Consistency, Hobgoblins, And Talk Radio

Stay in your lane.

Give them more of what they came for.

Superserve the P1s.

The sentiment gets phrased in several ways, but they all mean essentially the same thing. Give 'em what they want, and they want the same, reliable thing all the time. Be McDonald's, or, even better, In-N-Out, where the menu's been the same since the 1950s. If they see anything that deviates, they'll go away.

Things have changed since I was programming talk radio. Well, not entirely; mainstream political talk radio had already begun to morph into what it is today, one political philosophy hammered home all day, every day. My approach to competing with that was to look for hosts who were unpredictable -- the political views were less important to me than independent thinking. I advised them that they were NOT there as representatives of either political party, or any overarching political philosophy. They were to be representatives of the listeners, of the audience's interests. No politician was to be spared. I felt that the hosts had a great opportunity to hold the political class to account, that listeners could consider the hosts their representatives with access to the powerful that the average person never gets. And, above all, I did NOT want to be able to predict a host's positions or topics or material. I wanted hosts to develop their own personalities and, in turn, relationships with the listeners. The unifying thing, the thing people would be tuning in for, was that we'd be talking about things that matter to people in our market, in that case New Jersey. It wasn't liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. We didn't restrict ourselves that way. It worked.

In 2019, I'm not sure how that plays out. Political talk has become sports talk. People root for opposing teams. And unlike sports, in which a fan can be critical of the local side, there's zero room for dissent. You're either on board with everything (including the indefensible) or you're an apostate. There's always been polarization on a political level, but it wasn't like this; most people had views that spread across ideologies, conservative on some things, liberal on others. Now, at least for talk radio P1s, there's no diversity. You're in or they're gone.

But I still think that predictability is limiting. Take a look at talk radio's demographics, even on FM. (Hint: Old.) Some people crave familiarity and the "same old." I think there's still a large audience looking to find shows and personalities who entertain and aren't predictable. There's plenty of room for both.

Or is there? In the debate over Dan Le Batard's conflict with ESPN management this week, the point was raised that ESPN has research to say that listeners don't want to hear politics or social issues in their sports talk, back to the "stick to sports" thing. I wonder, however, if asking someone in a survey what they want is the same as what they'll really want in practice. There is surely a group of people who desire and expect a uniform, unchanging product. A foolish consistency, after all, is the hobgoblin of little minds, and I promise that this is the last time I quote Emerson or type the word "hobgoblin." (Maybe not the last part. "Hobgoblin" is kind of a cool word.)

I'd like to think that there's an audience for the kind of entertainment that surprises, challenges, infuriates. I'm not going to argue that the tried-and-true, sticking-to-sports kind of talk radio doesn't work -- at least for AM stations trying to hold onto the audience they have. It might always be dominant within the format. But there's also room for unpredictability, passion, individuality. Isn't there? Because if there isn't -- if we're saying that everything has to be the same because the increasingly narrow segment of the population left for talk radio won't stand for deviation from the formula -- we can just program automation to repeat the same talking points over and over and move on.

I can't be the only one who WANTS talk radio hosts to talk about their passions, address topics that might not be "in the format," be unpredictable. I don't eat the same meal every day, I don't watch the same TV show every day, I don't listen to one podcast over and over, and I don't want to know what I'm going to hear from a host before I even turn on the radio. Maybe it's just me, but I told you, it's been a long time since I've been a talk radio PD. The radio station in my mind isn't the radio station I hear on the actual radio much anymore. I miss it.

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If you want to find topics to break out of the ordinary, you'll find 'em at 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.

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Yet another reiminder that I'm moderating a panel on "Celebrities in Podcasting" at Podcast Movement in Orlando on August 14th, on Coleman Insights' Industry Track and sponsored by Audioboom. Register here and meet a lot of people who are breaking away from predictability.

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