This week's All Access newsletter takes another shot at the HD thing, pumps up what's right about radio, and includes a Heart reference (as does the headline above!):
I got a press release early this week and it was all about HD Radio and all the great, innovative HD2 channels out there. The HD Radio Alliance, it said, is "continuing the outpour of creativity and ingenuity with the second generation of HD2 programming." Well, that sounded encouraging, because all I hear on HD2 channels -- when I can get them, which is not all the time -- are the same stuff, pretty much, that I hear elsewhere, only with no commercials and no jocks. So I read on, and here are some of the innovative formats listed in the press release: Oldies, Smooth Jazz, Classical Music, Country, 80's. Wow! You mean I can get a radio station that plays oldies, and all I have to do is pay a couple hundred dollars and put up with the more-than-occasional dropped signal? Sign me up!
Well, all right, in fairness, they did have some less common examples, like "Local Music" and "Punk Young Alternative" and "Chick Rock" (BarraCUUUdaaaa!), but, still, it's all jukeboxes. Does it really take an "outpouring of creativity and ingenuity" to say, well, let's take a subset of the formats we already do and call it a format? I think it'll take something more than what you get when you delete a couple of categories from Selector to attract buyers. But I'm biased, because I like talk radio and personality radio and I truly believe that what radio has to offer -- its strategic advantage -- is personality, not "an ever-evolving 5000+ song library" that isn't much different from the target audience's iPods.
So I'm carping again. But I'm also irritated by some of radio's critics. I keep reading the futurists pretty much throwing the last shovelful of dirt on radio, telling us how most of the things radio delivers are better delivered by new media. When they're talking about music, they may have a point. But I've read the contention that there's no reason for radio to, for example, do traffic anymore, because everyone uses the Web and traffic-enabled GPS. Same for news -- who needs radio news when you can get what you need on the Web? For that matter, who needs talk radio when you can go on political websites and participate in the message boards?
Not so fast, Johnny Jupiter. It seems that people are applying the arguments they use to explain the death throes of newspapers to the radio business, too, and that's a mistake. I thought about it while listening to a live talk radio show dealing with a breaking news story and it struck me that what I was listening to was what radio does best -- live, entertaining, immediate, and personality-driven. Sure, I could go get the news on the Web, find video, look at a message board, follow a Twitter feed, but those are different art forms. Talk radio is an art form. Even delivered in a different medium -- podcasts, streaming -- it's still, essentially, talk radio, and it requires a certain type of entertainer and a certain form of entertainment. A radio show would not be better as a TV show, and what makes a good talk radio host isn't necessarily what makes a good anything else. You don't need to see it, or even necessarily time-shift it. It is, as the cliche goes, what it is. Just because there's newer technology doesn't make the art form obsolete. ("Yes, Mr. Van Gogh, that's very nice, but wouldn't it be better if it was a Flash video and maybe changed colors when you clicked on it? And where's the community? It needs a social networking component")
As for ditching the news, traffic, and weather, yes, all of the above can be and are being delivered in new ways, but that doesn't mean that radio should abandon doing it. I already get, for example, traffic information on my GPS, on satellite, on my cell phone, on the web. But in actual, real-world use, I rely on radio reports as much as the Web and the GPS. There's an expectation that your radio station will tell you what it's like on the roads, and if you don't NEED that report as much because you get the information elsewhere, it's still not going to make you turn it off, and you might miss it if it were gone. You don't have an exclusive any more, but you shouldn't be abandoning it.
Radio news, on the other hand, can deliver live, immediate information as quickly as a website and in a form that's well-suited to the medium and to the listener's needs (you aren't going to read a news website while driving). And a really good news organization can produce newscasts that trump even video, getting stories and sound that nobody else has, making listeners come to the station for the real story that TV and the Internet don't have.
That's important: you have to do the information well enough to make people want to get it from you first. You now have competition, a lot of it. But just because someone's sending traffic information and news headlines to your cell phone doesn't mean you can't compete. Just do it better. And many of you are already doing that. (Let's hope that the folks who control the purse strings understand the need to compete, too)
But wait, there's more: radio is not in the same boat as newspapers because it is a tremendously efficient medium. It already reaches everybody. It has a massive installed base, is already in the cars that Internet streamers hope to someday reach, and it's free, more or less. Newspapers are, by way of contrast, horribly inefficient: they require huge resources to print and distribute, and by nature they're late with the news, while the Internet can deliver the same material instantaneously and with enhancements. No wonder newspapers are suffering. But radio shouldn't be in that boat, because we do things others aren't doing yet (and may never do as well), and the technology still works.
What I'm saying here is that the industry's wasting its time looking to create excitement from jukebox formats when it should be selling what it does best, talk, information, and personality, the stuff you can't get elsewhere or is better than what you CAN get elsewhere, or both. That, not "80's Polka Classics," will sell radio.
Okay, now, let's help you do that unique, personality-driven art form of talk radio with this week's edition of All Access News-Talk-Sports' "Talk Topics" show prep column, including items about where you can eat dinner while packing heat, why you want to check that sewer connection before moving into a house, why cheap beer is in vogue, the story of the married couple and the Lotto jackpot, the girl with a twin in her stomach, a drunk substitute teacher, crazy ants, deadly amoeba, a one year old defendant, the swearing cabbie, a great Girl Scout cookie salesperson, why you shouldn't be eating pig frog legs, the feces fraternity (and the feces fraternity fire), manscaping the Glen "Big Baby" Davis way, why everyone's on meds, and the unfortunate proliferation of the faux hawk, plus much ado about the election and the economy and hundreds of other potential topics. You also get "10 Questions With..." the artist known both as WWBA and WHBO/Tampa PD and host Dro Silva and WJFK/Washington "The Hideout" co-host El Jefe, and the rest of All Access with breaking news and columns and ratings and jobs and all that, all free.
Oh, yeah, one more thing: Many of you came through in a big way for the Entertainment Industry Foundation's Revlon Run/Walk for Women's Cancer 2008, supporting myself and my wife Fran in the walk on Saturday. How'd it go? Great. Wonderful experience, and we raised a nice amount for a great cause. And we carried your support and best wishes every step of the way. On behalf of Fran, myself, and the people whose lives will be helped and even saved through the research and programs supported by the walk and by you... thank you, thank you, thank you.
