The Reach Thing

Here we go again. A report this week by Nielsen repeated the statistic that radio remains the number one medium for reach, which means that the reach thing is going to keep reverberating through the halls and conference rooms at every radio gathering for at least another year. If you, unlike me, don't go to those conventions, you have no idea how many times the phrase "93% reach!" can be uttered in a four-day span. I go to those things and I hear it in my sleep for a month afterwards.

And it's nice to be number one, even if it's not really all that accurate. The numbers are broken up so that "TV" only means your standard cable/broadcast plus time-shifting; things like viewing on phones and computers and "TV-connected devices" are broken out separately, but add them together and....

And it doesn't matter. Reach is fine, but that isn't a metric that matters as much as it used to. Advertisers are looking for engagement and actual listening and not just someone wearing a PPM walking into a store that's playing Hot Mix Jamz 108. And perhaps having radios installed in every car might just juice the numbers a bit. Ubiquity is a positive thing, but it's only a part of long-term success.

So I go back to the theme of a lot of these columns. Crowing about "93% reach! Biggest reach of all media!" gets old fast. I'd love to hear crowing about content that no other medium can match, about the industry fostering creativity it can deploy on multiple platforms, about something new instead of the same old thing we were doing 20 years ago. Surely, public radio seems to be way, way ahead of commercial radio in that respect, and if you think I'm going to bring up podcasts, yes, I am, but I'm also going to point to creative ideas like WNYC Studios' "More Perfect" Supreme Court podcast corralling several musical artists (including Dolly Parton, They Might Be Giants, and Devendra Barnhart) to do songs based on each of the Constitution's 27 amendments for a free digital "album," and the live podcast tapings many shows take on the road -- imagine, a "remote" that's not just about sales but is actually putting on a show -- and reviving scripted audio content. Some of that is going to work. Some of it will not. Podcasting, at this stage, remains in the "it's going to be a big business someday, but..." phase. But it's an attempt to address a future when radio's ubiquity will be blunted, and we should be doing more to innovate and more to let the world know when we do.

Or we can keep popping the corks when that reach thing pops up in the press releases once again, but I think it's time to move past that. The moment you think "hey, all's well after all!" is the moment you should be well advanced in planning for the days when "93% reach" isn't gonna cut it.

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Yeah, keeping it short again this week. It's August. Come on. Anyway, even in the end-of-Summer doldrums, you'll find unusual and unique material for your shows at Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports. Find it all by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. Plus, there's a new "10 Questions With..." "Hidden Truth" podcast creator and host Jim Breslo on how he developed his show and came to the podcast (and radio) space from an unusual background that includes law and, of all things, the gaming industry (as in Vegas, not video). Definitely check it out.

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Schedule notes: Yeah, I'll be off on Labor Day, except for the podcast. Also, I'll be at the Radio Show 2018 in Orlando in September, because, sure, why not a convention in Orlando during hurricane season? And, yes, the Worldwide Radio Summit is already taking registrations for the 2019 edition, so if you want to get in on that early, you can go here and register now; it's set for March 27-29 at the Castaway in Burbank. Are we done now? Yeah, we're done. Talk to you next week.

Perry Michael Simon
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