Name That Tune

The main thing I'm taking away from the year in radio and podcasting is that we're all being held back by old thinking. You want an example? How about The Breeze?

No, I'm not talking about the soft adult contemporary format itself. It's a reaction to a market opportunity, an attempt to serve the underserved older end of the 25-54 demographic, and, done well, it generates some salable numbers. What I'm talking about is the name itself, "The Breeze," and the way radio companies are rushing to pre-empt anyone else in a market from using it by slapping it onto HD-2 and HD-3 channels. What? You want to flip a station to Soft AC in this market? We got the name first! We win the race! Bwa-HA-HA-ha-ha-ha-ha!

That's typical radio management and programming thinking. It's also a demonstration of the kind of irrelevant maneuvering radio people are fond of making. Do you think the potential audience for a "Breeze" even knows what "The Breeze" is? Only people living in a market where "The Breeze" name is in use and developing an audience would associate "The Breeze" with Michael Bolton records. The name is meaningless. We already have examples of that, successful new Soft AC stations called "The Sound" or "Sunny." "The Breeze" as a trademark doesn't mean anything to people who aren't radio geeks.

We know this. It's right in front of our noses. Yet radio's always done that. To radio people, "Kiss-FM" means Top 40, except that it means Rock in San Antonio, Urban in Washington (on and off), Urban AC in Detroit... you get the idea. Station names are just a part of what needs to be a well-designed marketing strategy, yet if you're a radio person, it's easy to think that there's magic (or Majic) in a slogan, even if deep down you have to know that there isn't.

Radio is still run that way, though. Gotta box out the guys across the street, grab that name so they can't use it, as if the audience would know the difference. You can't call it Alt! We have Alt on our HD-3! Yeah, that'll make a difference.

The real difference is something more than a name that's been associated with a success in another market. It's what you're putting on the air and how you're marketing it. We're in an age with an insane number of options for audio entertainment; putting something out there that isn't available from another source, or is just plain better than others in the category, isn't easy, but that's why you're a professional. And marketing it does require a memorable name, but it's not necessarily the same name as someone is using in another market. Can't use "The Breeze"? Call it something else. Call it by its frequency. Call it by its calls. Call it "Irving." (Worked for Jack, Bob, and Ben.) Call it anything that people will remember. It's more important to get the word out to potential listeners by consistent, effective, engaging social media and not let up once you're on the air.

Or you can assume that success is in the name. Good luck with that.

We need to look forward, and that's hard when so much of the discussion about radio is mired in the past, whether it's wallowing in "Radio Wars" against other stations as if there's no other competition out there or just fantasizing about things like putting music back on WABC. We have to recognize that things have changed, change isn't a bad thing, and pretending things are just like they were 30 years ago is not going to help matters.

The other takeaway from 2018 -- can you tell this is my last column of the year? -- is one area in which radio is trying to move forward, with commercial radio is finally discovering podcasting but still mostly in the "get out of the way, the big boys are here to show you how it's done" mode. I've seen some promising signs, like KSL's true crime success and iHeartMedia's acquisition of HowStuffWorks, but I've seen promising signs before and I still see a lot of repurposed stuff and a lot of people acting like they've invented the medium when they didn't even know how to listen to a podcast two years ago. Again, it's old thinking, doing the same kind of content for a medium where the audience has different expectations and is substantially younger than the talk radio constituency. The world changed, and not everyone in charge of radio changed with it.

Still, I can hope for the best. Radio people do know how to produce audio entertainment and information, and they can and, we can hope, will adapt to the different medium. The one thing I do hope comes out of radio's invasion of podcasting is a better way to monetize the shows, because that's still in an embryonic stage even a decade into it. Direct response ads are fine as far as they go, but the breakthrough to the big bucks hasn't yet happened. It will be to everyone's benefit if and when it does happen, because as the AM band withers and FM ages, spoken word programming is inevitably going to be an on-demand digital thing.

Maybe it'll happen in 2019. If it does, I'll write about it then. For 2018, that's enough.

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While this wraps up the column for the year, there's more coming at Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, which will be on duty through next week. You'll find plenty to talk about on the radio there, with new stuff and a LOT of evergreen stuff posted there. It's all available for free anytime by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And we're closing out the year with "10 Questions With..." our ol' pal Peter Thiele, the PD at KARN-FM in Little Rock and a guy who's just naturally entertaining no matter what he's talking about. He's been at radio stations all over America, from New York to San Francisco, and he has some excellent insights about radio plus a memorable story about working with the late, legendary Barbara Carlson at KSTP that involves, of all people, Tom Wopat and, well, go read it and see if you can get the image out of your head.

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You can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well. And you can find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pmsimon, and at pmsimon.com.

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Well, then, any other parting words? I do want to mention last week's Intercollegiate Broadcasting System Western Regional Conference in Long Beach, which was great -- thanks to Valerie Geller, Dennis Clark, and Suzanne Whatley for sharing a panel with me, Danny Lemos for running a wonderful event, and all the attendees who were there because they want to be part of this industry. Their energy and enthusiasm are truly inspiring. Anything else? Um... nah, just Happy What's Left Of Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwaanza, Happy New Year, Happy Everything. I'll be back in January with new columns and CES 2019 coverage. Talk to you then.

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