Master Of Some

For a large number of talk radio listeners, streaming video has supplanted radio as the way they get their fix. As Fred Jacobs wrote in his blog post on Friday, research shows that a substantial percentage of the podcast audience wants their content served up as video, too. Radio and the music industry have been coming to grips with TikTok as the way the youngest generations hear music and get their entertainment. For all the talk about audio's importance in the media ecosystem, video is still a big, maybe the biggest, part of it. Yet, when media companies have taken a "pivot to video," it's been enough of a disaster that "pivot to video" is shorthand for "major media company stupidity."

There are reasons for that. Some of it is that not all content really benefits from visuals. Radio, in particular, has always assumed that all you need to do is stick cameras in the radio studio and show the hosts and guests sitting at the console and talking into mics with coffee cups and papers strewn about and that's all you need. More recently, it's the idea that all you need is to get everyone on Zoom and record that and you're good. And, sure, that's quick and easy and cheap. It's also visually dull and, let's face it, if someone told you, hey, you know the dingy studio you work in every day, it's on TV right now, would you be all that eager to take a look?

Another issue is that you can be a genius in radio and in no way able to create great content for other media. You can be a great writer and terrible on the radio. You can be proficient on generating viral TikTok video and an awful writer. Or you could be great at all of it, or some of it. Too often, someone -- a manager, a consultant, an "expert" -- will tell you that you, a radio host, have to start doing video, or crank out social media posts, without ascertaining whether you would be any good at that. It's not a crime to be less adept at doing TikTok than doing a four hour radio show.

This is why the rush to follow the audience and the research and be all things to all people can result in disaster. Every medium is different, even when they seem to be very similar. Podcasts aren't radio shows, because the way the audience uses them and the expectations listeners have from them are different; podcast listeners aren't just dropping in to the middle of a show like on radio, they're in it from beginning to whenever they lose interest, so how you construct the episode is different from how you'd prep a radio show. Video requires compelling visuals, something more compelling and maybe more kinetic than cameras-in-the-studio, and while there are exceptions, it really does help to at least make your studio look a lot more interesting than most radio studios and do stuff for the cameras that aren't meant for your audio listeners.

Or perhaps you should be treating different media as, um, different. Create radio shows for radio, podcasts for podcasting, TV-style shows for streaming video, and... okay, just do something goofy in front of your phone's camera for TikTok. (I know, you can do much more creative stuff than that for TikTok. But you might do better numbers having someone pour maple syrup on your head while a clip of "Yakety Sax" plays over it.) Repurposing radio shows for podcasts or video limits what you can achieve. It's cheaping out. You can do better.

And you should. Think of each medium as a blank canvas and start from scratch. It's not "how can I use my radio content in other media," it's "what can I create for this platform." Don't constrain yourself. And don't force it, either; find what you're best at doing and do that.

If you're great at everything, congratulations. If not, that's okay, too. Not everyone can make art out of maple syrup.

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Whatever medium you're in, All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page has material to help you do it right, so click here for that, 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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Almost took this week off, and then I remembered that it's the Eagles who have a bye week, not me. Oh, well. (Go Birds.)

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