This week's "The Letter" newsletter for All Access spends other people's money, but wisely...:
This week, a modest proposal for a probably unworkable solution to a problem that some people don't even think exists. Fun for all! You might want to delete this thing right now.
THE PROBLEM: Developing new talk talent.
THE EXPLANATION: At radio convention panels, someone invariably asks "where are we going to find the next generation of talk radio talent?" And then, after the laughter subsides, everyone lights cigars with $100. bills and agrees that they don't need a next generation of talent, because they can always just play "best of" tapes all day. And then they stampede to the hotel bar to drink Glenlivet out of the bottle until they lose consciousness.
Seriously, the number of stations and slots where someone can go to work out the kinks (please, no Foley jokes) and develop their acts has dwindled, and I regularly get major market PDs bemoaning how hard it is to find new, big-time-ready hosts. There are only so many disgraced politicians and TV news channel pundits to go around, I guess. The industry needs to create new talent that appeals to new generations of listeners. And there's the matter of taking people like music jocks and, well, disgraced politicians and TV news channel pundits and training them in the right way to do talk radio, from working topics to pacing to taking calls- the kind of stuff you can only learn by doing it and being directed by folks who know how.
THE BRIGHT IDEA: After Dallas, I thought about this and thought about what other businesses do. When McDonald's wants to test a new menu item, they pick a few markets and put the McSquid sandwich on the menu to see whether people like it and whether the addition gets in the way of cranking out the Big Macs and Filet-O-Fishes. When a big company wants to try a new concept, perhaps a "fast casual Bolivian restaurant" or an "all cell-phone Bluetooth headset store," they usually don't open thousands of them in every market, they open in a smaller market with a few units and test it all out. Every major company has an R&D department- research and development- coming up with new products.
THE PROPOSAL: The big radio companies own a lot of stations. Wall Street wants them to show constant growth, so they're loath to do anything that might, you know, cost them money. But it's in their best interest to develop talent for talk radio, because you can't really voice-track talk radio, and even if you're relying on syndication, Rush and Sean and Savage and Rome won't be on the air forever (as far as we know).
The answer isn't necessarily in getting more stations into independent owners' hands- after all, those guys need to make money, too, and syndication and automation are probably keeping them in business. And the Internet and HD Radio signals aren't the answer, either, not yet, anyway, because if you're gonna learn how to work the phones, you have to have an audience, and there's not enough of an audience yet. Podcasts? No live interaction. No, you gotta have shows on real broadcast stations that people can get on any old radio. But which stations?
Every company has its dogs. I'll bet there are stations the owners don't even know they own ("we have a station there? I don't even know where that IS!"). Many of the big group owners have such stations, maybe a small-market AM with a lousy night signal or an FM rimshot hitting a small population. And I've heard people who run stations tell me that they're running a particular format- Standards, for example- because they don't have any other options. They're not making money, or they're not making much more than break-even.
So, take those dogs and turn them into your R&D department. Make them your lab. Sign up promising talent- if they're small markets with low costs-of-living, we're not talking New York or L.A. salaries- and assign some of your best talk radio producing and programming talent to supervise the "department." It's ideal for diversity, too- if you want to do more than the stereotypical angry-conservative-white-guy talk, you can work it out and make it better off-off-Broadway. It wouldn't take a lot of stations or a huge amount of money, and the afterthought AM daytimer in a small Midwestern market won't make or break the company's quarterlies on Wall Street. And, right there, you're giving more people a shot than you can if you've got maybe- maybe- one local talk show slot per small market. Plus, the folks living in those markets get to hear local talk by good, raw talent developing right before their ears, a lot like going to the local class A baseball team's games to see so me competitive ball and a few potential stars at the beginning of their careers.
It's an R&D program. It's an investment in your industry's future. It might even make money.
BOTTOM LINE: Talk radio needs to rebuild its minor league system. This would be, I think, a good way to do it.
REALITY: It'll never happen. But a guy can dream, can't he?
CRASS COMMERCIAL PITCH: Another place companies fall down is in providing hosts with adequate producer support- most hosts are on their own coming up with material. And that explains All Access News-Talk Sports' Talk Topics column, your Virtual Producer throwing topic ideas and news items at you multiple times a day, every day. Stories this week include the Best Election Platform Ever, what a high school coach and Hitler have in common, celebrity sewage, a McDonald's drug ring, Shanna Moakler allegedly punching out Paris Hilton, ballpark food, why Gitmo detainees are getting fat, why Weezer is suing Miller Beer, a politician in a scandal that DOESN'T involve creepy IMs, and the Fourth Annual Turkey Testicle Festival, plus a zillion press-release-ready studies and the requisite saturation coverage of a certain Pervy Congressman. While you're there, check out "10 Questions With..." WGY/Albany talker Ed Martin and the rest of All Access with first-fastest-best industry news, columns, message boards, the very cool Industry Directory, and Mediabase charts, all for free, which makes up for having this show up in your mailbox every week.
NEXT WEEK: Probably something about how one of the things everyone says will change radio forever is already here and nobody's noticed it yet. How's that for a tease?
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