It's hard to hear people tell you all is well when you know all isn't exactly well. It's harder when you know things can be different.

This year's Conclave Learning Conference was a fine event with great people, and it's always worth spending a couple of days on the fringes of Minneapolis to experience. The mission of the conference is to help aspiring radio professionals achieve their career goals, and we need more of that. Yet, we also need more candor, and that's why I felt compelled to stand up and shoot my mouth off as I occasionally do at these things. This time, it was a panel of very smart radio people who I know would be receptive to discussing a question I have asked before; unfortunately, we ran out of time and they didn't get to respond in detail, but I'll ask the same question here:

How do you convince new blood to work in radio when they see how many jobs are being eliminated in the business?

Say you're considering your career options. You can go into an industry in which there's growth, where the sky's the limit. Or you can go into an industry in which entire categories of jobs are being trashed, or in which there's a greater danger of aging out of your job. What are you going to choose?

Let me be clear: There are reasons to work in radio. It is not dead. It can be fun and rewarding. There's still more money in it than in podcasting. There's the romance of being on the air that is very different from recording a podcast or being on a stream. There's the thrill of being live on the air, speaking to thousands of people at once.

But there's uncertainty. There's reading about companies getting rid of midday hosts, of evening hosts, of overnight shows. There's voice tracking on music stations. There's the spectre of having management telling you what to say and when and how to say it. There are the stories of longtime, experienced, successful radio talent -- even household names -- finding themselves not on the radio anymore, aged out or priced too high for the 2019 version of the industry. There are all the articles in the mainstream media about how radio's not popular with the Youth of North America, how it's all about Spotify and YouTube and podcasts now, and the underlying threat that by the time you've made it to the big markets, it'll be too late, and you'll be looking for a new career.

Maybe it'll take new leadership. Maybe we don't need the same people who brought private equity into the game and ended up having to continually cut budgets running things; Maybe we need people in charge who know how to create great local and national content and monetize it, without the need to generate unreasonable revenue and profit growth to please Wall Street. Maybe we need some assurance that the folks at the controls have a solid plan moving forward. And maybe they do, which leaves me with that question... no, it's more of a plea. Tell aspiring audio content creators what radio can do for them that nobody else can. Tell the next generation why they should do live broadcast radio, or even just work for radio companies, rather than create their own podcasts, or seek to hook up with podcast networks or digital-first companies or just do videos posted to YouTube and social media.

For an industry that seems obsessed with telling its story to the advertising community, it's critical that it tells its story to the creative community as well. If radio is going to be relevant in a digital world -- and it can be -- it needs to pay more attention to attracting and holding onto talent.

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Whether you're employed right now or doing a podcast because why not, you'll find lots of things to talk about at Talk Topics, the show prep column at All Access News-Talk-Sports, all free when you click here and/or follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. And there's "10 Questions With..." Phil Mackey, who a) works for a company that's doing interesting, forward-looking things, Hubbard Radio, and b) happens to not only be on the air but is in charge of one of those forward-looking things, SKOR North, which used to be just an AM sports station, KSTP in the Twin Cities, but is now a digital-first content machine that uses radio, podcasts, streaming, the web, and social media to reach its audience. Read and learn.

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You can follow my personal Twitter account at @pmsimon, and my Instagram account (same handle, @pmsimon) as well. And you can find me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/pmsimon, and at pmsimon.com.

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Good to see everyone at The Conclave, and kudos to Lori Lewis and the crew for another successful year. And now, I'll get a month off from conventions, but I will be moderating a panel on "Celebrities in Podcasting" at Podcast Movement in Orlando, August 13-16, and I hope I'll be seeing each and every one of you there. Register here. If you're trying to figure out the future, it's a good place to start.

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