The Bus That Hit You

What's the most profound change the radio industry has seen in the 28 years All Access has been around? I think it all comes down to one device.

When I started at All Access in the Jurassic era, all I wanted was a computer that fit in my pocket. I wanted it to be able to do work away from the office. I had no illusions that it might be able to do many other things. All I needed was a way to bang out copy and post it to the website. So I got a Palm Treo.

Remember the Treo? The original version ran the Palm OS and had a tiny physical keyboard, and it was slow, very slow. It did email and calendar stuff and not much else. When they came out with a Windows Mobile version, I jumped on it, and it did more things -- look, Scrabble and Monopoly! -- in color, no less, but it was still slow and I could never really do much work on it. For a brief time, I switched to an HTC Windows Mobile phone that had a larger screen and a slide-out keyboard, better but as thick and heavy as "Infinite Jest." Finally, my carrier added the iPhone, and here we are.

It was easy and common at the time to see how the iPhone (and Android, to be fair) was going to be a revolutionary device. I don't think everyone truly realized exactly how it was going to change everything, and I do mean everything. The phone part was the least important thing about it. It changed how we shop, allowing us to buy stuff in seconds without going to the mall, thus killing off one of the primary social activities of the last few generations. It allowed us to constantly be on social media, thus changing how we get news and accelerating political polarization. And it changed how generations consume audio and video entertainment, thus replacing radio and television for a lot of people.

Did you see that coming?

Maybe you did. I knew it would have an impact when I was trying to get my Treo to stream audio (it was not easy). I knew that as soon as it became reasonably easy to stream phone audio in cars, it would accelerate. But I didn't think it would happen as quickly as it has.

We have arrived at a future when people spend more time -- way too much time, probably -- with their noses in their phones. There's even a term for paying more attention to your phone than your spouse or partner, "phubbing," phone snubbing. It is how we keep up with the news, communicate with others, listen to music and talk, shop, order dinner, pay our bills, entertain ourselves, entertain others. (It also makes phone calls, but who does THAT anymore?) More than any other highly-touted device -- hello, smart speakers -- the smartphone has transformed the world. Whatever comes next for the business of audio content is going to go through the smartphone....

Until the next thing comes around, that is. A lot of companies burned a lot of cash gambling that the metaverse was going to be that next thing (it isn't), or that smart glasses and augmented reality would do it (they didn't). We don't yet know what that next thing will be, or whether there will even BE a next thing. In the meantime, if you want to gauge how radio ended up in its current predicament, you could chalk it up to mismanagement, of which there was plenty; you could cite consolidation and private equity investment, and you'd be correct; you could note increased competition, and that's true, too.

But, ultimately, technology changes, and some things get pushed aside into secondary roles or become obsolete. Radio's not obsolete, but it's secondary now. You can pick whatever music you want to hear, when you want to hear it. You can find talk shows about topics you choose, not the same angry ranting guys radio serves up. You can hear stuff from around the world on demand. And it's all because you now have a device that can do all of that for you, anywhere, anytime. Radio can't top that. It can only try to offer something different, something better than might be otherwise available, with better talent, better production values, better content.

It's just going to be coming through a device that isn't a radio. If you saw that coming in 1995, I hope you invested in Apple stock.

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Gonna keep All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep page going to the bitter end, 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.

Even after August 15th, you can follow my personal Twitter -- we're not really going to call it X, are we? -- account at @pmsimon to find out what hilarious predicaments I'll be getting myself into, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon), and that'll work for Threads as well. And I'm on Mastodon -- gotta admit, it's a little quiet there -- at @pmsimon@c.im. I'm not on BlueSky because I never got an invite, so there's that. I am in South Florida (fabulous Boynton Beach), so if you are, too, we can grab lunch one of these days. I'll have plenty of time for that soon enough.

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This being the penultimate Letter column, I'll remind you to also keep an eye on pmsimon.com in case I get inspired to write stuff there, and please stay in touch -- job opportunities welcome, too! -- via perry@pmsimon.com or social media.

Perry Michael Simon
Senior Vice President/Editor-in-Chief and News-Talk-Sports-Podcasting Editor (until August 15th, that is)
AllAccess.com
perry@pmsimon.com
Twitter/X @pmsimon
Instagram (and Threads) @pmsimon
Mastodon @pmsimon@c.im