You are going to want to hear what Larry Rosin has to say when he is on stage in LA next week for the BSM Summit.
Let me rephrase that. You may not WANT to hear what he has to say, but you do NEED to hear it.
Rosin, for those that are not already aware, is the president of Edison Research. The company is responsible for two surveys that cause a lot of buzz in our industry. One is The Infinite Dial, which has been studying digital media consumer behavior since 1998. The other, Share of Ear, studies audio consumption across all platforms.
These are surveys that routinely tell us that radio companies have work to do when it comes to retaining listeners. Still, Rosin says things may not be as dire for the sports format. That doesn’t mean it is all sunshine and roses if you are skipping Luke Bryan for Luka Dončić.
“I agree with the general point of view that sports talk radio is better positioned, better prepared for the future,” he told me. “But at the same time what I would say if the mall you’re in has less and less foot traffic, it doesn’t matter how good your store is, at some point you’re going to suffer, right? So you can’t ignore the condition of the mall and say ‘well, two of my stores are doing well’. Sooner or later, if people stop coming to the mall, it’s going to affect your store.”
The population of our country has changed. Different groups are gaining in population. People are moving multiple time zones away from where they grew up. As a result, our consumption of sports information has changed.
Local radio isn’t going to be able to meet everyone’s needs. Add to that the fact that a whole generation of listeners are not used to working on a schedule for content and it is clear, competition for radio stations is so much more than just what is on the other frequencies.
“One thing about audio is there’s no second screen. You can’t listen to two things at the same time,” Rosin says. “So I mean, it’s competition, right? On demand is the single most powerful wave to hit media consumption in our lifetime. So for some people, they want to hear whatever the local sports talk station is saying at any given time, but for other people, they might be sharing that time with on demand options.”
Plenty of information from the latest Infinite Dial survey will be presented while Larry Rosin is on stage at the BSM Summit, but there will be more. He will be bringing along information that is only available to those in attendance.
The specifics of that information I do not know. What I can tell you is that Rosin and his team have all of the information to prove that there is nothing temporary about the changes we are seeing. “That’s how we’ve always done it” and “that’s just the way it is” are phrases that no longer have a place in our collective brain and vocabulary.
It doesn’t matter what you grew up with. Consumers of all ages make choices based on content. They always have. Now, there are more options for where they can find the content they like.
“No one is loyal to amplitude modulation or frequency modulation,” Rosin says bluntly.
He expects to field some questions from skeptics at the BSM Summit. That happens everywhere. It comes along with the territory when part of your job involves presenting truths that may make your audience uncomfortable.
If you dismiss every specific Rosin shows you, the one thing he hopes you remember is that we can do better. Great talent deserves investment. Great content should be on every possible platform. The path forward for our industry will involve a mix of institutional knowledge and new information.
That doesn’t mean rushing to jump on the AI bandwagon. Rosin will tell you that the idea of artificial intelligence creating radio content “scares the hell” out of him. Edison Research is compiling what the audience is telling us matters in terms of audio entertainment. The best course of action for us as an industry is simple. Pay attention to what they are saying!
“Listening to the radio has dropped dramatically in share of ear since 2014 when we started doing that survey. And by the way, Nielsen shows the exact same thing,” Rosin says. “You can choose not to believe it. I’m sure some could say ‘my board is lit up as much today as it was ten years ago’ or ‘my audience loves me as much as it did ten years ago’ and all those kinds of things to make yourself feel good. But back to my metaphor from before, as fewer customers come to the mall and those customers are spending less money when they do come in, it may not kill you in the short term. It may not even kill you in the medium term. If you’re at this summit, you have a stake in this and you want it to be something that’s alive and kicking 15, 20, 30 years down the road.”
Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
