America’s Next Top Radio Model

Remember a few weeks ago when I suggested that perhaps a nonprofit business model would be appropriate to save local radio news? I still think there's merit to that, but the news that three major public radio stations have laid off a lot of their staffs and cut back on programming is an example of how the pandemic has upended pretty much every business model. If you're dependent on grants, donations, and government contributions, those are going to be among the first casualties when a cataclysmic event hits the economy, and will likely be among the last to be restored when it's all over.

I don't know what the answer is, either. There are some issues that might be revisited, like CEO and top management pay -- even with pay cuts, some of those folks are still making bank while the general staff is making "sorry, we're a nonprofit, we can't afford it" money -- and staff size. The number of layoffs at some of these stations is close to the number of people on many commercial stations' entire staffs, which says something about both overstaffing in public radio and understaffing in commercial radio, or what it takes to maintain the production values public radio and public radio-produced podcast listeners are now expecting. Either way, business models for radio of any kind, commercial or noncommercial, are reeling, and it might get worse before it gets better.

Not that radio's different from other media in this regard. Newspapers are in worse shape. Broadcast and cable television are praying that political advertising can save the day. Podcast advertising is... well, it depends on who you ask. Any medium relying on local advertising is going to need a radical revival of business among the auto dealers, restaurants, and retailers who made up the client base before COVID-19 showed up. If they're not spending....

What now? One option might be subscriptions. Broadcast radio can't slap a paywall on an FM or AM signal, and the "it's free" advantage over satellite isn't much of an advantage if advertising revenue isn't there. But podcasting and streamng can do paywalls, and that debate is still raging; You can point to something like Luminary and declare that the subscription model doesn't work, but then there's Spotify, obviously not exclusively podcasting but closer to the elusive "Netflix of Podcasting" than anyone else, and it appears to be working. Can broadcast radio do that, too? Can iHeartRadio or Entercom's Radio.com develop content compelling enough to convince people to pay a monthly fee?

Maybe, but to overcome the established default that podcasts should be free and platform-agnostic, they either have to offer something else that draws listeners to the app -- Spotify's music is the selling point, the podcasts are important but secondary -- or the podcasts have to be presold entities. The radio companies could have just as easily signed Joe Rogan (or Gimlet or Parcast) to a deal, but Spotify got there first. You can't just put up a paywall around content that nobody's willing to pay to get and expect consumers to beat a path to your door. (One word: Quibi.) Other options are a little more fraught with peril: live events will someday return, but it's going to be a while. Merch is a tough business. Remember when Cumulus did a Groupon-type thing? Yeah, that didn't work. But it's going to take some creativity. And just cutting costs isn't necessarily going to be an answer; national programming isn't in and of itself a bad thing, and it's common pretty much everywhere but North America, but it still has to generate revenue, and if the ad market remains slow (I know, it's pacing better at the moment, but this is going to be a long, slow slog), good luck with that. (The question of whether losing radio's local advantage is a wise move is a separate one.)

That's the industry's problem. If you're a content creator, it all affects you, but there are other issues to deal with. I'm going to save them for another column, though. This one's long enough as it is.

TL;DR: Radio, public or commercial, needs a better business model, which may or may not be available. Also, wear a mask.

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Fixing the industry is one thing. Getting material together for your show right now is another. Good thing for the latter that there's Talk Topics, All Access News-Talk-Sports' show prep column with lots of stories for your talking needs, available by simply clicking here and/or following the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item. Hey, and this week, it's my old comedian/actor pal Travis Clark doing the "10 Questions With..." thing; he's now a line producer at Parcast/Spotify and co-host of other podcasts, and he's got an interesting perspective on the podcast world from someone who's been on both sides of the mic for a long time. Also, we talk a little about Comedy World, which was one of the stranger experiences we've ever had.

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It's been a long, frustrating week, so I'll just say Happy Juneteenth, welcome to Summer (officially, this weekend), have a good weekend. I'll go now.

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