Gotta Be Another Way

Human brains tend to put everything into convenient, recognizable boxes. The first reaction most people have to something that doesn't fit into those boxes is resistance, or confusion, or some combination thereof. Or it's a thrill. But it's not what we perceive as "normal," and thus there's a little feeling of pushback if there's not outright revulsion. Once that's done, we then try to cram the new thing into a familiar context, which doesn't always fit. We want "new," as long as the form's somewhat familiar.

That's what came to mind when I was at last week's iHeartRadio Podcast Awards, and I'm not going to go into whether it was good or bad or anything like that; the show was, to use a variation of a clichÈ, what it was, an awards show with the usual trappings, a host, an audience, "the winner is," backstage interviews, pretty much the same as every awards show since awards shows became a thing. What struck me was less that it was another example of how podcasting is hot enough to attract traditional media's ardor -- I felt that at Podcast Movement with all the radio people there, too -- and more that I was in the middle of something totally recognizable. It was an awards show, the same as all the other award shows. There were categories, there were video montages, there were acceptance speeches, there was Mario Lopez. It's not a criticism that it could have been any other awards show, because when you think of awards shows, you think of all of those elements, from the red carpet to the finale, and it had all of that.

There has to be another way to do it, though, right? There has to be a way to do awards that doesn't look or sound like the Oscars, Golden Globes, Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, ESPYs, Golden Mikes, Webbys, Marconis, and Western Gribble County Chamber of Commerce Annual Burf S. Redenbacher Jr. Memorial Community Service Awards? Sure there is, but nobody's going to go there, because....

Because why? Because it's a risk. Because any time anyone tries anything truly different, it hits immediate resistance. To borrow a phrase that usually describes the resistance to modern art, it's the "shock of the new." And that's applicable not just to awards shows or podcasting but to radio and, really, everything. We're comfortable with what we know. We fear what's different. (And, these days, we tweet our offense, because we have to signal our disapproval so we can say we were agin it 'fore anyone else). If someone takes a risk, they take a lot of abuse; if the risk leads to success, everyone else rushes in to take credit. (And goes back in and deletes the old tweets.) The rewards of thinking and being different are weighed against the risk of opprobrium before there's even failure. In radio, I've been there, felt that.

Which is why I keep pushing people in radio and in podcasting to stop boxing themselves into tradition. It's great that more and more of us are ceasing to think of ourselves as merely in "radio" but now consider our business "audio," but that's just one step. You don't need to even restrict yourself to audio. The truth is, we don't know what will be the popular media five or ten years from now, or which device will deliver it (smartphones, you say? Five years ago, did you see smart speakers coming?), or what will work best, content-wise. One of the things I like about podcasting is that so many of the things that have "rules" in radio have zero restrictions in podcasting, from length of episode (ideal length: Whatever works for your content) to clock (stop sets? We don't have to show you any stinkin' stop sets!) to intros (don't need 'em, either). The rules aren't rules.

We're going to need to throw the rules aside for several reasons. One is employment; you need to be able to do more than talk on the radio or sell radio advertising. Two is creative, because ideas don't always fit one medium or another. Three is because consumer tastes and behaviors are changing and you have to react to that. Four is that as we move forward, the entire radio way of doing business -- you do shows, you get ratings, advertisers buy based on ratings -- is being upended in several ways, and I'll get to what programmatic means for the business (hint: not good things) in another column. And so on...

With all of that, you might think that the future is more scary than bright. Truth is, yeah, it's scary that the security of things being the way they always were is gone. It's scary what's happened to traditional media jobs, especially in journalism. It's scary when you stare into the future and it looks a lot like an abyss. But it's also a vast ocean of opportunity, and I promise I won't torture any more metaphors. Someone's going to strike gold (sorry) by doing something that doesn't resemble anything you've seen before. Might as well be you.

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And the winner for Best Place to Find Stuff To Talk About On The Radio is... Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports. Find it for free by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item.

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Incidentally, while I was at the awards show, I was reminded that I have never won an award. Oh, the shame of it, too old for participation ribbons, working in a job not eligible for any shiny trophies. Somehow, I'll manage. Maybe they'll give out a special Pulitzer for getting through an entire column about thinking differently without once using the phrase "outside the box."

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