Results tagged “Health care”

It's a common hazard of making a living by having an opinion: Most topics have gray areas, and gray areas don't work well when you're trying to communicate AND entertain at the same time. You do your research, you do your homework, and you find that you can see valid opinions on both sides of an issue. That's admirable if you're a professor, important if you're a journalist, and trouble if you do talk radio, because it always comes down to the dreaded phrase, "What do YOU think?"

That's a problem. People are coming to your show to hear what YOU think. They'll react to your opinion far more vigorously than if you waffle and then ask what their opinion is. Think of it in bar room argument form: If I say "Aah, the Yankees suck and they'll be lucky to beat out Tampa Bay for the division," you'll react by telling me loudly and in no uncertain terms whether you think that's idiotic or on the money. If I say, "Some people think the Yankees are the team to beat, but others think the Red Sox and Rays will give them a run for the AL pennant -- what do YOU think?," you'll give a calm, rational analysis of the relative merits of A-Rod and Evan Longoria, and it'll be way more polite and way less entertaining for others to eavesdrop on.

Your job, if you're a talk show host, is to have an opinion. People are tuning in to hear your take on the news. That means you need to HAVE a take (yes, Jim Rome fans, I know the rest: "don't suck"). This may be horrifying to some folks who consider talk radio unnecessarily incendiary, and it doesn't mean I'm condoning spreading misinformation or gratuitously inflammatory or offensive comments just to stir the pot, but a passionate certainty on every topic is a necessity in this game.

So when I realized I was in "What do YOU think?" territory, there was only one thing I could do. I clicked and dragged and highlighted every word I'd written -- and there were a LOT of those -- and tapped the Delete key. Time to start over.

When you're preparing your show, you have to be ready to hit that Delete key whenever you realize that you don't have a solid, passionate position on a topic. If YOU don't feel fired up about it, how can you expect an audience to hang in there with you?

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Of course, doing that left me pushing a deadline with no topic on hand. I had to come up with something fast, with no help in sight. You won't have that problem if you take advantage of All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics column, where, every day, there are hundreds of topic ideas, and some are bound to get your blood pressure rising. You'll find kicker stories and "real news" headlines and stupid jokes, too; just add your own perspective and there's your show. For example, this week's items include a savage attack on the Easter Bunny, the real winners in the health care battle (lobbyists, of course), the dwindling market for Tiger Woods impersonators, why some people are demanding the immediate retirement of Ronald McDonald, a different way of paying for trash hauling, why business cards are still around, a deranged attack triggered by an Obama sticker, why you might want to keep a bunch of toads in your house, what your teens are doing with body spray and lighters, the end of the 5 mph "cushion" you used to get from traffic cops, the health benefits of cinnamon and chocolate, how to get people to be organ donors (hint: PAY THEM), why you might not to live on Washaway Beach (and why some people still do), and an in-depth investigation into whether Donovan McNabb really did puke or not in Super Bowl XXXIX. All that, plus "10 Questions With..." New Jersey 101.5 afternoon co-host and Yoo-Hoo enthusiast Casey Bartholomew and the rest of All Access, where you'll find the industry's most complete and fastest news coverage, plus ratings, job listings, columns, forums, and more, all free.

Don't forget, too, that you can keep abreast of Talk Topics on Twitter -- just follow @talktopics (twitter.com/talktopics) and you'll get a link to every item in convenient tweet form. Net News is on Twitter, too; twitter.com/allaccess is the one to follow for the big breaking news stories. Hey, you got an iPhone, iPod Touch, or even, if you're lucky this weekend, an iPad? You'll want the All Access iPhone app: click here for that (it's free, too). And while we're linking, you might as well see what I'm up to at twitter.com/pmsimon and at pmsimon.com, where you can read about obscure comic strips, weird Sammy Davis, Jr. singles, and what Ozzie and Harriet meant to me (not much, it turns out).

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Right?

Well, now, that's a problem. I encounter this fairly often, local hosts concentrating on the same national issues that Rush and Hannity and Savage and Levin and any number of other hosts are doing. The "local" angle might be having the local Congressdrone on to parrot the party line in a convivial manner, but local issues? State issues? Small-time.

And that's a problem, too. I admit to having thought like that myself, only not in radio. In a previous life, I was an editorial cartoonist, back when there was still a future for people doing that job. I had an attitude about that, namely that local and state politics bored me. I was shooting higher. I didn't think I'd get anywhere concentrating on Philadelphia or Harrisburg when the big syndicated guys were all about Washington. So that's what I did, too, and I got lost in the shuffle and eventually decided that I'd need to find a career in which I was more likely to earn enough to afford food. (I chose radio. Whoops) Had I concentrated on commentary about what was going on right in my neighborhood -- what was directly impacting me and my neighbors -- I may have succeeded and remained in the newspaper business, and, today, I would, of course, be unemployed.

Radio's no different from cartooning or reporting or anything else. The glamour, such as it is, is in "going national." Doing that, however, means that you'll be ignoring the kind of stuff that can REALLY make you a name, serve your listeners, and make for better talk radio. There's always something going on in your city or state that you can make compelling, but that's especially true right now. In compiling Talk Topics every day, I run across stories from across the country that scream out for some talk radio host to seize on it, get angry, and make something happen. Every day, those stories are out there. Too often, I don't see any local talkers seizing the moment.

Here's what I mean: A major city takes people's homes and businesses to hand over to a rich developer to build a sports arena for his failing basketball team. Public-sector workers in several states are pulling down six figure sums in overtime on top of massively inflated salaries, even when the states themselves are virtually bankrupt and resorting to furloughs to try to save money. Legislatures and mayors are fretting about the calorie counts of school lunches and looking to slap taxes on soda and trash pickup rather than cut what needs to be cut. There are stories like this in every city, stories of inepitude and malfeasance, and they are absolutely tailor-made for talk radio, angry, pitchfork-and-torches talk radio, compelling and entertaining. It doesn't matter what your politics are, or which side you're on. There's plenty of outrage to go around.

See, the local stuff is something you can own. If everyone else is talking about national issues, you can make yourself different by taking advantage of the fact that you DON'T have to be generic. National talkers CAN'T talk about your local issues and personalities. You can. It's your strategic advantage. You can hammer on these things, get people involved, and get a lot of attention while you're looking out for your listeners' best interests. That's not to say that YOU should be organizing the pitchfork parade, but your show can be where like-minded people go to gather. And with a radio show, you have way more ability to build that community than blogs or podcasts or any other medium, because you start with a larger base. It's what talk radio can do better than anyone else.

I'm not, by the way, saying that national isn't good. From health care to Wall Street, there are major issues to be addressed and that's what the syndicated guys do well. All I'm saying is that if you're a local host, you should take advantage of the need for someone to draw attention to the state and local issues that have real impact on your listeners' lives, and make those topics your own.

Oh, yeah, one more reason to do it. There's a study that just came out, measuring how much time local TV news in Los Angeles spent on all kinds of news. They measured the eight stations that do news, and analyzed 14 random days' worth of news shows from last August and September. The result: Out of a typical half hour, 8 minutes and 17 seconds were spent on local news, mostly crime stories. News about government actions took up a minute and 12 seconds, 49 seconds of which were federal. Los Angeles-area government issues? TWENTY TWO SECONDS. TV news isn't paying attention to the mayor or council. Undoubtedly, your city's TV news isn't a whole lot different. Mwanwhile, the same study showed the Los Angeles Times, our only market-wide daily paper, devoting a whopping 6% of its news hole to local issues. See the opportunity?

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I mentioned earlier that some of the topics I'm talking about were encountered while writing the Talk Topics column for All Access News-Talk-Sports, and they're in there, along with hundreds of items of all kinds -- national, international, sports, entertainment, kickers, anything any talk radio show might use. Normally, in this space, I'd list a bunch of samples, but I'm not going to do that this week. Instead, I'm going to point you to the all-new Talk Topics Twitter feed at twitter.com/talktopics, where you'll find a handy list of everything in the Talk Topics column. Follow @talktopics and you'll be able to keep up with everything I throw in there, as soon as I write 'em up. And while you're at it, follow twitter.com/allaccess to get the biggest headlines from Net News first. Oh, what the heck, follow twitter.com/pmsimon too, for my personal, not-at-all-Joel's-fault comments on whatever's bothering me at the moment, usually involving Philadelphia sports teams or my cat.

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