The biggest challenge news and talk radio programmers, producers, writers, and on-air people face daily is knowing how to follow a tried and true path to arrive at new destinations. These separate but symbiotic aspects of the radio craft are what we call format and content.
A format is a map containing fixed times and features. It may vary a bit between dayparts but it’s designed to create a unique and consistent sound, 24/7. Your format, as much as the show hosts you feature, makes your station stand apart from your competition while being comfortably familiar.
Content is the secret sauce that keeps your audience enthralled and coming back for more. You may be talking about the same topics as your competitors but the information and perspectives you choose plus the artistry of its presentation must be consistently compelling to win.
In news and talk radio, we are storytellers. That’s the highest art in human history.
Your radio format is a good, sturdy box. Your content must come from outside the box. That’s where creativity and talent live and flourish. I’m annoyed by our constant use of the word “talent” simply as a generic term for people who talk into microphones. Merriam-Webster defines talent as “1) a special often athletic, creative, or artistic aptitude, 2)general intelligence or mental power: ability”.
Talent is special. It is a unique, artistic ability. It’s time radio remembered that.
Professional sports teams are dedicated to finding and developing the best athletic talent. They bid against each other for the greatest pitchers and quarterbacks. Every team has talent scouts, player development experts, and experienced coaches. Radio used to understand and embrace that approach. Used to. Now the radio game is focused not on performance but on budgeting, on plugging holes in the leaking dam.
Program directors are given hiring dollar limits that are embarrassing and insulting. Minimum wage to sit behind a hot microphone and board in Dallas? That’s a bottom-line fact in many markets. How are PDs supposed to hire and develop real talent? To make matters worse, program directors themselves are frequently burdened with two or three radio stations to manage. They barely have time to deal with format basics and no time at all to focus on content or talent.
Radio today is mired in mediocrity. We’ve largely forgotten how to inform and excite.
We know what brought us to this point. It wasn’t evolving technologies or social media, it was the giant radio corporations run by boards of directors working for investors. None of them knows or cares diddly-squat about radio, they only know about profit margins. (The joke’s on them, right? Check the scroll at the top of this page and see how broadcast stocks are trending.)
Look, I love American capitalism. I don’t hate corporate business structures I just think it’s a bad idea for the tail to wag the dog. Investors should ask questions. And, to successfully run any business you need to have people who understand it from the top down.
Caring about that business would help a lot.
I hate to raise a problem without suggesting a solution but I’m as lost here as anybody. I do believe, though, that success in any business starts with talent, however you define it.
Talent begins with raw ability that must be recognized, taught, nurtured, and encouraged to blossom. It has to be coached into experience by people who already have it. (BNM’s Perry Michael Simon recently wrote a nice piece about coaching talent. I strongly recommend it.)
I don’t want to sound like the stereotypical old man bitching about how much better things used to be in the past but seriously, I know some great people, young, enthusiastic, and gifted, who recently got their first radio jobs at big-name stations in major markets. Why, because they have an intuitive sense and a God-given gift that arrived in full bloom? No, of course not. They got those jobs because they showed promise and they’re anxious to work, even for a fraction of the salary experienced, proven performers would command.
You can’t blame these young folks for taking what’s offered but I do worry about their futures. They’re trying to learn a performance craft on the job by trial and error in top-five markets. Is there even anybody there to help them? Maybe not. PDs today are too busy and frankly, many of them don’t have enough experience of their own to confidently direct the programming of their stations. Overworked and underappreciated major market station programmers today rely on fuzzy corporate policies and ill-defined philosophies. There’s no risk involved. It’s safe.
And though it’s not my area of experienced expertise I strongly suspect the situation is the same in sales and general management offices. Why wouldn’t it be?
Radio is an art and craft. As surely as great movies depend on compelling stories, talented actors, and experienced directors, radio needs to remember that it needs them, too, desperately.
Radio isn’t dead. It just has amnesia.
A lot of people are lamenting the “death” of radio these days. Dave is right-on with his assessment of the business. It’s an interesting phenomenon because everyone involved can “do it better”-or they think they can and then wonder why it’s not working. In my lifetime I’ve met people enthralled with radio -who finally got there and realized it’s not for them. My (now) 31 year old son is one of them. Radio’s not for everyone. It’s definitely not the cash register it once was. It’s still free, still curated. It’s just being distracted by other media sources. Streaming, video games, videos, podcasts, Netflix…and on and on. Some will realize that the “art” of broadcasting is just that. Art. When it’s done correctly it still works. Even as half-baked as it is in major markets. (Seven hours of George Noory is NOT a great use of a 50kw signal.) Thanks for pointing all of this out, Dave.