Based on her journey to the recent National Assn. of Broadcasters convention and back, Valerie Geller’s Road to Radiodays North America may be a little circuitous. “When I was driving from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, I heard a live copy spot on a station in Victorville [Calif.], and they said ‘it’s so great to have a Cracker Barrel. Those buttermilk pancakes are so fantastic, and they make the best apple cider, and they have great lemonade.’ I didn’t know they even had Cracker Barrel in California.”
Geller not only found the Cracker Barrel, she ended up taking local roads part of the way home. “I passed the Vasquez Rocks near Santa Clarita. I saw the California Superbloom. I drove through desert that’s lush and looks like Ireland now because of all the rainstorms. It was one of the best experiences of the month.”
Geller is the veteran broadcaster, consultant, talent coach, and author whose Creating Powerful Radio has gone through three editions, and who is currently revising a fourth. Her Beyond Powerful Radio is available as a free audiobook. Geller is a panelist on Radio: Can You Handle the Truth, one of the key sessions of the upcoming Radiodays North America conference, to be held in Toronto June 8-9. That panel, moderated by Alan Cross, and also featuring John Parikhal and the CBC’s Susan Marjetti, asks whether radio has the appropriate ability to innovate and stay relevant in the digital age.
“Can you handle the truth” is one of the key questions for broadcasters at this moment. It’s hard to know how to feel about a business where retirements and the end of legendary stations is a weekly occurrence. Some metrics show good news for radio, but they aren’t revenue or listening levels. Part of the challenge for broadcasters is being clear-eyed about their strengths and challenges.
So are broadcasters in denial? “You can sit down with a broadcaster who rails against podcasting and digital audio and AI. Then you get in the car with them, they’re using the GPS, they’re listening to a podcast, they’ve got SiriusXM, they’ve got Spotify,” Geller notes. “Podcasting and radio co-exist now. That’s our truth.”
“Radio is its own worst enemy,” Geller adds. “We have not spent or invested in developing talent. Every other business has R&D and they spend on it because they are investing in the future. I love radio, but hate the state it’s in,” she says.
That said, Geller is also encouraged by how much she hears broadcasters “embracing the good” by “putting more of a [multi-platform] spotlight on it,” especially public radio. She cites the recent rebranding of KPCC Los Angeles as LAist 89.3 and how the radio talent and LAist.com staff have been integrated. “A lot of what I’m doing now is training print journalists to be able to go on podcasts. A lot of them are brilliant writers for the eye. When you listen to them on a podcast, they sound like they’re standing in front of their eighth-grade class reading their report under duress.”
Sometimes, the integration between on-air and social media is as simple as WAXQ (Q104.3) New York’s Maria Milito who tied in her animal advocacy work with Coronation Day by naming that day’s adopt-a-pets Charles and Camilla. “It made me love Maria. How could you not love Maria after that? It’s using the other media to bring people back to radio.”
Adopt today thru 5/13 @AnimalLeague #Adoptathon! This is Charles & Camilla
#GetYourRescueOn @Q1043 @iHeartRadio pic.twitter.com/dHXuqlsjnw
— Maria Milito (@mariamilito) May 6, 2023
Much of the discussion at RDNA will likely center around the intersection of AI, ChatGPT, and on-air personality. Geller recently told an audience at the British Columbia Assn. of Broadcasters that jobs wouldn’t necessarily be eliminated by AI, but would go to those able to work with it. “Every writer need an editor and AI is going to need an editor—somebody who knows things. You have to use it like a tool. It’s not a driverless car.
Takeaways From @BCABinfo #radio conference @riverrockcasino thx 4 taking notes @ronniestanton pic.twitter.com/4TaM46E4ij
— Valerie Geller (@vgeller) May 5, 2023
“A lot of the voice-tracking I’ve heard already sounds like AI. There’s nothing human about it. It’s just a broadcaster playing an actor playing a broadcaster. AI is just as good as [those voice-tracks] because there’s nothing real being said,” Geller adds.
“I just had a whole discussion ordering a prescription from CVS. I didn’t need a person. I just want to know that I can speak to a person when I need one. But I don’t want it to fake me out and pretend it’s a person. I don’t like fake,” she says.
For that reason, Geller acknowledges the potential for AI to “jump the fence. We need to figure out how to regulate it so it stays factual and doesn’t try to fool people . . . the ethics need to be talked about in professional gatherings with thought leaders and people who can decide how we’re going to use this new thing we have that operates at the speed of light. The time is now to have the conversation.”
Radiodays North America is the new seminar partner of both the long-admired Radiodays Europe conference, as well as the successful Canadian Music Week. Geller is a veteran of both. She praises RDE as “where our global tribe of radio gathers and connects.” She appreciates CMW for giving her “exposure to new music, new artists” as well as the excitement of knowing that “everyone in the whole place is creative.” You can see the entire RDNA session list here.
Valerie Geller also recently spoke to Scott Fybush’s Top of The Tower Podcast about how to communicate efficiently in the current age.