Up To You

You don't HAVE to do that.

By "that," I mean put something -- anything -- on the air. And by "you," I'm talking first to management, GMs and PDs and "Brand Managers" and whomever else makes the programming decisions at your station (the screaming you hear is me, reading another press release about a programming decision that quotes the General Sales Manager). There's no law requiring you to air anything in particular.

I'm mentioning this in the wake of the election, during and after which a lot of hosts, not all but a lot, have resorted to increasingly outlandish positions, and in some cases, they're actually advocating things that are, to say the least, disturbing as well as false. Some hosts have implicitly advocated violence. Dog whistles have gotten louder. And, of course, here in America, they have a right to say what they want. They are entitled to their positions. Not gonna argue against that.

But they don't have a right to use someone else's platform to do that. For that, they need assent from the platform owner. You've heard the debate over social media platforms' responsibility for falsehoods posted on their sites, but you don't hear the same debate about radio station licensees, or executives, or programmers, or the radio hosts themselves. Some hosts have been broadcasting material that is pretty extreme. The stations broadcasting that material COULD say no. That they don't, or that they're unwilling to do so, is interesting to me.

Okay, I'm going to put the brakes on for a moment and explain something here: I'm not advocating interference from the GM or GSM in content. There might be nothing more antithetical to good radio than the GM telling hosts they can't talk about something, or should talk about it "this way" instead of how they want to do it. I've been there, and it is not pretty.

But when it comes to the indefensible, that's a different story. It's when a host goes down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, or says racist or misogynist or xenophobic things, or repeatedly passes along false information. It's not that the GM should storm into the studio and cut off the mics, but it's that management has to decide what it wants its platform to represent and program accordingly. If a host goes off the rails, programmers have to decide if that's where they want their station to go. And the answer may very well be yes, but that raises the question: Where do you draw the line? You CAN draw a line between what's acceptable to you and what isn't. What's off limits for you? Does anything go? Are you so afraid of your P1s that you'll drop your standards in fear that they'll leave?

One thing you can do is to set forth what your line is in advance. Hosts need to know where the line is, even if they plan to cross it from time to time. It sucks when you're not told something is verboten until AFTER you do it. You CAN set boundaries, and you SHOULD assume talent will push them (great talent usually does). But knowing in advance is helpful.

As for syndication, most syndicators want your feedback. If a show is getting too reckless for your taste, it's not unacceptable to call your rep and say so. They want that feedback because they want stations to take and keep their shows, and knowing what works and what doesn't helps that, no matter how small the market or station. If you're not happy with the show, chances are other, more reticent PDs aren't happy, either, and that information helps the syndicator adjust what they're doing. You can't be afraid to complain. And if you're hearing things that you don't want your brand to represent, it's incumbent on you to say something.

It reflects on all of talk radio, too. Right now, it's not hard to find talk radio being lumped in with social media fake-news campaigns and cable news as the sources of some of the nation's woes. You and I know that not all talk radio's like that, but it doesn't matter. The perception is there. The public, and many advertisers, don't always distinguish between Alex Jones and hosts who don't slop over into that kind of talk. It's all one blob of angry guys to them.

What you allow on your air is going to stick to you and your station's brand. You have a right to put what you want on the air, but you can't expect that there won't be consequences. Talk radio's always dealt with that -- the dreaded No Buy lists -- but the rhetoric wasn't then what it is now, and it comes back to this: You don't HAVE to air ANYTHING you don't want to air.

So don't.

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I was going to congratulate everyone on making it through the election and surviving, but I guess things are going to continue to be weird even after the race has been called, so I'll just congratulate everyone on making it to the weekend. Baby steps, people.

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