I came away from the 2013 Radio Show in Orlando encouraged. On the dais, NRG’s Mary Quass spoke candidly about radio’s spotload issue, an unusual admission at the time. Cumulus had just announced the acquisition of streaming music service Rdio, prompting their Lew Dickey to declare “it’s all audio”—a major about face from the previous “us and them” mindset. Finally, I sensed broadcasters were ready to discuss their issues across a broad canvas.
For the next 18 month, I spoke to broadcasters’ groups, from the National Assn. of Broadcasters to Commercial Radio Australia, about a comprehensive plan for Radio in an Audio World. The tenets included expanding beyond the over-the-air signal, organizing those choices in a more user-friendly way, and understanding what set radio apart when our competition was Apple and not merely each other.
I also encouraged broadcasters not to cede the battle for “continuous music.” To not address spotload, I felt, was pushing listeners away before they left on their own. Part of the charge to create more “radio” beyond the AM/FM dial was to compete with Pandora and a nascent Spotify on their own music-intensive turf.
I knew it was an ambitious agenda. The presentation found an enthusiastic audience from group heads to small-market GMs, but I knew that the response for some would be “don’t tell me, tell my bosses.” I was also envisioning required a level of unity that has often eluded broadcasters. Some audience members probably thought “don’t tell me, tell my competition.”
Three years later, on the eve of Radio Show 2016 in Nashville, I wrote an article called “As Industry Gathers, Radio is Still Negotiating the Audio World.” It was about the issues that still haunted broadcasters—spotload, spot quality, streaming issues. It was also about my early encounters with cab drivers and civilian friends who did not know how to use broadcast radio, then still a relatively remarkable occurrence, at least among adults.
I wrote the 2016 article on the eve of podcasting’s explosion and the implosion of industry initiatives like NextRadio (and Rdio). I wrote it when there was more industry infrastructure—from BDS to All Access. I wrote it before industry gatherings became diminished and before the three years when we could barely talk face-to-face at all, much less make elaborate plans.
A decade after my original article, assessing radio’s progress in an audio world might just seem cruel. The surprise was that radio’s better-financed rivals hadn’t successfully transitioned “radio” to a new platform. Instead, they still wait for their George Lucas—somebody who grew up with Flash Gordon, but with the vision to reinvent it for a new generation, instead of literally suggesting a new episode every Saturday, 1940s style. (Perhaps the rise of podcasting as audio’s shiniest new toy was because they had their own Serial.)
There are people to whom a radio pep talked seemed willful in 2013. There are certainly broadcasters who were still optimistic then to whom “Staying Optimistic in Radio, Even Now” just seems delusional. But I want to share “What Got Better About Radio” (at least for me) with the rest of the world, because I think radio’s many choices are still a marketable commodity, at least until somebody else offers something better. But that window will close, and it will probably not take another ten years.
Writing about the promise of Orlando when radio’s fall gathering is not a separate show but two programming tracks at NAB Show New York may seem naïve, too. But I came away from last year encouraged by both the quality of the people I encountered and the new emphasis on the intelligent use of personality, a discussion that is expected to give way next week to the use of AI as personality. But there will be broadcasters in New York with the power to make a difference. In 2013, I wanted to deal with radio’s issues holistically. In an overwhelmed industry, I feel the need to narrow my focus.
The weird thing about the last 10 years is that while broadcasters refused to defend the continuous music franchise, they never really got away from it. WLTW (Lite FM) New York is a 7-8 share radio station. Chicago’s Lite FM, WLIT, is a 6-7 share player. KOIT San Francisco has been in the 7-9 share range, even with another AC in the market. As with Pandora a decade ago, Spotify and Apple Music have the mystique of “music discovery,” but they are continuous music providers as well. Radio’s least sexy aspects are where rivals have made the most inroads, and yet they still seem to be our biggest draw.
And that is why my first priority is this:
Fix spotload. Now.
Don’t play games with it (“the 14-minutes of spots are over and we’re kicking off a commercial free-hour”). Don’t merely reconfigure it (3×4 or 2×6?). Don’t shrug it off. Take meaningful action.
We still need streaming apps that better organize radio choice. But until we fix spotload, all our on-air device promos will just be gateway drugs for other services.
We still need to fix our streaming stopset experience. But at current levels, spotload is an issue even if we do not play the same PSAs or three fill songs repeatedly.
We need to market radio again. If we did so aggressively, usage would probably go up even for what’s over-the-air today. But I’d rather our first dealing with a younger or lapsed listener be the best it can be.
We need better commercials and to control the quality of our sponsors. But I knew by 2016 that “just make the ads better” wasn’t working (or happening in the first place). And we can control seven minutes of spots an hour better than we can 12-14.
We need to continue to embrace personality, particularly as the AI discussion rages. We need to decide how we want to use AI, and create a code of ethics. We need to embrace the show-biz and localism that are also part of radio’s toolkit. We need “real radio” to be a rallying cry, rather than quaintly nostalgic. Being overwhelmed and overleveraged makes these things harder. And, again, there is a lot of listening still going to those stations where full-service personality is not the focus.
We have decided as an industry that we must solve our problems on our own air and among those still listening. I agree with that. For now. Radio needs to address its listening levels. Radio also needs to admit that the current 8-9-minute listening occasions are a bug, not a feature. If we are looking to increase listening, without an ambitious multi-pronged agenda, the best thing I can think of now is not to push listeners away as frequently for as long as we do currently.
I asked Facebook friends for the one thing they would most prioritize. Their answers ranged from paying talent better to an industry-wide marketing campaign; from specifically targeting the next generation of listeners and talent to “thinning the herd.” (I also believe in a smaller number of broadcast services done better.) You’ll see their responses next week, but spotload is at the heart of many of them.
Encouraging broadcasters to fix the one thing that has been regarded as non-negotiable throughout this discussion may seem as naïve as 2013’s exhortations to engage at every level. At a time when a lot of our on-air clutter is in-house, I still hear places where tightening is possible. And just as radio’s crisis began with the addition of one unit an hour, the elimination of even one minute an hour has the ability to repatriate 18 minutes of listening in rated hours, or as we call that now, two listening occasions.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com