This week's All Access newsletter followed four days of listening to L.A. and San Diego fire coverage. I heard some excellent coverage, but I thought about how I found myself looking for more and faster information (like, for example, how close the Malibu fires were to All Access World Headquarters), and how radio couldn't give me that but the Web could. And when I noted that I wasn't finding everything I wanted from the radio station websites, I realized that, like for snow closings, radio's role in emergencies is changing fast:
Terrestrial radio -- I know, the NAB wants us to call it something else, like "SuperGroovy Radio 2.0 HD" -- is everybody's whipping boy these days. The industry is like a kid with a target painted on his forehead and a "Kick Me" Post-It stuck to his back, and we all indulge in making fun of him from time to time. I do it here practically every week. Lord knows, the industry often deserves the criticism, and I don't have to tell you why. Radio hasn't been having a good decade.
But when something happens and radio gets to show what it can do, it largely does the job. That's what happened this week when Southern California caught fire. We had ourselves a full-scale, big-time emergency, and radio did what it has to do under those circumstances. I heard most of the talk stations in Los Angeles and San Diego doing an admirable job under trying circumstances. Most stations did what I'd hope they would do on the air -- all hands on deck, everyone pressed into action, wall-to-wall coverage, lots of information. (A few stations stuck with national political or sports shows. If you can't afford a news staff, at least simulcast a local TV station's coverage. But running a "best-of" taped show while your listeners are fleeing their homes? Sad)
What's interesting, though, is how radio's role in emergencies may be changing. After all, radio and TV are no longer the only media available to get the word out, and in some ways, the Web is a tremendously effective news medium. Web pages mean a user doesn't have to wait for a radio announcer to say where the fires are or what the traffic is, because it's there on a map. Need a shelter location? It's instantly there. Radio can't do that, not on demand, at least.
But the Web can't do everything, either. You're in your house, you smell the smoke, and suddenly the Reverse 911 call comes and you're told to immediately get out of your house and get on the road. So you grab what you can, throw it in the trunk, and you're in your car and unsure what's happening or where to go. That's when you fire up your laptop and you hop on the Net and... oh, wait, you're not going to do that because you're driving. OK, so you'll whip out your iPhone and pull up a website and... no, most people don't have iPhones and most cell phones have terrible, slow web browsing on tiny screens. The Net is great -- you're soaking in it! -- but when you're in your car and stuck in an endless line of traffic and you want to know what's happening, you're going to turn on the radio.
Terrestrial radio still has some advantages: it's in almost every car. It's very portable. You can use it without having to look at the screen or wait for a page to render. It can't give you instant access to exactly the sliver of information you may need like a web page can, but it can impart critical information in an immediate and useful manner, and that's what I heard on stations across the dial, commercial and public.
But radio stations aren't just radio stations anymore, or at least they shouldn't just be radio stations. If people are increasingly turning to the Net for the information radio excels at delivering (snow closings, anyone?), radio stations ought to take a long and hard look at whether their Internet offerings do the job. Your web site is an increasingly important part of what you produce. In this case, some stations' web pages DID have things like emergency numbers and news and other critical information, but those pages were usually hard to find. You had to click through to find the information, and that information wasn't always there. (I just checked -- one prominent station's web page requires drilling down two pages in the corporate template to get the news headlines, at least three for the actual stories and information, and the breaking news page was last updated early this morning, and it's late in the evening Thursday as I write this) Even if the people fleeing in their overloaded Ford Tauruses can't look at your web page, lots of people who have web access and power are still coming to your site for the news, and you need to make sure it's there, easily accessible and updated as frequently as you'd want to update your on-air news, or more.
Here are a few things I'd like to see every station do:
1. In an emergency, your home page doesn't need to be promoting your shows. And it doesn't need fancy graphics. It's an emergency. Your listeners are relying on you. The page needs to make it easy for users to find the news. Put it right there on the front page, with easily navigated links to more details. Use maps and graphics, too, but put them up front so someone who's in a hurry doesn't have to find the link and click several times to get there. It might be a good idea to create an emergency template for your site to slap onto the Web when you need to strip it down to the essentials. And if your station wants to be a dominant news provider, news headlines and briefs should be a focal point of your home page even in non-emergency times -- newspaper and TV station websites are doing that now, and if you're trying to compete with them but your news is on some secondary page, you'll lose that battle.
2. Update, update, update. Someone should be pumping the news onto your site all day and night. A rolling blog on the front page is good. Set up a feed and do it. Some of the best sources of information were at hyper-local news sites that provided exactly that, nothing but a list of continually updating stories with maps and information. If they can do it with no budget, you have no excuse not to do the same.
3. You put listeners on the air to tell what's happening in their neighborhoods, so let them post information and video on your site, too. Your audience is a community -- take advantage of that. Posting cell phone video and messages are the new media equivalent of calling in to talk on the air. Again, you're not just a radio station anymore.
4. If your site doesn't have a mobile version, make one so that when people DO have a moment to check the Net with their cell phones, they can read your information. Someday, all cell phones and portable devices will do what the iPhone does and display full web pages, but not yet.
Okay, you have your assignment for tonight. But regarding what I heard on the air from talk and news radio this week, there's a lot about which "regular radio" can be proud, too.
The fires were not the only news of the week, of course, at least outside this area, so All Access' show prep bonanza Talk Topics continued to provide hosts -- maybe even you! -- with plenty of other material. Among those very items were stories about "adult-friendly" theaters, dangerous Halloween decorations, whiskey in the baby bottle, a spectacular drinking binge in Wal-Mart, New Jersey stink bugs, the Worst Fall TV Season Yet, glow-in-the-dark shrimp, the staph infection and why hospitals aren't yet testing everyone for it, why you should be careful about eating that dead dog, how restaurants are reaching new levels of expensive, Diddy vodka, nude Vermonters, pooping pigeons, a real-life Homer Simpson in Sector 7-G, what really happened to Tony Soprano, where the germs are, and a stirring tribute to the late inventor of Rice-a-Roni, plus stuff about the fires, the World Series, the candidates, the war, and pretty much every other news topic. This week's "10 Questions With..." is a visit with WLnk (107.9 The Link)/Charlotte and Link Radio Network PD Neal Sharpe, who has interesting things to say about his station's non-traditional format, and the rest of All Access has the usual stuff like the industry's leading source for news, message boards, columns, ratings, job listings, music charts, a searchable industry directory, and much more, all free.
Let's close this week by sending our thoughts and prayers to the many people who lost their homes and possessions in the fires and to the firefighters who have had to knock these fires down in incredibly tough conditions. And let's hope that none of us have to go into emergency mode again anytime soon.
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