Speak For Yourself

CES is over, and after spending the week in Vegas looking at gadgets and sitting through endless panels and presentations, my Big Takeaway -- it's the law that every reporter and pundit at CES has to have a Big Takeaway -- is that a) nothing new happened, b) artificial intelligence is everything, and c) voice control is everything, too. You'll read about that elsewhere, in the context of what the radio industry and podcast companies need to do to take advantage of blah blah blah you've read that before. I'm going to address this column not to the radio industry in general, nor the CEOs. I'm not talking to iHeart or Entercom or Wondery. I'm talking to creators -- hosts and producers. This one's specifically for you.

You will read about radio companies needing to make sure their product is easily accessible via voice command, needs to be part of the connected car, needs to be whatever. You, as a host or producer, need to do the same thing, but not for your station, not for your employer.

You need to do it for yourself.

And here's what you need to do: You need to get people to use voice platforms not just to ask for your station or aggregator app. You need to get them to ask for you. Specifically you. Not "WXYZ." You, by name or show title. And you need to do that to empower yourself.

It's pretty simple. In a world in which people can access entertainment and information by just saying the name, you are much more valuable if people are asking specifically for you or your show rather than a corporate entity. Otherwise, you're an interchangeable part, and you're replaceable. In order not to be replaceable, you have to be a brand yourself. And to be an effective brand, you need to give people a reason to ask for you, which brings us way, way back to what's been essential since dinosaurs roamed the earth doing AM radio: compelling content. Generic jocks, same-old talk radio, lame sports takes will not cut it. You'll have to make people want YOU, not your station, not your format. They can get music elsewhere. They can get a huge range of talk from radio and podcasts and social media. But if you're unique and entertaining, they can only get you from you.

So do that. It might not make your employer all that happy, but they can make that work for them, too: they need strong personalities and content to sell, too, and you can provide that. You build it, they'll come. Everybody can win. But you should make it work for yourself in the process.

Anyway, otherwise, I saw cars and wearables and giant TVs and RF toothbrushes and people queuing up at Google's installation to go down a giant slide into a ball pit and robots, so many robots, robots serving soda and scooting around toting toilet paper. You know, the usual.

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Helping you be unique for over 20 years, Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, continues to dig up material for every show with commentary and jokes and folderol, whatever folderol is. Also malarkey. Just click here and/or follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And for 2020's first installment of "10 Questions With...," I talked with Fox Business Network anchor Liz Claman, who also hosts an interview podcast "Everyone Talks to Liz Claman," the title of which might well be true, considering the pretty impressive guest list she's compiled. And she has some interesting stories to tell about her life and career and even Broadway. Definitely well worth reading.

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Yeah, CES was interesting, even if it was sort of a treading-water year and nothing radically new happened. Unfortunately, still no jetpacks. Flying cars, sort of, yes -- more small helicopters than Chevy Malibus with wings -- but no jetpacks. I'm beginning to think that we're just not going to get those.

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