Irreplaceable You

Would they miss you if you were gone?

We're not talking mortality here. It's about judging whether what you do on the air means more to your listeners than just background noise.

Baseball has a statistic to measure the value of a player, Wins Above Replacement, WAR. It's exactly what the name implies, purporting to determine how many more wins a player is worth to the team over what an average, cheap-salary replacement would offer. Radio doesn't have a specific metric to show how much more share a station has because of a particular host, nor does podcasting; All you can show is your present ratings performance relative to other stations, or number of downloads compared to other podcasts in your category.

Those numbers are, of course, unreliable and can't show whether someone else could step in and get the same or better results. Absent a formal metric to prove how good you are, how do you know what your radio or podcasting WAR would be? You don't. But you can self-evaluate, and if you're honest with yourself, you'll know if what you do is, if not irreplaceable, at least hard to replicate by someone else. And the question to ask yourself is:

"What am I doing that listeners can't get from anyone else?"

Ooh, tough one. But think about it: How much of your unique personality is coming through? Are your topics different from other hosts'? Are you deeply engaged with the audience, on the air and on social media? (Patience. We'll get to Twitter soon enough.) What about you would listeners miss if your show or podcast ended today?

If you have a hard time answering those questions with specific answers, you're probably replaceable. That's a tough (but fair) assessment in an age of abundant audio entertainment and information options. If you're doing essentially the same material others are doing, why does anyone need you?

Maybe they do, but with so much competition, perhaps you should be looking for things that make you special in your audience's eyes. That can be as easy as following the advice I used to give talk hosts back when I was a Program Director: Go out and live your life, observe, take mental notes, and then come in and put that on the air. What happens to you is on one hand unique, because they're your actual, real-life stories, but also relatable, because even though the listeners weren't part of your actual experience, they've had similar situations and reactions in their own life. They weren't there for that specific frustrating problem with the self-checkout at Walmart that you had today, but they've had trouble with the self-checkout themselves. They aren't dealing with your kid applying for college, but they've been through that for their own kids. They didn't get cut off by a crazy driver on I-95 today, but they've seen that before. Tell them about yourself in an engaging way and you've made a connection they'd miss if you were gone, and you're also establishing a point of view that makes your comments on other topics yours and yours alone.

Or you can just spout the same talking points everyone else does, or read the same liner cards or do the same bits, and when the conglomerate that owns your station decides that your salary would be better spent on shareholders, or your podcast gets lost in the big pond, you'll wonder why your Wins Above Replacement dipped so low. The opportunities for average, competent-but-replaceable talent are shrinking. Be irreplaceable.

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

Put your own spin on the topics you'll find at All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page. 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. We still have "10 Questions With..." my ol' pal and talk radio veteran Peter Thiele of KZRG/Joplin, MO up, but we'll have a new 10 Qs with Agua Media co-founder Rick Sanchez -- yes, that Rick Sanchez, ex-CNN, ex-WSVN Miami, not Rick Sanchez from "Rick And Morty" -- up very soon, so look for that.

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.

While it's still around, you can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well. And, in case Twitter's implosion is permanent, I'm on Mastadon, too at @pmsimon@c.im.

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

At this writing, Twitter hasn't quite gone away, and I would be lying if I said I wouldn't miss it if this is indeed the end, but I won't miss the trolls and misinformation, and I won't miss the stress induced by hours of doomscrolling. It's going to be a hard habit to break, and it's unlikely that Mastadon or any other social platform will be quite like it, but we lived without it before and we can live without it now. It may be irreplaceable, but some irreplaceable things just go away and aren't replaced at all. C'est la vie. And happy Thanksgiving; see you here in two weeks.

Perry Michael Simon
Senior Vice President/Editor-in-Chief and News-Talk-Sports-Podcasting Editor
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
Twitter (for now, at least) @pmsimon
Mastadon @pmsimon@c.im