Broken Habits

Old habits, the saying goes, die hard. We're seeing "hard" right now.

That, more than anything else, was my reaction to the radio ratings this week. You know what happened. Cumes plummeted. Shares don't really matter. The ratings company is warning that it was all an anomaly. Next month might look different. Yeah, whatever. To me, the ratings were a warning shot about the medium's future.

Radio relies on habit. You get in the car and the radio goes on and you leave it there because it's easy, it's free, it's what you always do. You listen at work because it's what you've always done and it takes less effort than picking songs or playlists on your phone. There's nothing wrong with this, of course; habitually doing something doesn't mean you don't like it, it's just that the mechanism by which you do it has become automatic. And when they say old habits die hard, they usually mean that it takes a lot of time and conscious effort to break them. Once imprinted, habits don't easily go away.

And then, a pandemic, stay-at-home orders, no commuting, no communal offices. The habits you developed over an entire career are abruptly interrupted. You're not getting into your car to drive a half-hour to work, so that radio stays silent. You aren't in an office with other workers, so you don't have to confine yourself to the Station The Whole Office Can Agree Upon (oh, Lite Easy Magic Mix, we hardly knew ye). You can listen to podcasts, you can use Spotify or Apple Music, you can check out YouTube. You've been doing that since March. You'll be doing that for a while.

So, if old habits die hard, is there another cliche about establishing new habits, or re-establishing old habits that died? Because that's where radio is right now, between the old habits and future habits. Once we get to the new sort-of-normal, what will people do for entertainment or information? What audio will they use? Once they're used to podcasts or Spotify or video during the workday, will those become the new habits? How do you get those people to come back to your radio station or your show?

There's no magic incantation to re-establish those habits, but if your audience doesn't miss you that much, it might be hard to get them back. There are things you can do, however, to maintain that audience connection in the interim, and they're the same thing you should always have been doing, pandemic or no. First, however, assess your show and your station: Are you creating content that's different enough and good enough for people to crave? If you do talk radio, does your audience want to know what you, specifically and uniquely, have to say about everything? If you do a music show, is what you provide in your breaks something people miss if they're not listening? Is your station providing information that people can't get, or can't get as well, from social media or podcasts? That's stage one.

Stage two is maintaining engagement. Yeah, that's social media. You should be all over that, but you need to always do that, and I'll raise the issue of when you lose your job and you're "between stations"; it's always been important to be able to bring your loyal audience with you. It also keeps you top of mind, because if listeners see your name and your comments on social media all the time and can engage with you there, that helps with re-establishing the habit. You'll be part of "the way things used to be when they were good," and when they finally get back into the commute and you're there on the radio, they'll stick with you.

Will those habits be re-established? Dunno. Maybe they've already gotten used to other media and will keep those new habits in the new world. But if you're going to get your show, your career, or your industry back in the game, you need to do whatever you can to remain in your audience's consciousness. Give them a reason to get hooked again. You might want to get to work on that now.

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One way to establish that habit is with great content, and one way to create great content is to talk about interesting things. You'll find that, and commentary and stupid jokes, at Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, which you can find by clicking here and/or following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. You also definitely should read "10 Questions With..." Jerry Petuck, who took the plunge a few years ago by moving from radio into running a podcast network and has some great insight on the business and where it's going.

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"The Evening Bulletin with Perry Michael Simon," my podcast, has returned on a sporadic basis (this week was off due to technical issues that are in the process of being resolved), so listen and subscribe by clicking here or finding it on Spotify, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, and all the other usual podcast places, and on Amazon Alexa-enabled devices by saying "Alexa, play the Evening Bulletin podcast."

You can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well. And you can find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pmsimon, and at pmsimon.com.

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Hope your isolation/lockdown/stay-at-home is working out OK for you. Remember, haircuts can wait when nobody has to look at you. But there's no reason not to shave. Or shower. Definitely shower.

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