New Radio, Who Dis

I still listen to the radio. Most people do, even if they won't acknowledge it. The industry beats everyone over the head with that "93% reach!" statistic, and, yeah, most people encounter radio in their daily lives, in the car or in a store or when the alarm clock -- remember alarm clocks? -- goes off. I, for one, am committed enough to have recently, and here I warn you to hold your loved ones tightly as the shock sets in, bought a radio. No, really. Not a device with a radio built into it, not something that streams the Internet versions of AM and FM brands, but an actual, AM/FM, purpose-built little portable radio. And it has HD Radio, too. What? No, it's not 2006. I just needed a radio to....

"Needed" is not quite the word, but I did want to have a battery-powered AM/FM radio that also does HD on hand for the occasions when I want to just travel up and down the dial and see what everyone's doing, especially on the road. After all, I write about radio, so I need to hear what goes out on the air, not just the streamed version with different ads and promos. So, I do listen. But I don't listen as much, and when I'm punching up stations on the new radio, I'm reminded of the things I hear, and don't hear, that made traditional broadcast radio less essential to me. I suspect I'm far from alone.

The first thing is obvious: It's not on-demand, not like podcasts or subscription music services. When I'm in the passive, entertain-me mood, radio's fine. But, especially for spoken word content, I'm rarely just wanting to hear someone talk without choosing what they're going to talk about. You can't even rely on sports talk to be focused on the game or team or topic about which you want to hear. Same for political talk. And if you're yearning for talk about anything else, good luck finding that on "regular" radio. Conversely, I can choose from an insane number of options from podcasting, and I can hear entire shows that start when I want them to start. No more tuning into a show in the middle.

But the second thing is more important. Over the years, I've asked panels of radio executives to name what innovative things their stations have done on the air in the past year, and I've gotten mostly crickets. Listening to radio today is an exercise in Everything-Sounds-The-Same-ism. You don't need to tune into many talk shows to know what they're going to be saying. You know what music you're going to hear, by format, on commercial music stations. No surprises, but nothing new, and nothing that you'd make an appointment to hear. Remember when you'd tune into Howard Stern or Neil Rogers or Phil Hendrie or Tommy Mischke to get a dose of something really unique, different, and personal? That was the '80s and '90s. I was programming back then, and I was hoping we'd get more gotta-listen, singular, unique talent opting for radio careers and doing stuff we hadn't even imagined. I didn't anticipate radio getting more restrictive, didn't anticipate the reaction to the PPM, didn't anticipate that YouTube and podcasting would siphon off the talent. But here we are.

So I have a new radio, and there are good shows on there, but I'm wondering if I'll ever get that must-listen feeling from traditional broadcast radio again, the feeling that I have to be there when a show is live and hear something I can't get elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, there's good radio happening even in the post-bankruptcy, consolidated era. And podcasting isn't uniformly excellent, not by a long shot. It's important, though, for the radio industry to understand that just putting their current output on smart speakers or streams or chopping 'em up and putting 'em out as podcasts is not enough. What's really missing is the development of new, unique, unmissable shows and formats, for broadcast and streaming and podcasting alike. It's what radio companies can do, should do, MUST do to be in the game. Give me something that'll make me want to listen to that little radio I just bought, and in the car, and on my phone, and on my clock radio. Yeah, I have a clock radio. You got a problem with that?

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Seeing as how it's the middle of August, I'm trying to keep these short(er), because I'm pretty sure your minds are at the beach or fretting about the kids going back to school or stuff like that. So... talk to you next week.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
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Twitter @pmsimon
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