Make Yourself Useful

Thursday morning, the newspaper didn't get delivered. It was 2 pm by the time I realized it hadn't been delivered.

I subscribe to the paper edition of the Los Angeles Times not because I want the actual physical paper, but because taking the hard copy was, when we first signed up, a cheaper way of paying for the paywalled website. We signed up for the Sunday edition, and they later threw in the Thursday paper, which comes with some circulars. But when I open those papers, I find that I've already read most of it online. I'm happy to pay to support good journalism -- I pay for other online subscriptions, too -- but the paper version just seems redundant. If it wasn't for the grocery coupons on Sunday, I could dump all of it directly into the recycle bin and not miss anything I hadn't already gotten on the website or app.

That's pretty much universal knowledge now, which is why, besides aggressively (and in some cases, desperately) moving content online, newspapers are cutting back on publication days. Some have reduced their paper product to three or two days a week. (Ken Doctor has a sobering article about that this week at Nieman Labs; read it here.) The cost of composing, printing, and delivering a product that's dated before it even lands on your doorstep, that can't be updated on the fly, that isn't what the consumer wants anymore, is too great. It may be that the newspaper industry reacted too late, and/or in the wrong manner, but it's where we are now. It is not good for democracy or the future to have a world in which news reporting and gathering is economically unfeasible, yet that's where technology and public tastes led us.

So, radio. We've been through the arguments before. Radio did this, radio missed out on that, radio still reaches 93... wait, is it 92 percent? 91 percent, at least. Radio could get back in the game if only the content was just right. Radio is still... um...

What if none of that mattered? What if the younger generations radio needs to survive are telling you right now that the technology itself is not what they want? What if broadcast radio -- transmitter sending out linear curated programming -- is to them what newspapers are to most people these days, a buggy whip technology unsuited to an on-demand, narrowcasting-oriented society? What if the very nature of what people consider entertainment has radically changed, if DJs and talk hosts and 10-in-a-row-chosen-by-someone-else, and even non-superhero movies and unbingeable TV shows are out and TikTok videos are the entertainment of choice now? What, then, are you supposed to do with all of this infrastructure you've amassed?

There are two ways to approach the questions. One is to ask in turn what the technology you have is best suited to provide. The answer could be live news and information. It could be interactive programming, or, in other words, live shows with phone calls. It could be... well, whatever the technology does better than podcasts or streaming. And that may very well be data delivery, telematics, something that the frequencies can convey that will be more profitable than plain audio. The other way to look at it is what we've talked about ad infinitum for the last several years: your business has been redefined and you're in the content generation business now, in which case you're not a radio company, and also in which case you have what seems like infinite competition, some of which has far lower production costs and none of which is saddled with the costs of licensing and maintaining facilities.

Wow, that's cheery, isn't it? Yet there's one other thing that radio, as an industry, should not forget: Among the people in the business are some who are inarguably the best at creating audio entertainment and information. That's a substantial resource. Yet the industry, still dealing with investors and debt and the perception that if you're not growing at a huge rate, you're not growing, is deemphasizing that talent, and you know where that's led.

I don't know the ultimate answer. It may be that the technology is doomed. But there's still life in the business, and it would be beneficial, or at least interesting, for the industry to ponder how its product is used and whether it's still the best technology for that. I don't want to think about radio the way I think about a hard copy newspaper that failed to materialize on my driveway one morning.

=============================

You won't discard all the great show prep (okay, YOU try to segue from that column to this plug) 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 then read "10 Questions With..." radio veteran and "Dining Out with Bruce Newbury" food dude Bruce Newbury, with great insight into independently creating and growing a regionally-syndicated show.

Make sure you're subscribed to Today's Talk, the daily email newsletter with the top news stories in News, Talk, and Sports radio and podcasting. You can check off the appropriate boxes in your All Access account profile's Format Preferences and Email Preferences sections if you're not already getting it.

My podcast is "The Evening Bulletin with Perry Michael Simon," a quick (two minutes or less) daily thing, and you can get it at Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Google Play Music, iHeartRadio, TuneIn, Stitcher, and RadioPublic. Spotify, too. Google Podcasts? Click here. You can also use the RSS feed and the website where you can listen in your browser, or my own website where they're all embedded, too. And if you have an Amazon Alexa-enabled device, just say "Alexa, play the Evening Bulletin podcast."

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.

=============================

We're almost there: I'm moderating a panel on "Celebrities in Podcasting" at Podcast Movement in Orlando on August 14th, on Coleman Insights' Industry Track and sponsored by Audioboom. Register here. Also, I just looked out the window and it looks like the Times may have delivered that paper on Friday, so there's a day-old paper with several-days-old news out there. Awesome.

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