Picking Your Spot

What are you gonna talk about now?

In an age when it seems that every topic and genre of talk radio or podcasting has been done to death, it's daunting to be plotting out your future and wondering if there's anything you can do that would stand out. The same-old won't cut it, but when it appears that there's a traffic jam of content in every possible direction, it's understandable that radio hosts and podcasters trying to plan for the next stage of their careers would be frustrated, ready to throw up their hands, give up, and apply for a job doing something else.

Yet, someone's going to succeed in the seemingly overcrowded marketplace for spoken word media, and it might as well be you. The trick is to find something about which you're passionate, and produce something people will want to hear. I know, that's a neat trick if you can do it, but we're talking about your future and we're talking about you.

It's not like we've never seen things as crowded as this before. For several decades now, talk radio has been packed with political talk, and conservative political talk at that. Podcasting has always been a copycat medium of sorts: It started with a raft of tech shows, followed by the "buncha guys in a room talking about whatever" genre, a wave of "Los Angeles-based comedians interviewing other Los Angeles-based comedians about comedy," then public radio shows repurposed as podcasts, and so on, up to today's glut of true crime, daily news updates, "branded-content" podcasts, and "Bachelor" recap shows. Standing out in those crowds isn't easy, but some shows do. It's the same for radio, where some shows do better than others.

It's not random, although it's not always easy to define what makes one show a hit and another an also-ran. Some of it is surely marketing. Some of it is the size of the audience for that particular subject matter. A lot of it is the appeal of the host and the quality of the production. Anyone can sit around a Zoom H6 with a couple of mics and talk about "The Bachelor." Breaking out from that pack requires good hosts, entertaining content, and marketing -- social media generating word of mouth. Hard, but do-able.

Oh, and then there's passion. One of the things that makes me cringe a little is when a host tells me that they're thinking about doing a podcast, but when I ask them what it'll be about, they don't have a clear answer. Both podcasting and talk radio, moving forward, are going to require you to do more than just open the mic and talk about random stuff. You need to be talking about something that you're passionate about, something about which you have real and deep opinions. Ask yourself why someone would want to listen to you talk about whatever it is you're talking about, and ask yourself why YOU would want to listen to yourself talk about it. If it's something that excites you, about which you have deeply-held opinions or about which you know everything there is to know, or you have a deep curiosity about it, that's going to show. That's why someone would want to hear it. It's not an accident that many fan-hosted podcasts about pop culture are so successful. The hosts care about their topics, and it comes across to the audience.

You also have to define what you're doing. Yes, you can find plenty of top podcasts that are just interviews without a defining genre, but Joe Rogan, Adam Carolla et al. got into the game before the deluge. If you didn't, your name is likely not enough to attract an audience. Put yourself in the audience's shoes: They're looking for something to listen to, whether a podcast or radio show, and they have a massive range of options. Are they going to recognize what "The (Your Name Here) Show" offers, or are they going to look for "shows about 'The Bachelor'" or "podcast about the Lakers" or any other specific area of interest? Pick a topic or genre. That applies to podcasting now, but it will also apply to talk radio if the industry wants the format to survive after the current P1s... well, let's call it "age out," but you know what I'm saying. There'll have to be more than just angry-guy-ranting-about-politics talk to attract the under-65 audience. Someone's gonna try it (probably on FM, likely not on AM, but someone's gonna do it).

And there ARE topic areas that aren't being covered, ot aren't being covered well. If you're a news-oriented person, I'll make one suggestion: Local. You know that radio news departments have been cut way back or eliminated, but you also know that newspapers have done the same thing. If your local paper still covers your town's government and issues, you're lucky. The days when even the smallest town's council meetings drew multiple reporters are gone. The days when local papers held officials to account are waning. Some of the most successful remaining local talk shows in major markets cover local and state issues more than national topics, and they do it by being dogged and unrelenting about things people want and need to know about the local issues you don't see covered on TV news or in the papers. If you're talking about the latest tax hike or boondoggle construction project or the homeless crisis in your city and nobody else is, you win. It takes work -- you need to be a real reporter as well as just a talker -- but there's opportunity to build an audience and make a difference. True, you aren't going to become a national or international superstar that way, but you'll be a local hero, and that beats being one of the countless hosts lost in the shuffle.

All of this is to say that there's a future for what you, the talk show host or podcaster, do. Find what you're passionate about, talk about it, and tell people you're doing it, and don't worry about the size of the competition. If you build it, they will... okay, they may or may not come, but build it anyway and see what happens.

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Whatever you talk about and wherever you do it, Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, has material for you. Just 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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Reminder: I'll be at Podcast Movement Evolutions, February 12-15 in Los Angeles; the BSM Summit in New York February 26-27; Talk Show Boot Camp in Cincinnati March 5-6, where I'll apparently be moderating a roundtable of heavy hitters; and All Access' own Worldwide Radio Summit in Burbank March 25-27, where I'll be moderating ANOTHER panel of heavy hitters. More details to come.

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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