Spring Cleaning

Spring is always touted as a time of renewal, of hope, a new start, unlimited possibility. The countryside is in bloom, baseball season has begun, the days are getting longer, the sun is shining... everything's looking up.

Except if you're in radio, which is always in "Winter is Coming" mode. We in radio have become conditioned to wait for the other shoe to drop, whether it's the ratings book report card or the layoffs sure to be waiting around the corner. The latest example of the latter is the fear of layoffs to come as a result of the Entercom-CBS merger. It's no secret that deals like this are always accompanied by layoffs, but radio deals have a way of stretching out the agony. First come the rumors, then the assumptions, but the actual news seems to take a while to happen. It's hard to be effective at your job when you have a guillotine blade hovering above your neck.

But that's life, you know. Even growth industries are like that. And it could be worse: just do a quick Google News search for "Retail" for a quickening stream of stories about major national retailers closing stores and "overstored" America.

Here's the thing that throws me a little, though: Whenever people in the business complain about what's happening, they rarely if ever follow it up with what SHOULD be done. And the simple fact is that going back to the "good old days" isn't an option, nor should it be. The world changed. Tastes changed. Doing radio the way it was in the '70s isn't an option. Top 40 on AM isn't coming back (unless you simulcast on an FM translator, that is). Fairness Doctrine "some people think this, others think that, what do YOU think?" talk isn't going to work. So, if the industry is indeed going to hell in a handbasket, what would YOU do about it? (And has the word "handbasket" ever been used independently of the word "hell"?) If you were running radio, what would you do?

I proposed something years ago in this column -- yes, I've been doing this so long, topics just keep coming back again and again -- that I thought was a good exercise then and equally apropos now: Imagine starting over. Clean the slate. Blow it all up. Start with a blank. Okay, then, you have radio, starting fresh in 2017, looking to make a place for itself against Internet-based competition and with all the other distractions in place, from phones to voice controlled devices to connected dashboards. You have your pick of pieces to choose from. What's the plan?

In 2017, my answer might be a little different from what it was back when I first suggested this exercise (around 1999 or 2000). Back then, I'd have advised to play to radio's strategic advantages -- production experience, ubiquitous delivery, ease of use. I'd have suggested updated imaging, shorter stop sets, live-and-local, the usual responses. But today, I think the way to approach the blank slate is more rooted in the recognition that due to technology, you have to plan to be more than a radio station, and due to economic factors, you can't do everything you want to do (or wish you could go back to doing).

If you had the cash and were told you could start a media business now, your heart would tell you to buy radio stations. Your head might tell you to buy into something digital. But you can do both, as long as you approach the business as a content production entity and not what we used to think of as a standard radio station. You can see some of that thinking in how a company like iHeartMedia has tried to reposition itself as less radio than a lean, mean digital machine, but the radio portion -- the part that led to the debt they carry -- is both the primary revenue producer and something of an albatross going forward unless they can pull off making that debt magically disappear (and let's not go down THAT road right now). If you think about starting over, think about putting other content -- video, podcasts, streaming, websites -- on an equal footing with the radio part. You can generate content for all platforms, and cross-promote it all.

That doesn't necessarily answer what to do about that debt, does it? Nope. Which is another part of the exercise: If you're starting from scratch, which jobs stay, which go, and which get redefined? How many people do you need working the morning show? Do you need traffic reports? Does every station get a PD or does one person handle all your stations? I'd argue that the ultimate product gets hurt when you cut back the way radio's been cutting back -- I always say that commercial radio does with 3 people what public radio does with 30 and what should be done by 10 people -- and that things like elevating producers to more than just glorified assistants and call screeners are what commercial radio's always failed to do. Wiping out news departments was also a poor decision; radio news departments should be manned 24/7 and generating news content for broadcast and online around the clock. Again, if you think of the business as only what goes out over the transmitter and antenna, you think you can close the building and get away with voice tracking on the computer. If you think of your product as content for all platforms, that building should be humming at all times.

Those are some of the thoughts I have when I think of starting over. Hey, it's Spring and the possibilities are endless. Might as well dream to take our minds off... you know. What would your dreams be for radio (other than reverting to 1975)? Maybe one day, one of you will be able to put those dreams into action. This way, when the Powerball hits, you'll be ready.

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As for me, I have dreams, too. I have a dream that someday, Friday will roll around and I'll be just BRIMMING with ideas for this column instead of waiting until the last second, hoping in vain that inspiration will strike. I have not given up that hope. Someday....

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