Especially For You

Whatever happened to talk radio that addressed the things about which listeners really care?

I'm asking that after thinking about this week's All Access News-Talk-Sports 10 Questions interview with Dan Weissmann, the creator and host of "An Arm and a Leg," a podcast that, in a non-political, non-partisan way, probes deeply into a topic that affects practically everyone in America: the high cost of health care, and the process of trying to figure out why things are the way they are. The show is doing what talk radio isn't doing these days, offering an entertaining look at something that's a universal, top-of-mind issue for everybody.

Why isn't talk radio doing that?

It's a fallacy to say that, well, that's a public radio thing, to talk about real issues. Commercial talk radio, the theory goes, is for us-versus-them, let's-make-fun-of-the-other-side, total fealty to "our man." Can't alienate the P1s with any deviation. Gotta give 'em more of what they came for.

And that's fine if you assume that the dying-off elderly conservative male population is all you can reach with talk radio in 2019. But that also assumes there's only one way to do talk radio. For that, let's go back in time a little.

25 years ago, there were your basic conserva-talk stations as there are today. There were "guy talk" stations, usually on FM and essentially comedy formats. There were stations that were hangovers from the earlier era of radio, the WOR-style conversation and companionship stations. There were sports stations, then still a novelty but also generally as they are today, although not yet on FM. And there were a few stations and shows taking the bold position of talking about things that listeners cared about, their everyday lives, from taxes to schools to traffic problems.

Today, "guy talk" is mostly gone, unless you're in Florida. WOR itself is indistinguishable from any other political talker. Entertainment talk geared towards female audiences has succeeded in the Twin Cities but never spread further. With few exceptions, talk radio is either conservative political talk or sports talk. That's it.

What happened?

Maybe it was reacting to the PPM and the idea that maybe the loyalty of listeners to the "guy talk" stations was overstated in diaries (although in 2019, listener engagement and loyalty is more important than ever, isn't it?). Maybe it was fear of the audience, thinking that anything but hardcore political stuff would drive away the core of Men 65+. Maybe it was a misunderstanding of what a variation on the talk format really involves -- at conventions, I keep hearing "lifestyle talk" reduced to "talking about the Kardashians," which no talk station other than the (successful!) one in Minnesota does. Maybe it was a lack of enough programmers and GMs and corporate types willing to take risks. But here we are. And where talk radio has faltered in serving the larger audience of people who are listening not to have their political positions validated but just to get some entertainment and make it through the day, podcasts are filling that gap. If the mainstream audience finally adopts podcasts in critical-mass numbers, that's your talk radio for the future.

Which brings me back to Dan and health care and the podcast, which you should listen to even if only for informing yourself about the issue. It's an example of spoken word audio that addresses the listeners' needs, that speaks to them about something that's on their minds every day. There are so many other examples of podcasts doing what talk radio COULD do -- talking about parenting, commuting, workplace things, local politics, crime, social issues -- that it makes me wonder why someone isn't trying it on a broadcast signal.

Oh, right, money. You have to hire people. But the payoff could be big. (No, please, stop it with the "just put podcasts on the air" thing -- the very nature of on-demand podcasts is so different from how people use broadcast radio that you can't just slap a podcast on broadcast and think people will dutifully tune in at the top of the hour and listen to the end.) And it doesn't in any way invalidate standard political talk, which remains a solid option on the AM dial, or sports talk or public radio talk or podcasts, it's just another alternative, and isn't having another option for that fifth-FM-in-the-cluster that might pay off a good thing?

Once again, I'm dreaming. Then again, sometimes I think that the audio entertainment-industrial complex needs a lot more dreamers.

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I'd have written about radio and the hurricane, but I've done that before. Some stations did great, some just threw on TV audio, some stuck with regular programming. Good, bad, ugly. You know what I think about all of it. To the stations that went wall-to-wall and truly served their communities, bravo. To those who didn't have a plan, get one for the next time. To everyone along the coast affected by Dorian, I hope you made it through safely. And to contribute to relief efforts in the Bahamas, the Washington Post has handy list of donation options.

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