Battle Lines

The radio industry has always reacted to competition with a combination of defiance and fear. There's nothing wrong with what WE do, the industry seems to be collectively saying. The other guys -- they're deficient, not what people want, cheating, evil. All we need to do is tell our story better and all will be well. 93% reach! Or is it 91%? Well, it's reach, and it's bigger and better than any other reach!

This manifested itself in some of the reaction I saw to Spotify's commuter-targeted playlist feature that mimics radio, sort of. It's not quite like radio -- there's music, sure, tailored to a user's preferences, and news updates from NPR, PRI, and the Wall Street Journal, and podcasts for the talk-minded, but it's not formatted like a typical live morning show, so it's different. Whether it's better or not depends on the user's perception of the experience, but it's another option for the drive to and from work. But the reaction was a combination of "That's Not Radio!" defiance and fear that we have yet another competitor for people's attention.

By now, the industry should be used to the competition. It's not going to let up. There will be more attempts to grab a piece of what radio still owns, like the commute, the in-car experience, the... well, the commute and the in-car experience. And the reaction shouldn't be so much fear as it is resolve to offer what others can't: better, more desirable original content. Personality, companionship, interesting, funny, relatable content that listeners can't get elsewhere.

Better move fast on that, though. Yes, Spotify's working on that. (Look at their podcast initiative.) So are others, whether streaming or podcasting or things we don't even know about yet. Liner card reading, canned bits, doing the same thing every day for decades will not cut it anymore. Predictability is death. "Good enough" is not good enough. If your shows sound today like they did in 1995, your fear of competition is justified.

You know that, and you know the hurdles: Stations are cutting staff and budgets, there's resistance from people who have "always done things this way," "it didn't work when station X tried it," a litany of excuses. The next stage is here, though, and radio needs to be thinking that way.

Which is a segue to a more promising note, come to think of it. If you follow the Nielsen ratings, you know that they now give a little listing love to some stations that didn't register before, like translator-less HD2 and HD3 stations and streams, giving them a "Gentleman's 0.1" if there's even one meter registering a listen. That's not the promising part. What IS promising is to see streams of some AM talk and sports stations registering a lot more than that consolation prize. When KFI/Los Angeles' stream is beating some broadcast stations in the 6+ numbers, that means it's possible to take your programming online and make an impact. Moreover, we know how Nielsen's PPM methodology isn't exactly tailored to catch all the streaming that's going on. If a stream's doing more than the minimum, it's quite possible that the real number's much higher. (It's also possible that it's lower; when you're talking about shares under 1, the margin of error is a huge factor.)

In other words, you're already competing on the digital side. If your streaming isn't showing progress, maybe that's a sign that what you're doing isn't quite up to the task, and your AM signal isn't necessarily the entire problem. I've told you this before: The rules have changed. In fact, throw out the rules. You're competing in a wide open field, not just on AM or FM. Some stations are taking up the challenge, with programming that's better tailored to generations growing up digital, with podcasts and other content that isn't the same old thing. And the best way to hold your own against the Spotifys and Stitchers and Wonderys and whatever else is out there is not to rest on your laurels but to continually innovate and cultivate a culture that rewards different thinking. I want the radio industry to get there, not just with lip service but by... ah, I'm dreaming again, right? Let me dream. It can still happen.

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What else to talk about? Well, there's Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, all free when you click here and/or follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And there's "10 Questions With..." Brian Kilmeade, who you know from "Fox and Friends" and for his daily Fox News Radio show, and, yes, we talk about Fox's biggest fan, and much more.

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