On With The Show

Jerry Blavat, the Geator with the Heater, passed away Friday morning, and among the tributes to the Philadelphia radio personality was a line in a post from WJBR (Mix 99.5)/Wilmington PD Eric Johnson on Facebook that I hope he won't mind me quoting. EJ said that he once referred to "the radio business" in conversation with Blavat, who responded “it’s NOT the radio business -- It’s SHOW BUSINESS!”

He was right, to a point. Radio SHOULD be show business. Nominally, you could categorize radio as part of show business, or entertainment. But radio has never really thought of itself that way, or promoted itself in show-bizzy ways. And that's been radio's loss.

As an industry, radio has promoted itself as a utility, as something that shines in emergencies. In effect, radio promotes itself as equivalent to a flashlight, important when the power goes out, but not as something equivalent to TV, or the movies, or even TikTok. For all the talk about how personality sets radio apart from streaming competitors, I haven't seen too many stations really going all-out to promote individual personalities -- around here, I've seen a couple of billboards with the name of syndicated morning hosts, but that's it. I'd wager that if you asked random people on the street for the names of their favorite radio personalities, most would be stumped, or give you the names of hosts who haven't been on the radio for years.

Why would they, when music stations pride themselves on shutting up and playing the music, talk stations air the same kind of talk they've been promulgating for decades aimed at the same, dwindling audience, and local news operations have been cut into irrelevance? What's to remember? What's to promote?

There are some podcasters who know the difference. They do live shows, they go heavy on production elements, they have some idea that this is supposed to be entertainment and not an emergency natural gas shutoff valve. Because of that, podcasting has some hosts who have ascended to a kind of star level. Radio hasn't done that in a while.

Why doesn't radio do more of the show biz thing? Perhaps it's because the industry has been primarily run by people who rose through the ranks on the sales side. (Say what you want about iHeart, but having a programming guy at the top and the company's promotion of big-ticket, big-name live, show-bizzy, made-for-TV events is probably no coincidence.) Perhaps it's because years of emphasizing generic station identities and "the best variety" and not the personalities have taken their toll. Perhaps it's the inability of the industry at large to develop the next wave of talent, or that the talent has moved on to media like video or podcasting where they can chart their own destiny without being assimilated into the radio Borg. No wonder that when movie studios and TV producers and Hollywood talent agencies look at audio, they see podcasting, not radio.

Yet, radio still reaches vastly more ears than other audio options, even if those ears may be growing more gray hairs. Despite the scary news stories, radio's still in practically every car and still getting used. Between smartphones and smart speakers, radio's still available to everyone who can get podcasts or streaming, as well as the handful of people who also own actual AM/FM receivers. These are competitive advantages, and the advantages of the competition -- on-demand availability, international ubiquity, portability -- are available to radio as well.

So, there's no reason radio can't compete. But if you're going to compete in the entertainment domain, you have to have a little show business flair. You need to dazzle people. You need to find big talent and nurture them and let them shine. You need management that understands that if they think their product is audience for advertisers' messages, they have to attract that audience with something that can stand out in a very crowded marketplace, and that you don't do that with generic radio shows or by stressing how radio is good when there's an ice storm.

You gotta put on a show.

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A good show starts with good content, and that's where All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page comes in with material to help you dazzle 'em, 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. Also, don't miss "10 Questions With..." Premiere Networks' newest host, "Rich on Tech" host Rich DeMuro, who as a longtime TV personality knows about putting on a show. He's an interesting guy with interesting thoughts on everything from radio to CES and more.

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You can follow my personal Twitter account -- Twitter is still alive, somehow, it turns out -- at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well. And I'm on Mastadon, too at @pmsimon@c.im.

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And now for the Falling Iguana Update: Despite the cold snap in Florida last weekend (and it was pretty chilly, which I know won't move those of you up north), we haven't had any iguanas falling from our trees for a couple of weeks. So, the score so far this winter on our property stands at three, although one of them was so big I think he'd count for double. I'll keep you posted.

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