2 Kool 2 Be 4-gotten

What do people really think of radio? More to the point, do they think about radio at all?

There was a story on local TV news here in L.A. the other day about local residents protesting the electric companies' decision to turn off power in fire prone areas every time the Santa Ana winds start to blow. A woman was livid about the power cuts, and she summed up her argument to a reporter: Without power, there's no internet, and thus no way to get vital information to people who may be affected by the fires.

When we saw the report, Fran turned to me and said, "Isn't that why we're all supposed to have radios?" Indeed, battery-powered or hand-cranked radios are always on the list of emergency supplies to keep on hand in case of one of California's various disasters, right there with canned food and jugs of water. And we're in a market where local radio news and emergency coverage are still alive and well, with stations like KFI and KNX maintaining news staffs and reliably going into wall-to-wall coverage when our region is afflicted by fire, flood, earthquakes, and plagues of locusts. You can still turn to radio in a crisis.

That's great. It's also, in a way, meaningless if generations aren't even thinking about radio as an option.

Now, I can hear the melodious sound of a bunch of people in suits shouting "93% REACH!" Or maybe "91% REACH!" It's something in that ballpark. Yes, radio "reaches" people, or at least a large percentage of a small sample of people consenting to be part of a research panel and carrying meters. And a woman being interviewed on local TV news is not necessarily representative of the general public. I get that. Still, I'm betting that a growing number of people aren't thinking of radio as, well, anything. It doesn't really exist in their world, at least not as we knew it. How could it? They likely don't own a radio at home, or at least they don't even remember that there might be a tuner in the bedroom clock they don't use for alarms anymore. The thing in the car is as likely to deliver audio streaming from their phones as it is to serve as a "radio." And they're probably listening to music or political talk or sports anyway; news is what they get from social media. Radio? It's on in the background in some places. It might pop on in the car. It's still around, but not what it used to be, and not in the foreground.

With that in mind, it's no wonder that when someone stuck a microphone in her face, it didn't occur to the woman on TV that radio is a vital lifeline, a conduit of critical information, even though there are radio stations in her area doing that job. For her, and ultimately for everyone, all media are converging into that device in her hand. Radio, TV, movies (sorry, Martin Scorsese), books, newspapers, magazines, music, games... sure, radio and TV and game consoles and books will continue to separately exist, but the future and, for a large percentage of the world, the present involves everything funneled into a single device via IP, perhaps controlled by voice. Meanwhile, in so many places, local radio news is a shadow of what it once was, and the audience isn't conditioned to think of the radio as a place to which you can turn for critical facts in a crisis.

What can radio do to change that? I don't know that you can convince people to use a physical radio, but it couldn't hurt to get the word out that radio provides great service in an emergency. And then provide great service in emergencies. And make it easy to get that information on every device, including by voice command (hey, how about creating a simple command for emergencies that would bring up your stream on Alexa and Google devices? "Alexa, play emergency information"). And then... well, if people aren't thinking about having a device that doesn't need electricity in an emergency, maybe radio stations should pool resources to give away hand-cranked radios to everyone who wants one. They're available cheap on Amazon, but people aren't even aware they exist. Make it easy. Give people a free radio with your logo on it and maybe an emergency contacts card with relevant phone numbers and helpful information on dealing with wildfire, earthquake, tornado, whatever. Just a thought.

Whatever you do, the goal is to climb back into the public's consciousness. It's marketing, it's promotion, it's reacquainting people with things they used to instinctively know: Radio is essential, radio is a lifeline, radio can be there when every single other medium can't. It's a strategic advantage that should still be top-of-mind but hasn't been for a while. Time for a reminder.

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If you're a talk or podcast or morning host and you have an emergency need for stuff to talk about... okay, that was an awful, awful segue into a plug for Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, which has material for every show and is in no way related to emergency service, so please accept my humble apologies. Just click here and/or follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And don't miss "10 Questions With..." Westwood One's John Stolnis, who has a lot to say about radio news, podcasting, and Philadelphia sports, which are, as you might have surmised by now, three of my core topics. (It was conducted before Zack Wheeler signed, but there IS some Phillies talk.)

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This is the last column for 2019, by the way. All Access goes into holiday mode next Wednesday, which means that we'll still be posting fresh radio, music, and podcast industry news every weekday, but I'll be occupied with that for a few days and then off until January, at which time I'll be rushing off to CES in Las Vegas and so Talk Topics will go on hiatus and this column will go on hiatus and we'll do it all again in 2020, because that's what we do. (The podcast will be fresh every weekday as usual, by the way, and I'll surely be posting the usual idiocy on social media.) Enjoy the holidays and let's meet back here on (checks calendar) January 3rd? Really? Okay, then.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
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Twitter @pmsimon
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