This week's All Access newsletter wonders if there's a Jobs or Schmidt in the bunch. Not that I expect it:
So... what's next?
I've been thinking a lot about that lately while watching the radio industry do what it, and most other businesses, do in a time of crisis, which is circle the wagons, cut operations to the bone, and hope that the cavalry shows up before the creditors do. Sometimes, I suppose, that works, but when you're staring a shrunken advertising market in the face and the recovery looks like it'll be a slow-go for a while, and your biggest and best clients needed a federal taxpayer-funded bailout to survive, it's hard to keep positive right now.
All right, then, let's go back to that question: What's next? I'm not suggesting an answer here, but I AM suggesting that it's the question that the leadership of the radio industry had better start asking and answering before someone else does it for them.
A couple of times this week, I've heard people mention the old business mantra, "Innovate or Die." That phrase doesn't always apply -- there's plenty of money to be made with a good product that still fills a need and does it as well as or better than any competitive product. But in radio, I wonder where the innovation went. Think about the companies which are surviving the bad economy the best, and you get Google and Apple and other businesses which share a critical characteristic: They're constantly coming up with new businesses or radically improved or reworked versions of existing businesses, and they shake things up. There were search engines before Google, but Google figured out how to do it right and make it pay; since then, the company has constantly tried a wide range of new ventures, some successful, some abject failures. But the key is that they're still throwing a lot of ideas into the market, and every one that sticks gives them another market in which they can sell advertising. Some people were skeptical when Apple finally entered the cell phone business, because there already WERE smartphones, but the iPhone was, and is, a game changer. These companies have visionaries in the corporate office, and that vision gets passed on to the managers, the rank-and-file, and even the customers. There's constant innovation, constant development, constant thinking several steps ahead of the game.
Where are the radio industry's visionaries? It doesn't have to be on the CEO level, but who in radio is thinking ahead of the curve? Everyone can agree that just serving up programming in pattern on a standard terrestrial signal (HD or not) is a limited product in a rapidly changing competitive landscape, and that iPods and streaming and Pandora and cell phones are starting to take bites out of radio's business. We can also agree that, despite the new competition, radio isn't dead yet. But if the best innovation radio can do is to take the same music and rearrange it with a new slogan, that's not a good sign for the future.
(By the way, if you want proof that radio isn't thinking forward, take a look at radio station websites. I'll let you count the number of really good, non-cookie-cutter sites out there. You won't find many. But you WILL find plenty of corporate-template sites with rarely-updated content and the look and feel of a sales kit, and there's really no excuse for that. Oh, yeah, if your station established blogs for the talent and they haven't been updated in months, that's inexcusable, too)
So, what IS next? Should radio be serving up material for fans to remix and mash up and post on their own Facebook pages? Should talk shows extend to separate chats or "post-game" podcasts available on the Web or through iPhone apps or widgets? Should stations offer some kind of video chat so listeners can interact with each other while a show's going on? Should there be a way for fans to have their own "shows" distributed through the station's website? I don't know, but there ought to be someone at every company, someone at the NAB, someone at every level of radio whose job it is to just throw as many ideas out there as possible, whatever's technologically feasible and some that aren't... yet.
All I'm suggesting is that this industry needs more people willing to take chances, try new ideas, expand in unexpected ways, and lead, not follow. But if that's not going to happen anytime soon, then, please, will y'all just get someone to fix your websites and keep them updated with cool content? Please?
That would be a start.
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Anyway, you gotta do a radio show, and there's a forward-thinkin' new-fangled Internet way to get your material together, and that happens to be Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports. Among the items available to you this week are stories about a valuable broken record, China's Internet Addiction Rehabilitation Camps, public officials who can't understand why sending out racist jokes through company e-mail (or any e-mail) is a bad thing, the prospect of a jobless recovery, another DUI on a riding mower, the booming business of tattoo removal, the Cash for Clunkers Craze, the settlement of the Little League sliding lawsuit, a tale of a runaway tractor, a 76 year old man, and a taser, a pet store employee's bad choice of Facebook pictures, breakfast at the movies, a 101 year old lawyer, the 10 worst promotional stunts, Eli Manning's contract, and much, much more. Plus, you can check out "10 Questions With..." "The Group Room" host and cancer fighter extraordinaire Selma Schimmel, and the rest of All Access with industry news, charts, columns, ratings, jobs, and more, all free.
Next week, I'll probably talk about a good reason to get out of the office, or something like that. In the meantime, see what you can do about that station website, okay? Thanks.
