How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Ax

You can't say you're surprised.

After all, radio and podcasting are businesses, and businesses are taking the opportunity of dark economic projections to claw back whatever gains employees made in the pandemic and save some money. This week alone saw NPR dropping about 100 employees and four prominent podcasts while iHeartMedia "temporarily" (we'll see if that holds up) dropped its 401(k) match and put the brakes on spending. We've seen Spotify backtrack on its podcast spending, with a lot of jobs lost, and SiriusXM did its firings a couple of weeks ago. Rumors of ESPN jettisoning even big names are making the rounds. If your company hasn't done something like this yet, it will. 'Tis the season. 'Tis ALWAYS the season.

The question you have to ask yourself, however, is whether those jobs will ever come back. Management always makes vague promises about restoring jobs and pay cuts when conditions improve, but as we've seen before in the radio and podcasting businesses, somehow, when things DO improve, there's no rush to restore anything. Not that there aren't going to be jobs, not that there won't be opportunities, but this isn't a growth situation. (Let me qualify that: There IS going to be growth, but it's going to be in more independent podcasting situations, not in salaried positions with big media companies. People are going to succeed producing content and finding ways to monetize it. You just can't rely on the usual employment situations so much anymore.)

Look, if you're currently still gainfully employed by a major media organization, that's great, and if you're a survivor of a corporate cutback, that's also great, yet you can't avoid thinking that while you've escaped this time, the Grim Reaper may find you in the next round. You know the signs: The bosses tell you that you're part of "the family" and "the team" but they start cutting back on little things, they leave open positions unfilled, they begin to question every expense ("do employees really NEED coffee?"). In extreme cases, they suddenly "pivot" the entire business to follow a trend, regardless of whether it makes sense (I've been through pivots to video and social media before, and radio companies in the last few years plowed millions into podcasting without regard to whether the industry's revenue has reached the level that would justify scaling up those efforts). I frequently hear from people in radio and podcasting who see the handwriting on the wall and are looking for advice on what to do.

And what you can do is a) pursue your goals, but b) have a Plan B, and c) remind yourself that you shouldn't be defined by your paycheck. If you're a creator and your drive to create is unstoppable, consider what you can do on your own -- podcasting, streaming, making videos, selling your art, doing a Patreon. Go after paying radio and podcasting and writing gigs, sure, but be prepared to go independent if you have to. Have other means of earning enough to pay your bills and get insurance, a day (or night) job -- I know several former radio personalities, even major market hosts, who have gone on to careers in other industries and have never looked back. (It turns out that being able to afford the rent beats the glamour of a meat remote.)

It depends on what you expect from doing radio or podcasting, I guess. If you don't absolutely need it to provide you a living and if you don't treat it as the only acceptable option for employment, there's ample opportunity to satisfy your creative urges. You might even find ways to make it profitable for yourself outside the corporate structure. However, if radio IS your living, I'd love to tell you that the sky's the limit, but, realistically, that's not where the growth is.

Nevertheless, if you want it badly enough, you should go for it. You never know until you try. Just be prepared to end up moving in a different direction, because that's how business goes and, let's face it, if artificial intelligence can do the job, even poorly, you know what the bosses will do.

I love radio, and I love podcasting and streaming and all things audio. I also know that they don't necessarily love me back. That's fine, as long as there are other things I can do. You should feel the same.

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

Wow, that was... well, many of you are still plugging away with radio shows, and podcasts, and whether you're on the air or on a podcast or talking to the wall, you need stuff to talk about, and All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page is where you'll find it. 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.

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

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

A reminder that we'll be talking about talk radio of the different kind with Jon Grayson of KMBZ/Kansas City and Todd Hollst of WHIO/Dayton, and about where podcasting is going with Amplifi Media's Steve Goldstein, at the All Access Audio Summit April 26-28, and you can see the agenda and register for the all-streaming event here. And I'll try to be more sunny and warm next week. No guarantees, though.

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