Stayin’ Alive

As it turns out, everything is entertainment, and everyone wants to be both an entertainer and be entertained.

This came to mind as we caught a quick breakfast at a deli, one of those places where they have placemats covered in ads for local businesses. There, among the ads for roofers and painters and Realtors and one for an event celebrating "Saturday Night Fever" headlined by "Rich Travolta" and a Barry Gibb impersonator, was an ad for a radio show. Someone is brokering an hour every Saturday morning on a low power FM in West Palm Beach to offer "Music, Sports, Comedy & News," and promoting it on deli placemats while also streaming it live on Facebook. He's paying to do what most of you do to get paid, and you can assume not too many people will happen upon his show -- it's all of 45 watts and normally airs Haitian programming -- but there he is, plugging away, presumably doing what he loves to do.

It's different as you move through the generations. Older people grew up with the "magic of radio," using a Mr. Microphone to annoy mom and dad, making fake radio aircheck tapes with cassette recorders, imagining being on the radio with everyone in town listening like the teens in "American Graffiti" listened to Wolfman Jack. Later generations tried Live365, or, like everyone else, ditched their blogs to start a podcast. Many started YouTube channels. And now, you can get fame and, maybe, fortune lip-syncing on TikTok. You don't even have to make that decision; if you do something, anything even remotely colorful and someone nearby happens to whip out their iPhone and point the lens at you, you can be an international sensation with thousands of followers before you realize what just happened.

Times change, and technology changes, but people still want to be stars. It's just that what generations consider entertainment and celebrity is also changing. "You're going to Hollywood!" means different things to different age groups, and it's a lot more impressive the older you are. Being a radio star isn't what it used to be, but neither is being a movie star. Trip and fall on your butt in public and if someone is recording it, there's a segment of the population to whom you'll be way more relevant than Tom Hanks, or Ryan Seacrest, or anyone who's a celebrity to other age groups.

So, why would someone buy time on a 45 watt radio station and go to the trouble of planning and hosting a radio show? Because for some people, the magic is still there. You don't have to think that you've got a massive audience and being heard by everyone in town to want to feel what those of us felt when we first went on the air. I've done live radio and I've done podcasting and I've done video and television, and that radio feeling is unique, even when you're just voice tracking. You may be able to reach more people in a few seconds on TikTok than on a low-wattage FM or some AM daytimer in the boonies, but there's a reason we all wanted to do radio in the first place. It's not a mutually exclusive thing from wanting to be a YouTube or TikTok celebrity or an Oscar-winning actor or a stage star, but it's different. Maybe it's because it was an achievable goal, maybe it's because the thrill of going live and knowing that someone somewhere that you don't even know would hear it, but it's what we felt and it's still there and relevant for a lot of people, even if we have generations that would rather mouth the lines in "We Don't Talk About Bruno" in front of a mirror while pointing their phone at it.

And some people want to be "Rich Travolta." I'm not judging. But I take some comfort in knowing that there are still plenty of people who want to just do radio, and I think that number is larger and more diverse than we assume. Maybe they'll do podcasts, maybe they'll try to get a job in broadcasting, or maybe they'll write a check and show up at an LPFM every Saturday morning and talk to strangers who might have been drawn by an ad on a deli placemat. It doesn't matter. Entertaining is entertaining, whatever the medium, whatever the audience, however you do it.

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Entertaining, you say? If that's your goal, try All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page for plenty of entertaining and informative stuff to talk about on the radio or your podcast. Find it by clicking here, and you can also follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics and find every story individually linked to the appropriate item.

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Speaking of entertaining and the future, it's time RIGHT NOW to register for the the All Access Audio Summit, streaming on April 20-21. It's a virtual thing, and my session will feature four very smart and innovative people discussing where spoken word content and the radio, streaming, and podcast industries are heading. Spike Eskin of WFAN/New York, Robin Bertolucci of KFI/Los Angeles, Elsie Escobar of Libsyn and She Podcasts, and Rich Stern of TuneIn, no less. You will not want to miss that or the rest of the agenda (see it here). So register. Also, we don't talk about Villanova (seriously, it was a good run and nobody was beating Kansas this year) and baseball's back in action (got my Marlins-Phillies opener tickets for next week), so things are looking good. Entertaining, even.

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