Mythbustin’

Everybody's an expert, of course, and so radio has been declared both dead and alive, relevant and irrelevant, outdated and, um, not outdated, I guess. Digital adherents and traditionalists have their own views, and they all think they're absolutely correct.

Any resemblance to politics is purely coincidental.

As an impartial observer (I'll pause while you howl in derisive laughter for a few minutes), I thought about some of the conventional wisdom out there this week while writing about the radio news of the week. Let's examine where we are, shall we? Like:

Statement: Nobody Cares About Radio

Evidence: Ask your teenagers.

Counterevidence: KROQ fired a morning show cast member. It was literally headline news on TV news and in the newspaper. My local paper had it as the lead story on its website. Granted, Ralph had been there for 18 years and is extremely talented, but we're talking about a radio guy and it was on Los Angeles TV news and in the paper, and a LOT of people cared. That doesn't even always happen when a TV show drops an actor. It's a testament to the value and power of radio talent. Also, your teenagers may not listen to as much radio as when we were kids and listening to WABC on a transistor radio, but "they don't listen" is an overstatement. Give them a reason to listen -- great personality, great music, great talk -- and they will. (Not on AM, though. There ARE limits.)

Statement: Those Bankruptcy/Financial Difficulty Stories Show Radio Is Dying

Evidence: Chapter 11. Mergers. Debt. Low stock prices.

Counterevidence: Depends on who you are and what you're looking at. You're an investor? You sunk money into licenses and transmitters at the top of the market? Sorry, dude. You might have been better off with Bitcoins. You work in the business? Might be nerve-wracking right now, what with cost-cutting and layoffs and the looming threat that your employer might be replaced by some new entity that can only comprehend budget line items. Radio as a going concern? It's been in better shape and the future does indeed involve different forms of distribution, but audio entertainment is still a viable business and that's what radio is. It isn't growing at a rate Wall Street wants to see for investment, but the revenue has rebounded enough from the bottom to pay the bills and keep the business as a going concern, so there's that. Radio might not be attractive to a lot of equity firms in 2017, not after seeing how things worked out for the last wave of investors, but it can still be a pretty good business.

Statement: People Get Their News From Facebook And Twitter Now. Radio News Is Irrelevant

Evidence: "All my friends get their news on Facebook."

Counterevidence: I'd say WTOP's ratings show there's still a healthy, large audience for radio news. And KCBS. And WBBM. And even stations like WINS and KYW and KNX which aren't on the FM dial yet are still getting more than respectable ratings. There will always be people getting their news elsewhere, but there always were. There's room for news on radio right alongside social media, the web, TV, and your friends texting you "DID YOU HEAR ABOUT FLYNN OMG."

Statement: Social Media Is The New Talk (And Sports) Radio

Evidence: "All the really hot takes are on Twitter."

Counterevidence: See the news item above, but replace the stations with WFAN, WIP, The Fanatic, The Sports Hub, WEEI, The Score, and any other sports station that has strong ratings. Sure, WIP and the Hub are getting a boost from their local NFL teams doing well, but it's more than that. If people's desire for sports talk was being satisfied by social media, you wouldn't see WIP at number one.

Statement: Podcasts Are The New Talk Radio

Evidence: A zillion podcasts.

Counterevidence: There's some truth here. Traditional talk radio can still get an audience, but the demographics indicate that the younger audiences aren't rotating in like they used to. Meanwhile, there's a strong appetite for spoken word content among younger audiences, but it's diffuse, split up among those zillion podcasts. The good news for radio is that there's no barrier to making original content for podcasts that reaches the next generations of listeners. And when Google finally gets around to a native podcast app for Android and when everyone has voice controlled speakers in their houses and cars so that they can simply say "Alexa, play The Evening Bulletin Podcast" (which you should say right now to your Amazon device and which is indeed a blatant plug for my podcast), you'll see how podcasts will be a critical element of audio entertainment in the future. Now, if it can only be monetized....

That's my expert analysis of the state of radio. As always, I am right.

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Next week is the last column for 2017. I have no idea what it's going to be about, and I'm open to suggestion, but it's gonna be the last one. Talk to you then.

Perry Michael Simon
Vice President/Editor, News-Talk-Sports and Podcast
AllAccess.com
psimon@allaccess.com
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