Faith in the Future

The theme of this week's NAB Show in Las Vegas was "The M.E.T. Effect," which on one hand gave the signal to every amateur comedian in town to make a Yoenis Cespides joke or something like it, and on the other hand signaled nothing, because it was a stupid slogan. The idea is that media, entertainment, and technology are converging, which is a misunderstanding of what convergence means. In fact, media, entertainment, and technology aren't converging in any meaningful way that they haven't overlapped already. What's new is that the technology is changing, and the entertainment is changing to suit the platforms. That's not convergence, that's adaptation.

Whatever it's called, the talk of change was striking in how the two broadcast media represented here approach the new world. When I sat in on panels about video, I heard executives talking about how they've begun to produce shows in a different way: NBC, for example, is making "Saturday Night Live" sketches specifically for Snapchat, series of bursts of comedy that string together to tell a story. Programming is being produced for OTT and subscription streaming venues. Shows are being measured not just by linear ratings of a show in its initial in-pattern airing but by the views for clips on YouTube, social media engagement, and whatever else technology is throwing at them. You don't hear fear from the traditional broadcast networks, even if the new world has threatened their primacy and dented their overall viewership. They're adapting.

And then there's radio. Even at the panels and presentations about "digital solutions" for radio, the conversation wasn't about adapting in the way television adapted to the Netflix/Amazon/Hulu invasion. It was... defensive. They talked about preserving radio's supremacy on the dashboard. They talked about getting those FM chips -- old technology -- activated in cell phones. They talked about radio's traditional news and emergency value. They talked about how radio still has that 93% reach (but not about the drop in time spent listening). But they didn't talk much about what they're doing in the present and what they plan to do in the future to address the change in listener habits, preferences, and technology, other than the usual "should we do podcasts?" stuff we've been hearing for the last several years.

There's no vision. There's little positivity or confidence. And here's what I don't understand: Television networks have the same concerns, and maybe even more trouble, facing them. They, too, hold licenses that have diminished in value, so much so that no less than NBC sold its own New York channel in the incentive auction and will channel share with itself there to pick up a few extra free-money bucks. They, too, have competition unhindered by the cost of licensing and regulation. They, too, face bandwidth costs -- greater bandwidth costs -- to deliver their content via the Internet. Yet there they are, embracing social and Snapchat and YouTube and figuring out more and more ways to monetize that audience. Radio could have the same mindset, but....

But it doesn't. Radio is living in fear, with its largest operators saddled with hopeless debt and with no clear idea how to proceed in the digital space. The answers are in front of them, as they were for television, yet they're still circling the wagons and hoping that FM tuner chips and the repetition of the "93%" mantra do the trick. Honestly, it's weird to me, because radio has a pretty clear path to growth if it looks at new technology not as a threat but as an opportunity. Your audience's preference is for something different? Give them what they want. It's not hard. It IS a disruption of the status quo, but nobody guaranteed you that everything would stay the same, did they? You can do what NBC is doing, accept that you can't force people to always watch shows at the moment they air on TV, and post Melissa McCarthy laying waste to the White House press room on YouTube or the latest "The Voice" auditions on Snapchat. Your audience is splintering and listening to Spotify and Pandora? Maybe you should be doing content that you can place on those services, like podcasts or branded playlists. An app that just streams or apes Pandora isn't enough. Go where the audience is going, wherever they're going, and create content -- YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THAT! -- that works there.

The future, in short, is bright if you want it to be bright. And it's coming, whether you want it to or not. Television is adapting. Radio is still hesitating. If radio wants to continue to be relevant, it has to adapt a lot faster and more positively than it's been doing. A good start would be for the leaders of this industry to stop playing defense and get moving towards where the growth is happening. Look forward already.

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And whatever the platform, you'll find stuff to talk about at All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics, all by clicking here and/or by following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And there's the Podcasting section at AllAccess.com/podcasts, and this week, there's "10 Questions With..." Tim Andrews, who's producing "The Von Haessler Doctrine" and on-air at WSB/Atlanta and hosts a podcast and has grown as a talent and as a producer since his days as a sidekick and voice guy on "The Regular Guys." It's a good read.

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Clearly, I did something very, very annoying in a past life, because I'll be at ANOTHER convention next week, which I always misname despite it being co-produced by All Access. It's -- I have to do this slowly -- the Worldwide Radio Summit in Hollywood. (I had to retype that twice because I got the name wrong.) Follow me on Twitter and Facebook if you like to watch someone descend into madness.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
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