New Ballgame

Baseball and radio go together. Ask any American guy of a certain age about baseball on the radio, and he'll more likely than not launch into a misty-eyed memory of being out with his dad as Vin Scully called a Dodger game on the car radio, or hearing Harry Caray through the AM static on a transistor radio late at night, or a picnic with Ernie Harwell describing a Trammell-Whitaker double play on WJR. It's a guy thing.

Also, it's an old guy thing, because younger listeners probably don't listen to baseball on the radio unless they're at work and can't watch, and since baseball has a young-person problem, you get the idea.

Baseball, for its part, seems to recognize that its appeal to younger audiences is an issue. The rule changes -- pitch clock, bigger bases, no shifts, pickoff attempt limits -- are aimed at making the game faster with more scoring, and that, they hope, will make the game more appealing to generations which prefer faster-paced entertainment, from video games to TikTok. Baseball will never be that fast, but at least it knows it needs to do something, even if it risks alienating its base of people who rhapsodize over the game's leisurely pace -- that's how Vin was able to tell entire long stories within a half-inning or even a single at-bat -- and tradition.

Radio, on the other hand, isn't changing any rules to stay relevant. Maybe it should. Wait, you say. Radio doesn't have a formal rule book. But we do have rules, from what music to play and when, to where the stop sets land in an hour, to the kind of topics talk hosts should do and countless other dos and don'ts honed over decades of experience. Every deviation, every unfamiliar format or host coloring outside the lines, draws indignant responses from radio veterans. "You can't do that!," they say, or words to that effect, while at the same time they wring their hands about how the kids aren't listening the way they used to, and simultaneously insisting that it's the music's fault, because everyone agrees that "music today sucks and the music from OUR youth was the best ever." Innovation in radio is always met with a combination of opprobrium and fear.

It pains me to suggest that anyone follow the lead of Major League Baseball, which doesn't have the best record in a lot of areas (okay, MLBAM/BAMTech turned out to be a winner), and they certainly took a long, long time to get to the point of actually doing something about the youth problem, but at least they're trying now, and whether the changes work or not are secondary to the fact that they're trying.

Try. Radio stations do not have to do things the way they've always been done. You don't have to sound like everyone else. It is not enough to just do what works in another market. Radio, the technology, has its benefits -- it's actually an efficient, cheap (free to the user) way to reach mass audiences, with massive audience acceptance and ease of use (and availability both over the air and through streaming, with podcasting as an on-demand option). The available audience is practically everyone, and audio entertainment consumption is growing even with the advent of social media and continuing popularity of video as competition for people's time. People want audio entertainment. If the younger demographics -- the ones which you need to reach for monetization purposes -- do not like what you've always done because their tastes and behaviors are different, it does you no good to rely on tradition and "the rules." You gotta do something.

So, do something. Tear up the nonexistent rulebook. Change things up, and if the changes don't work, try another change. Don't wait until it's too late.

It's time to start some new traditions.

=============================

One tradition to keep is the tradition of checking All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page for great stuff to talk about on the radio or on your podcast. Get there 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.

Make sure you're subscribed to Today's Talk, the daily email newsletter with the top news stories in News, Talk, and Sports radio and podcasting. You can check off the appropriate boxes in your All Access account profile's Format Preferences and Email Preferences sections if you're not already getting it.

You can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well.

=============================

Speaking of baseball, go Phils. (You knew that was coming.) And, as one of those old guys who likes baseball on the radio, it's a good thing that both teams in the Series have excellent radio broadcasters, Scott Franzke and Larry Andersen for the Phillies and Robert Ford and Steve Sparks for the Astros. The tradition of great baseball radio broadcasts continues.

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