Who’s Next

Who's going to be the next Rush Limbaugh?

That's the wrong question to be asking. In fact, it's a little late, and beside the point. You -- the talk radio industry -- shouldn't be looking for the next Rush Limbaugh. You should be looking for the first of someone else.

Positing that the industry needs another Rush is how we got where we are in the first place: a format that's starting to get that aged, Adult Standards aroma, good to keep an AM station with a lousy signal on the air and not for much else. That's an exaggeration, of course; there are still many talk stations, even on AM, doing well. But the demographics are mostly not great, and doing what we know has worked in the past -- a lot of local hosts to go along with the syndicated stars, a local news staff -- is more expensive than most operators are willing to tolerate. Add into that an increase in pressure on advertisers not to buy time on controversial programming, and the appeal of selling off the transmitter real estate and writing off the license becomes more clear.

But it doesn't have to be this way. There's not just some life left in the spoken word format, there's a lot of potential. People DO like spoken word content, but more of them, especially younger audiences, want something other than what talk radio has been serving up since shortly after Rush hit it big: Rush and a lot of hosts doing a weaker version of what Rush did. That was the formula and it's still the formula. More of what you came for, management reasoned, was a solid strategy. Tune in at any time and get what you came for.

What DID they come for, though? I think there was a misunderstanding of why, exactly, Rush was popular, and here I'm going to tell you that I am NOT going to talk in this column about the actual political and social content of his show, which you can feel free to debate in the comments on someone's Facebook post. Maybe late in his career, it was about the politics. Early on, it was as much or more about, well, Rush, and the entertainment elements of his show. You can debate whether it was funny, or whether the entertainment was still there at the end, but he was, along with Howard Stern, an exemplar of the "love him or hate him, you gotta listen" approach. Whatever you think of the man or his show, it WAS a "show." HE was the show. If you listened, you listened for him.

That's irreplaceable. So was Howard. Any attempt at creating the next Rush, or Howard, is doomed. But the fact that both thrived at the same time doing very different kinds of talk radio sends a message that everyone seems to be missing: It's about the talent, not the format. Don't try to replicate whatever magic these guys had. Instead, look for other people with unique talent and ideas and develop them in whatever direction they want to go. Rush wasn't "the new Bob Grant" so much as he was "the first and only Rush Limbaugh." A few of those who followed in Rush's footsteps have forged their own paths. That's what you want, not someone doing Rush's act, only younger and with a different name.

This means something else -- literally, finding something else. I know I'm talking to myself here, because affiliates are probably going to want to replace Rush with something Rush-like in fear that the audience will go away if fed anything different. There's also the assumption that what people want is "familiar," something that's reassuringly like whatever it replaced. But that ignores the simple fact that Rush wasn't "familiar" when he started. You wouldn't be talking about him now if he had been.

What would I do if I was handed the thankless job of Supreme Ruler Of Talk Radio? Besides asking for my salary up front, I'd look beyond talk radio for the next talk radio star. However, I would not look for a politician or a cable news pundit. Perhaps I'd look for someone doing something creative in podcasting who might benefit from talk radio's immediacy and interactivity. I'd look at people in areas of radio and television that aren't about news -- sports seems like a place where people with opinions about everything are abundant, and I can rattle off several names of sports radio and TV personalities who already talk enough about politics to indicate that they're more than up to the task. I'd aggressively look for a more diverse pool of hosts to reflect the fact that the audience is more diverse and that chasing the old-white-male demographic has its limits (which we reached a while ago). I'd look at community leaders and organizers who are natural communicators. I'd look at social media influencers (shudder), not the ones who just pose at pretty tourist sites but the ones who have built followings with witty, clever posts on whatever's in the news. (Not the "reply guys," though. Too thirsty.) Above all, I'd look -- demand -- someone who has a unique voice and a strong idea of what they want to do with it, whatever the ideology or political affiliation.

But not "the next Rush Limbaugh," because there was only one of those. If talk radio is going to get re-energized in 2021 the way Rush did that when he hit syndication, it's going to take someone doing something we've never heard before. It's long overdue that talk radio programmers look for and develop something different. Something different is out there if you want to find it.

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One way to be unique is to talk about things others don't. Find those things at All Access' show prep column Talk Topics -- Click here and/or follow the Talk Topics Twitter feed at @talktopics with every story individually linked to the appropriate item.

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I mentioned last week that I'll be doing something at the 2021 virtual All Access Audio Summit and I'd have more details soon. Yeah, got that: I'll be talking about making the leap from radio to podcasting, and the pros and cons of that move. Panelists will be revealed shortly (gotta love cliffhangers), but my intent is to give you the benefit of those who have real-life experience in taking the podcasting plunge after leaving broadcasting. Warts and all. (No actual warts will be deployed.) The Summit will stream on April 21-22 and you can now register here. Which you should do.

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