Anti-Social Tendencies

Does the world need another column pontificating about radio's use of social media? Probably not. But there's one aspect that I don't think stations and individual hosts consider enough, and a friend's question about it earlier this week came at about the same time I was thinking about the same issue, so here we are, and, no, this is NOT going to be about what you post on social media. It's about the reaction.

I've been thinking about this for a few years now, observing posts by Facebook friends who also happen to be radio talk show hosts whose followers are mostly listeners. You aren't going to be surprised that any item posted by the hosts is met with comments that invariably devolve into the crassest, lowest-denominator political ranting with memes galore. There are obviously fake news stories presented as fact, and links to dodgy "sources." There's name-calling of the lowest order. It's a convention of people with whom you wouldn't want to associate, even if you agree with their politics.

Now, it's true that you can't control who your fans might be, and you don't necessarily want to have to crack down on people who are there because they like you. Yet, if you're a host or station whose comments on Facebook or replies on Twitter are looking more like 4chan than a reasonable conversation, it reflects on you whether you want it to or not. It might not be your fault, but... well, say you're an advertiser and you see the social media accounts of a host whose show you're on overrun with, say, racist comments. What does that tell you about the audience you're reaching?

In reality, it might truly say very little, because, like callers to a talk show, the people who respond to and comment on social media posts probably represent a tiny fraction of the actual audience. They're often the fringiest of fringe types. They're not speaking for you, not officially, but in a way, they ARE speaking for you, because their behavior is right there on your page, and advertisers and other listeners will, consciously or not, link you to them. Advertisers might think, well, conspiracy theorists buy my product, too (the possibly apocryphal Michael Jordan "Republicans buy sneakers, too" quote comes to mind), or they might think there are better places with better audiences on which to spend ad dollars. Other listeners might think, oh, I can't admit to listening to this show, people will think I'm one of "them." It's a bad look, even if you aren't saying anything in your posts or on the air that might be objectionable to anyone.

When my friend asked me about this, she was looking for guidance on what policy a station should institute for social media comments. That's easy: Stations should be monitoring the comments on station posts and deleting or issuing warnings on any comments that fall into the abusive or fake categories. As for just plain stupid comments, there's not a lot you can do without becoming a little deletion-happy, but the more egregious violations should be met with the ax. It's not censorship, because a) a radio station isn't the government, and b) it's the station's platform and nobody else has a right to use it without the station having some semblance of control. If someone acted up in your house, you'd throw them out. Your social media accounts are your house. You want engagement, but not abuse.

That applies to hosts' personal accounts, too, and that's the part that sometimes gets overlooked. I'm not suggesting that stations take control of hosts' personal pages, not at all. But hosts need to keep an eye on their own accounts, and police the comments, too. It's not to silence dissent and not to quell engagement. It's that the comments can and do reflect on you even if you didn't make them. You want opinion, you want dissent, you want engagement, but you don't want personal attacks and general stupidity to overtake them and you don't want anyone to see what's going on under your Facebook posts and cast negative judgement on your audience and what you do. Blocking is not a crime, and it doesn't matter if someone gets upset that they've been blocked if the result is to clean up your comments section. Let 'em whine. You'd cut 'em off and hang up if they called into your show and acted up, and this is the same thing. Your accounts are an extension of your show. Treat them the same way as you'd treat your show. Bad callers, bad commenters, be gone.

I would toss this aside as too obvious, but I see a lot of terrible listener behavior congregated under talk show hosts' Facebook posts or as replies on Twitter. Some hosts seem to even encourage it. That's their prerogative, but it seems counterproductive. Save the fire for the medium that pays you to be provocative. Keep the medium that doesn't pay you and sits there in Google searches forever on a less stupid level.

Or don't. It's up to you who with whom you want to be associated. You decide if engaging with that is worth... well, what DO you get out of it? Maybe that's the question you should be asking yourself.

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I don't have a good segue to the plug for Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, so just go there to get all kinds of stuff to talk about on your show or podcast, 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. Also check out "10 Questions With..." Ken Webster Jr. and Steve Johnson, jointly talking about the legacy of the Walton and Johnson show and Ken's ascension to co-host after the passing of John Walton.

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