Revising The Rules

It kind of creeps up on you, the realization that there are new things happening and you just can't wrap your head around them anymore. This has been the case forever. Your parents hated your music, your hair styles, your culture. Their parents hated theirs. Some seniors prefer calling a customer service line and speaking to a real human to using an email or DM or chat. There are still people who write checks at the supermarket instead of using a card. You know that this has been the case since dinosaurs dismissed comets as a flash in the pan. Yet, here you are, thinking that the new ways aren't a patch on the way YOU learned to do things, the new culture being somehow less than the old.

When do you know you've achieved Full Get-Off-My-Lawn status? How suddenly does it happen? Is is when you hear people talking about buying and selling NFTs and it's all alien to you? Is it like Shaquille O'Neal on last Tuesday's TNT studio show getting schooled by Candace Parker on how NBA defenses have changed in the ten years since he played? Is it the moment you see the list of Grammy nominees and realize you have heard precisely zero of the nominated songs and recognize maybe three or four names? Is that when you decided that the new is bad?

It doesn't happen in radio, though, because radio hasn't changed. Oh, the audience and its preferences have changed, no doubt, but radio itself hasn't. Radio today is what radio was like in 2011 and 2001 and 1991. It's how we did it years ago, it's our experience, time-tested. Talk radio is what it was. Music radio is what it was. You put the breaks in the same place. You hire people who sound the same as the people they replaced, and if yiu happen to hire someone who's different, you instruct them to do the same things their predecessors did, the same bits and same benchmarks at the same times. You tell yourself that this is how it needs to be, because it worked before and taking chances is unwise in an industry in which everyone is on edge, thinking about the next layoffs while trying to forestall them as best they can.

Few things last forever. Some things are best left unchanged, but that's contingent on the audience's desires staying the same as well. When that happens, as it is with audio entertainment, you have to be careful to maintain what you have -- the audience that's stuck with you, the older demographics -- while developing new ways to reach the growing available audience of younger people who, honestly, would want you to stop talking over records or stop bashing immigrants or stop airing so many commercials, if, that is, they were still listening the way you did as a kid.

But you're getting older, and you don't want to be that creepy person trying to remain relevant by being a little TOO into youth culture. Fine. You don't have to talk like a twenty-something, or dress like one, or even like what they like. Just know what they're into, learn about it, and when you're developing new audio content, give it to them. Don't apply everything you've learned in radio (or, for that matter, podcasting, which has evolved quite a bit from its early years) to new content. What your intended audience wants may break every rule about the business you thought was sacrosanct. Why, you might even have to put a female lead voice in a daypart other than middays or evenings! Or a talk host who has a viewpoint, and life experiences, that are different from other hosts! Shows might be less than three hours, and might begin and end at a time other than the top of an hour! Why, maybe there wouldn't be "shows" at all the way we've defined them since radio began! What heresy!

We're not going to grow if we don't try things that are alien to our experience. That experience is valuable, but if you don't adapt it and recognize that the target has shifted and some of the old ways aren't better than new ideas, you'll be your parents telling you to turn down that racket, or the customer slowly writing a check at the grocery checkout stand while a long queue of people with 10 items or less wonders why you don't have a debit card which would have gotten you, and everyone else, out the door by now. The only constant in life is, as Heraclitus said, change. (Yes, I had to look up his name.) You can accept that and address those changes, or you can ignore it.

Just watch out for the comets.

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One thing that changes every weekday is the treasure trove of topics at All Access' show prep column Talk Topics, where the material for your show is regularly refreshed. And refreshing. 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 going to keep reminding you that I'll be hosting a panel at the 2021 virtual All Access Audio Summit about the pros and cons of going into podcasting from radio, with Atlanta's Jeff and Callie Dauler and Steve Goldstein talking about everything you need to know about the transition, on April 21st. I'll also keep telling you to register now until you do, and I'll keep telling you that even after you register, because I can't customize this column for each reader. I mean, I COULD, if I sent each one of you an individual email, but I think I'll stick with the way I do it now. Some changes are not a good thing.

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