Que Sera, Sera

It's okay to admit that you don't know what the future will be for this business.

Nobody does. (William Goldman's Hollywood aphorism "Nobody knows anything" applies.) Today's "future of audio" could be tomorrow's Quadrophonic, today's next big thing might turn into tomorrow's Zune. Today's certainty that the future is in podcasting and that radio is dead is... what? Well, it's not guaranteed, that's one sure thing.

In just a few weeks, I'll be heading to Podcast Movement in Dallas, and there will be a lot of optimism tempered with some frustration among the O.G.s of the podcasting world. We were expecting things to be further along by now. The growth we've seen in the industry has been good, but a lot of people were expecting revenues to skyrocket for everyone. Some people have indeed gotten rich in podcasting, but not a lot of people. Meanwhile, radio is exactly where it's been for the last few decades: on the ropes, bleeding, keeping bankruptcy attorneys busy, but still alive. "Radio is dead" isn't true; that might eventually be the case, but turn on your receiver and, oh, hey, there it is, broadcast radio, somehow still plugging away. And streamers have built vast audiences but any hope of profitability seems to be submerged in an ocean of royalty payments. Every medium has its good news and its bad news, and nobody knows which is the true harbinger for where we'll all be in the future.

But you can say that about anything, any business, any category. The bottom can fall out of any industry at any moment, for totally unforeseen reasons, or for completely predictable reasons (how's your crypto account doing?). Any industry can experience sudden and surprising growth. Moribund or allegedly obsolete businesses can rise from the grave like in a movie Svengoolie would show on a Saturday night. Vinyl records made a comeback, didn't they? And even if you identify a hot trend that eventually pans out for some, you might not get it to work anyway. I once worked for a company that had a large and growing podcast network and decided that it would rather invest in creating a subscription video on demand service; it ended up with no podcast network and a failed video service, because even guessing right on where things are going (and it really was just guessing) didn't make them the next Netflix.

We are probably going to get some bad news in the radio industry soon. You've seen the fairly dire reports about certain broadcasting companies, and those reports tend to precede more layoffs. What that says about the future of the company isn't great. What that says about the future of the business categories it occupies is not as certain. One (or more) company's stumble doesn't necessarily mean the entire industry is on life support. Or maybe it does. We don't know. We can guess, or we can just keep going until someone tells us we can't anymore, and then we can move on to do something else. You may need to initiate your career Plan B, and there's nothing shameful about that. Or you may not need an alternate path.

Speculation can be fun until it starts gnawing at your soul and causing ulcers. It's freeing to rid yourself of that feeling of impending doom. Radio is dead, you say? Okay, we can do something else to make a living. Podcasting can't generate a living wage for you? There are other options to pay the bills. You can't predict the future? Join the club.

You should not be defined by the business you happen to be in. Be optimistic about yourself. Whatever happens to radio, podcasting, or streaming is gonna happen whether you predict it coming or not.

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And if you happen to host a radio show or podcast, be optimistic that your next show is gonna be fantastic. Get that confidence by checking out All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page for stuff to talk about. 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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You can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well.

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As I mentioned above, I'll be at Podcast Movement in Dallas August 23-26. Register here and stop by my session on which Audioboom's Brendan Regan, Lemonada Media's Stephanie Wittels Wachs, and UTA's Shelby Schenkman will tell you all the ins and outs of podcast networks, and I will do whatever it is that I do. That's at 10:45 am Wednesday in Dallas A, whatever that is. Drop in and say hi to me there, or find me at various Deep Ellum BBQ joints later.

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