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Top Of Mind
March 22, 2019
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. That's okay. Utilities can make a lot of money and employ a lot of people. They can serve a valuable purpose. But for a media category, just being a utility without the ability to either grow the audience or increase revenues with ever-increasing rates is a difficult position to find oneself in, even if it promises steady profitability. The investors, they do not accept those margins
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Nobody hates radio.
I thought I should say that up front, because a lot of commentary about radio starts with the assumption that there are mobs of people trashing radio as, I don't know, an old-people medium, dead as a doornail, the past. There are a handful of pundits saying things like that, but, let's face it, "hate" is a little extreme. Hate would require people to pe passionate about the issue.
And passion is not a word I'd use when considering the public's opinion of radio. If you're not in the business, chances are pretty good you don't actively think about radio at all. It's just... there. It's a utility. It's there when you get in the car, it's there in the background when you go to pick up a sandwich for lunch, it's there when you're in the driveway with the hood popped, checking the belts on your Dodge. You put it on, you get a few songs, or someone talking about Trump or football, or -- grrrrr! -- commercials, you go on with your day.
Remember that when you see research both favorable to, and pessimistic about, radio. Whether we're talking (incessantly, desperately) about, what is it today, 92% reach? 92% reach, or whether we're talking (with great alarm) about young demos listening less and switching to Spotify and podcasts, we have to maintain some perspective. Unless you sit someone down to take a survey, or attach a PPM to their hip, most people are just not thinking about radio. It's taken for granted. If you press them with questions, they'll tell you what they like and don't like about radio, but they aren't otherwise thinking about radio. There's no need for them to think about it. It's just not a priority.
That's okay. Utilities can make a lot of money and employ a lot of people. They can serve a valuable purpose. But for a media category, just being a utility without the ability to either grow the audience or increase revenues with ever-increasing rates is a difficult position to find oneself in, even if it promises steady profitability. The investors, they do not accept those margins.
So, breaking out of the utility image is where radio can grow. With so many other options, from podcasts to streaming audio to social media to practically anything else that occupies people's time, growth will require people being more passionate about the medium. And we've seen it before. Howard Stern building a big, fervent audience nationwide. Rush Limbaugh becoming so compelling to some folks that they assembled in "Rush Rooms" at restaurants to listen. Any number of morning shows able to draw crowds to personal appearances. The common denominator is personality (and talent), something that radio's been lax about developing lately. That's not as easy as it used to be, because someone who's got something new and different to offer has plenty of other options: They can do video, which is more glamorous and has made some amateurs very successful. They can do podcasts, where the money isn't there quite yet for most but there's no PD or consultant telling them what to do and no FCC to tell them what words they can't say. Sure, radio can offer a salary, but someone who puts a high value on their own creative freedom wants more than that. All of this means that radio should be selling itself to the creative community as more welcoming and with fewer restrictions than it's posed in the past. A new day, if you will.
All of this is a convoluted way of saying that a medium that continues to be ubiquitous, is available on all devices (via streaming, but it IS there), and isn't particularly hated because it isn't particularly top-of-mind has plenty of opportunity to be relevant and rise from the utility category. If you develop content that people get passionate about, that gets them talking and paying attention, they can and will talk and pay attention. The problem isn't that radio's image is bad or that it's withering and dying, it's that. for decades now, there hasn't been any new content that gets people to really think about radio as a foreground thing. There are many good radio shows, but what the business needs is stuff that stands out and can't be replicated in any other way.
Easy, right? Of course not, but that's what radio needs, fresh talent doing things people think about, talk about, can't be without. It's a tall order, and it might be harder than it used to be, but it's happened before. It's more than a marketing issue, it's giving the people something they don't even know they want yet, but will. Get on that, will you? Because you're starting from a better position than you think you are. You're not hated. You're not even being thought about. You're under the radar. Time to surprise everyone.
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Wanna surprise people? Find surprising things to talk about on the radio at Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports. It's free; find it by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. Also, we have a new "10 Questions With..." the OTHER co-host of "The Brooklyn Boys" podcast and Executive Producer of "Elvis Duran and the Morning Show," the artist known as Skeery Jones, who, like his partner David Brody, has plenty to say about his career, radio, podcasting, and getting free stuff. Read it and definitely check out the podcast.
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My podcast is "The Evening Bulletin with Perry Michael Simon," a quick (two minutes or less) daily thing, and you can get it at Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, and RadioPublic. Spotify, too. Google Podcasts? Click here. You can also use the RSS feed and the website where you can listen in your browser, or my own website where they're all embedded, too. And if you have an Amazon Alexa-enabled device, just say "Alexa, play the Evening Bulletin podcast."
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Gonna be at the Worldwide Radio Summit next week (Wednesday through Friday), so will there be a column? Who knows? Depends on timing. Maybe you should just show up and come to the back of the room where they hide me and I'll do a live version of the column. Find out more and register here.
Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
www.facebook.com/pmsimon
Twitter @pmsimon
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