No Place Like Home

Why do you listen to radio? Entertainment, yes, and companionship. Maybe some background noise, or there's something going on in the news and you want more about it while you drive to the dry cleaners. Perhaps you want to listen to music but don't want to have to program it yourself, or select a playlist. Or connecting to your phone to listen to an alternative is too complicated, or you're too lazy to hit that button, or you just don't care all that much and want whatever's easiest to access when you start the car. Point is, there are still reasons to listen to radio instead of consuming some other form of media.

One of the primary reasons people used to listen to radio once alternatives began to proliferate was localism. It was what radio did best, we were told: Having a local host helped foster a connection with the community. The host knew the local "celebrities," being one of them; even in just talking up records, there was a local element, and you knew those hosts were there with you, going to the same places you go, experiencing the same weather and traffic and taxes and school systems as you. And, of course, as recently as Thursday, the industry was telling Congress about radio's role in emergency services in arguing against a performance royalty, and emergency services are the essence of localism, right?

Yeah, that whole localism thing was thrown out the window a long time ago. The ideal of localism gave way to the cost savings of syndication, voice tracking, and centralization. You don't even need a local studio anymore. And we're told listeners don't care, because they're here for the music, or for the national angry-guy talk. I've been thinking about all of that since we arrived in Florida a couple of weeks ago. One of the things that's always been notable about South Florida has been how much of the media was specific to the region, and not just when a hurricane was approaching. On radio, that meant having Top 40 flavored with Freestyle dance music that you'd hear nowhere else in the country, some of the most compelling personality-driven talk radio in the nation with Neil Rogers, Phil Hendrie, Randi Rhodes, Rick and Suds, Tom Leykis, and many other unique talents, the rabid anti-Castro ranting on Radio Mambi and other AM talkers, long-running music station personalities like Rick Shaw and Paul and Young Ron who, when you heard them, made you feel like, yeah, I'm in Miami....

Some of that local flavor still exists. Even stations overseen by a national programming department would know that this is a market where you're going to want to make sure you're heavy on Bad Bunny and J. Balvin on your Top 40s. And you can still find a lot of Dolphins and Canes and "Heat Culture" talk on local sports radio (though you can also go to the Le Batard podcasts for truly Miami-centric stuff, including the indispensable #BecauseMiami episodes). In West Palm, there's even one of the few remaining non-sports "guy talk" stations left in the country, local most of the day. Localism has a pulse in radio here.

But in other ways, it's on life support. Talk radio is mostly syndicated, and what isn't syndicated is mostly either the usual ConservaTalk (TM), with a few local shows adding DeSantis idolatry to the Trump idolatry, or brokered business talk, which is... well, it pays the bills, I guess. And there remains a massive hole for someone to be talking about the (many) very local issues facing the region, from widespread corruption to environmental disaster (they are related) to crime and traffic and trains hitting people and cars and, yes, all the colorful Florida Man news you can handle. There's no shortage of stuff to talk about here. And you can say that about most metropolitan areas. Moreover, newspapers and their websites have severely cut back on their news staffs and thus unable or unwilling to cover everything. With all the homogenization of culture, there ARE still significant regional differences. Miami is not L.A., which is not New York, which is not Chicago or Dallas or Philadelphia or Seattle. It's not just dropping local references; there are different mindsets, and even if people don't tell surveys and pollsters that they want to hear about local things, there are local things they don't even realize ARE local things. And there are local issues that remain underreported because the local media aren't focusing on City Hall or county government or the State House. There's so much opportunity for radio, both on the air and with locally-specific podcasts under their umbrella.

All of that goes to a point that I've made before and bears repeating: It's understandable that radio companies, facing crushing debt and a slow-growth business, would want to save money by eliminating local staff and doing as much as possible on a national or regional basis with fewer bodies involved. It's also true that some voice trackers do a good job of sounding local even though they've never been in the market they're tracking. But that leaves a big opportunity for local content, because while everyone else is abandoning localism, there's still a market for it. People want a sense of place, and radio can provide that. We used to get that everywhere, turning on the radio and instantly knowing where it was coming from and where we were. It's one path forward towards growth and relevancy.

Not that national is bad. I mean, I DO still listen to satellite and podcasts. But a little home cooking is nice, too.

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Apologies: The move is wreaking havoc on my schedule and my ability to get some columns and other material done in a timely manner. Thanks for bearing with me. I'm hoping things get closer to normal soon. And, yes, I know, I'm in Florida, so there's no such thing as "normal" here. All those years in L.A. should have prepared me for abnormal.

Perry Michael Simon
Senior Vice President/Editor-in-Chief and News-Talk-Sports-Podcasting Editor
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
Twitter @pmsimon