The Unavoidable Truth

Another media company has announced that it is executing the "pivot to video," and examining the explanations for why they've decided to dump the written (or posted) word is interesting, since what they're saying doesn't quite sync with reality. There's a lesson for talk radio, and podcasting, in here, I swear. Stay with me now.

We saw this with MTV and with Fox Sports, and this time it's Mic.com, the attempt at a flashy news and clickbait site for Millennials. They've just fired 25 reporters, editors, and staffers and they're going all-in on video. Here's what CEO Chris Altchek told the staff Thursday:

“We made these tough decisions because we believe deeply in our mission to make Mic the leader in visual journalism, and we need to focus the company to deliver on our mission.... Visual journalism already makes up 75% of the time that our audiences spend with Mic. As new platforms emerge and existing platforms continue to grow, we believe this will become a dominant form of news consumption."

They've been setting this up for months, by the way, with the publisher writing about a "visual revolution in journalism." And they've been tossing out phrases like "premium video," as if anyone's going to pay them for video reports. They're trying to sell the idea that Millennials want their news in bite-sized video form, that Millennials simply don't read.

This, of course, is not true. In fact, a Pew Research study just last year showed young adults preferring reading news stories, much, much more so than older adults. See for yourself. The actual breakdown for the 18-29 demographic is that 42% prefer reading their news, 38% watching, and 19% listening. It's the 50-plus demographics who prefer watching. (Listening could do better, but that's a separate issue for now.)

Which, of course, leads to the question: Why would you throw all your resources into video when your target audience is not telling you that it wants video more than text? The answer is simple: That's where the money is. And the money is in video because of agencies' and advertisers' insistence that video advertising is more unavoidable. (Don't take my word for it; Bryan Curtis at The Ringer did a good job of explaining the truth about the "pivot to video" in this article.) You can ignore print advertising, you can avert your eyes from outdoor advertising, you can fast-forward through TV ads on your DVR or pay extra to Hulu for an ad-free experience, but you can't skip a pre-roll ad on an online video unless they let you skip it. That's also a feature of those increasingly annoying auto-play videos on too many pages, which is also an argument AGAINST pre-roll ads. When those things fire up, do you pay attention or are you frantically trying to find the X or the Pause button to stop the noise? Doesn't matter: The site counts it as a view, and advertisers pay for it, even though you didn't really watch it.

Where does this leave talk radio? I think that talk radio undersells its greatest advantage, one that podcasts have been selling since the Dawn of On-Demand: native advertising, live reads, host-delivered commercial content. Spoken word audio, whether talk radio or podcasting, has a huge advantage in exactly what advertisers say they want, which is the unavoidable commercial. In fact, it's better than unavoidable. Listeners don't WANT to avoid them. Done right -- and so many hosts just naturally pick up on this -- it's part of the show. It's content. Howard Stern showed the way with the classic live Snapple spots back in the WNBC days. Many of you do it daily. Podcasts are loaded with them. Listeners perceive that it's an ad, but they're also getting more of what they came for, the host and his or her personality. A regular pre-recorded, produced spot will send your finger to the Scan button; a live read won't. And if this is what advertisers want to put their money into, you have what they're looking for.

If you're looking for a bright spot for the future of talk radio and podcasting (I look at them as two branches of the same spoken-word audio medium), that's something to warm your heart as everything else goes to hell. You can see that, for example, podcasting gets high CPMs for those spots, and I get told time and again that some talk radio stations' bright bottom lines are largely generated by live reads. Perhaps ALL spots should be live reads, because there's a great story to tell if your content never gives a listener a reason to tune away. It also doesn't provide too many opportunities to take a bathroom break if you're actually live on the air, but you can work around that, and I am determined NOT to end this column with a Depends joke. Way too easy.

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One more reminder that I'll be at Podcast Movement 2017 in Anaheim next week, August 23-25. I will not be on any panels, but I will be lurking, and I will be covering it, so keep an eye on Net News or the Today's Talk emails for news from the event. I hope you'll be there, though, because for many of you, if you're not doing it yet, podcasting is your future. Speaking of which, I might have some news to... ah, but that can wait... for now....

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