Prepping For Doomsday

Let's say for the sake of argument that it all goes away tomorrow.

Let's say for the sake of argument that the "radio is dead" people are even more correct than they think they are. Let's imagine that, suddenly, AM and FM are abruptly shut down, the spectrum returned to the government for other uses. No more licenses, no more call letters, no more stations, no more business. The end. Roll credits. But, again for the sake of argument, let's say streaming and podcasting and video will roll on uninterrupted.

How would you fare? Is what you do -- the content you create -- good enough to compete in media of abundance, where there are no rules and no barriers to entry, where listeners' choices are abundant and you're just one of a zillion options on every device?

Okay, radio isn't dead quite like that. It's not going out of business tomorrow. When you wake up and if you turn on your radio in the morning, you'll still find AM and FM stations on the air, plugging away. But as the Audacy cuts reminded us this week, the medium's ability to sustain your career is still in question. The number of jobs is getting smaller, and the attitude that, "someone's gonna still have a radio job so it might as well be me" is not likely to carry you as far anymore. It's not a career for anyone looking for a reasonable assurance of longevity.

But you still want to create audio entertainment, and there's still a vast audience for it -- in fact, pretty much everyone on Earth likes to listen to some form of audio entertainment. There's just so much of it. And if you want to make it a career, you have to compete with all of it, whether you're one of the dwindling number of survivors in radio or you're trying to monetize a podcast or whatever it is you're willing to gamble will be the next big thing. Here's what you need to answer right away:

What about what you do is different from everyone else?
What makes your content better?
Why should a listener pick your content?
How are you planning to promote your content?

Note that none of the questions involve radio, or a radio career. You can't think of it that way anymore. And in doing so, you don't need to constrain yourself to radio's rules, because... I don't have to explain that, do I? The radio industry, with layoffs and a reliance on unadventurous programming, is telling you that your future isn't in radio. (With all the investment in digital, they also seem to think that THEIR future isn't in radio.) Take the hint.

And here's another hint to take. Did you hear about Fred Jacobs' presentation of the AQ4 study at Morning Show Boot Camp? Did you see the key takeaway? Here's the headline on one slide in the deck: "There Is Near Universal Agreement That Talent In Radio Feel Taken For Granted." I'll expand on that: Any creative person is taken for granted, and, worse, it's because everyone thinks they can do your job. Everyone thinks, "hey, talking for a living? I can do that!" Management thinks you're interchangeable. Your friends think you have it easy. I've been writing for a living for decades and even my friends tell me that writing is easy and they could do it, or that they once posted on Blogger and therefore are "writers" and could easily make a living that way if they ever decided to stop doing what they actually do for a living. Podcasting has only increased that image: Anyone CAN do a podcast, and we're quickly losing count of how many people are doing just that.

There's an answer for it, though. Sure, anyone can open a mic on the radio. Anyone can record and post a podcast. Anyone can write an (expletive deleted) column about radio. The trick is to do it well, do it better than anyone else's, do it well enough that it builds an audience and, if the Good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise, it can be monetized. If you can do that, there IS a future for what you do. Don't worry about the medium; that's a problem for the people who own stations and hold licenses, and their investors. Your task is to create better stuff, stuff people will want.

Tired of it all? Tired of the stress, the shrinking industry, the lack of respect? Here's the bottom line: If you really ARE better than your friends who think they can do what you do, it's time to prove it.

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One way to prove your worth is to talk about interesting, unusual, entertaining stuff. You can get plenty of that at All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page. 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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The future, you say? Next week, I'll be at Podcast Movement in Dallas, hosting a panel on Wednesday at 10:45 am (CT) in the Dallas A room at the Sheraton downtown, with Audioboom's Brendan Regan, Lemonada Media's Stephanie Wittels Wachs, and UTA's Shelby Schenkman being smart about podcast networks and me providing comic relief or something. Register here and I hope to see you there.

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