Home Field Advantage

Is there any value left in localism?

Yes, of course there is, but there are powerful reasons to go in precisely the opposite direction. It's happening everywhere, of course, and we saw more of it this week when Bell Media flipped both of its Windsor stations from locally-programmed Active Rock and Triple A to their national Country and Top 40 brands. Other than commercials, the stations now sound like their like-named brethren in markets across Canada, same jocks, same music, same everything. And you know about how iHeartMedia and Entercom have been eliminating local talent and staffers and promoting more national talent and brands, including the "Alt" brand and format introduced by Entercom across the river in Detroit the moment Bell flipped Windsor's 89X away from Rock. We know the goal: National programming and branding, one national airstaff per format with maybe a local morning or afternoon show, as few bodies in smaller markets as possible. It's the SiriusXM model, or, to keep this News-Talk-Sports column in the right format, the way many talk stations are largely or all syndicated programming.

Cue the complaints. But if you're a large broadcaster with plenty of debt and not a lot of empathy for the affected employees, it makes sense. Reducing costs to the bone (or deeper) is every company's dream. Local retail accounts have been hammered as national retailers took control and Main Street withered. Can you blame a company looking at deep, practically unpayable debt and a financial outlook that doesn't match up with that? (You can blame them for going into that debt in the first place, but that ship sailed 25 years ago.) Why NOT have the top national talent in every market, available everywhere -- should small market listeners be deprived of the best radio just because they don't live in New York or L.A.? And while we're at it, isn't this precisely how radio in most other countries is operated? Yes, it is: National programming, national formats, national brands. Even where local radio exists, like in the U.K., national brands and programming have largely taken over and dominated. Why should North America be any different?

There is, of course, an answer for that. These are huge, diverse countries. Kansas City isn't New York. Halifax isn't Toronto. It might be the case that regional differences aren't what they used to be, and, in the case of entertainment, people in every city watch the same TV and eat at the same chain restaurants and shop at Walmart and Home Depot. Maybe musical tastes have homogenized as well, though we still have markets where, say, Country overperforms, or "it's a Rock city." (Fewer of those nowadays, I guess.) But there are still differences that radio can and should recognize, differences in attitudes, differences in what issues people feel are most important, political (are you in a red or blue market?) and socio-economic differences. National programming has its place and may even dominate as it does in television, but there are differences and quirks that other media don't address.

That is an opportunity, and why, while we're going to get national radio brands and formats and we're going to continue to get syndication, there's also room for something local. As long as there are any local advertising dollars, there's opportunity for local programming with local hosts and local news and local topics to scoop up the revenue national stations focused on agency programmatic dollars are leaving on the table. In that case, the competition won't be the national radio operators, it'll be what few media will be left going after really local revenue: outdoor, definitely, and social media, and, yes, digital. (Hearing a midroll ad on a podcast for a bank with a tag pointing me to a branch in my town close to my house reminded me that geotargeting is a pretty powerful option, even if the content of the podcast wasn't at all local. But it was for a large bank, not a local business. I generally don't hear any ads for really local clients on streams or podcasts... yet.) It leaves a lot of opportunity in markets where there is still a sizable locally-based business community, and for that, local radio is still competitive.

Despite the layoffs and firings (Note: I personally hate calling them "RIFs." That's corporate-speak. "Reduction in Force" reduces human beings to line items. I mean, they've been reduced to line items by management for generations, but this just adds to the heartlessness), despite the pandemic, despite the business reasons for national programming that make sense, there's opportunity for radio stations to find audiences and advertisers that aren't national, who want to hear what's going on in their town, who want their radio to reflect their home. Some people like chain restaurants and stores and some people like to eat and shop local. It's understandable if the iHearts and Entercoms and Bells want to be the Walmart or Target of media, because there's money in that. But there's nothing wrong with being local, too, and stations that don't have (or have to pay for) a national footprint have a chance to embrace the local positions being abandoned by the big guys and redevelop a pretty nice business model, too.

There's room for both.

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Local or national, hosts everywhere will find stuff to talk about on the radio or on podcasts or on TV or Twitch or YouTube or at passers-by out in front of the Wawa at All Access' show prep column Talk Topics -- 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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I'm taking the whole Thanksgiving week off, so no column next week, no Topics, no nothin'. The rest of All Access will be working, though, so you'll still get all the radio news first and best at Net News and all the music stuff and whatever else it is that we do here. I'll be back on Monday, November 30th. In the meantime, have a great week and a great (U.S.) holiday and an incident-free Black Friday. Really, you don't need that flat-screen TV, no matter how cheap it'll be when the doors open at midnight Thursday night.

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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