Especially (Not) For You

They're remaking "Clueless," which came out in 1995, and the practically unanimous reaction on social media has been "no." That's been my reaction to every proposed remake -- no, the original was good enough. Never mind that the original "Clueless" was itself sort of a remake of Jane Austen; for a generation or two, the movie was, well, THEIRS. And a remake reminds us that 1995 was over 20 years ago and that there are adults today who are too young to remember the original. We get old, and we don't like being reminded of it.

But there's an answer to the "no remakes!" crowd, too. It's simple: These remakes? They're not for you.

That's a hard perspective to maintain, because it requires the individual to put themselves in someone else's mindset to evaluate whether something is good. We tend to think that everyone thinks the way WE do. And radio has been laboring under that impression for, um, forever. I can remember being excoriated by a general manager about one show, cursed out because he didn't think a show was funny, even though he was roughly 30 years older than the target audience. Another GM would tell me that his friends didn't like our station, again citing people who weren't who we were trying to reach.

Which is a roundabout way of coming back to a principle that should be obvious and that we've stressed over the years: Know your audience. And talk radio in particular has done that, but to only one extent, which poses a problem for the future. There's no question that if you have an AM station in an FM world that's increasingly becoming a pure-play online world, your audience is probably older and likely more conservative, and talk radio serves that well enough. If the target's 60-something or older and a Trump supporter, well, that's covered. That, however, leaves a huge opportunity to reach the rest, whether it's based on age or political position or just people who want to hear conversation but not about politics. It's not about changing what's on the air now so much as it's knowing that there's a lot more potential audience that isn't being served by what we're doing now.

And that requires understanding that we've left the age when younger generations "aged into" talk radio when their interests "matured." Someone who's coming of age now is not necessarily going to be just like their parents. They are not being attracted to talk radio because it's not for them. It's for dad and granddad, but it's not for someone whose concerns are more about job issues and child rearing, someone whose cultural touchstones aren't the same as people who loved the Beatles and "Andy Griffith," or even Britney Spears and "Seinfeld." All they know is that talk radio isn't for Millennials, doesn't relate to Millennials, can be outright hostile towards Millennials.

That's an opportunity, even if you think podcasting is taking talk radio's place for younger audiences. It is and it isn't. It's taking a chunk of the potential audience for talk radio, but it's not live, and when you have breaking news (and, lately, there's ALWAYS breaking news), talk radio can fill a role that podcasts aren't built to fill (social media is, but until we all have autonomous vehicles, live radio's a viable option when you're behind the wheel).

Incidentally, it's not a matter of hiring younger hosts, although that's also an issue. It's... well, it's back to knowing your audience. You don't necessarily want a 70-year-old host dropping hip-hop references and talking about eating avocado toast and thus turning into a Steve Buscemi meme. (I've heard talk radio hosts mispronounce "meme" and ask producers what a meme is, which is painful.) But you do want to talk about things that are relevant to a larger, more salable audience, and you want to image it with production that doesn't sound like talk radio sounded 30 years ago.

Hollywood does this by repackaging and updating old material, which is sort of a cheat but at least recognizes that new audiences are looking to relate to something that speaks to, and looks and sounds like, them. Sometimes it works -- "A Star Is Born" -- and sometimes it's Adam Sandler in "The Longest Yard," which didn't appeal to anyone but Adam Sandler. If it's a remake of something that you hold dear as a cherished memory of your youth, you'll have to remind yourself, the new one is not for you. And if you're programming talk radio and you want to try to get those demos to be a little younger, remember who your content is for, even if the GM complains that his friends at the country club don't get it. They don't have to. It's not for them.

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Now (PAINFUL SEGUE ALERT), what IS for EVERYBODY is the vast amount of material for shows of any kind at Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports. It's a heaping helping of topics that you WON'T find elsewhere, and that will resonate with every target demographic, or something like that. Just click here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. Also, don't miss "10 Questions With..." Peter Dills, the venerable food show host in Los Angeles who's about to launch a podcast as well. He's the guy you go to for the lowdown on dining in L.A., and you'll get more of his expertise in a new upcoming Radio.com podcast.

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Enjoy Halloween if that's something you do. I still have to buy candy for the few kids who'll show up trick-or-treating. It's the annual and eternal struggle: Buy what THEY like (hint: Skittles), or buy what WE like (anything chocolate)? Probably the former, because otherwise we'll just eat it all before the kids show up. Wait, hold on... we COULD buy BOTH. Hmm....

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
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