You think you know what your audience wants. Do you really know? Really?
For pretty much all of modern history, it was assumed that the general public had zero interest in women’s basketball. The television ratings proved that. It wasn’t that there were no transcendent stars or great stories, it was just that there wasn’t enough interest, whatever the reason. In recent years, there was some interest in UConn and the WNBA, but, still, not at a remarkable level. Not yet.
That all went out the window this year, culminating in the Women’s Final Four drawing bigger TV numbers than the men’s edition. Maybe it was the emergence of great college talent with big personalities – Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, JuJu Watkins – or maybe it was Kim Mulkey’s, er, unique personality and fashion sense, or Sabrina Ionescu shooting the lights out against Steph Curry. Maybe it was just that the women’s college tournament was miles more entertaining than the men’s this year.
But now, there’s intense interest in the women’s game, and if you don’t think it’ll last, check out the ticket prices for Indiana Fever road games even before they officially draft and sign Clark. She’s obviously a major reason for the public’s sudden embrace of women’s basketball, but there’s no question that there’s now a market for the sport among people who previously didn’t care.
Pinpointing when the audience’s preferences change is an inexact science. That’s far less important than knowing that tastes have changed. The saying goes, “Give the people what they want” (which, incidentally, appears to come from a George Jessel joke about a funeral). Know what your audience wants to see and hear and they’ll turn out. But what gets left out of that philosophy is to also know when “what they want” changes, because while some things are evergreen, others are dynamic. They change. Nothing lasts forever. (Ask anyone under 40 who Bob Hope was.)
And maybe that’s a good explanation for why talk radio, for one, has seen its audience “age out.” Most of it focuses on the same talking points as it did 20 years ago, with the addition of Trump a notable exception. Immigration? Us-vs.-them politics? Not too much has changed in talk radio: same topics, same imaging, same bumper music, same everything. It’s safe, and it’s making the medium more irrelevant even in an election year.
Same thing for what gets covered by America’s Incredible Shrinking Newsrooms. For election coverage, they haven’t learned anything from 2016 or 2020. Local newsrooms are 95% crime and 5% about the news which is way more likely to be on viewers’ and readers’ minds.
Look, whatever assumptions you’ve made about what your audience wants to see, hear, and read need, to put it mildly, to be reviewed. They don’t go to the mall anymore. They’re more likely to listen to hip-hop, pop, or country than rock. They probably don’t spend much more time with radio than the time they’re in their cars, if that. The news and talk consumer of 2024 has different concerns and tastes, from politics to food, than their counterpart in 1994.
Research it. Go out and talk to people. If they’re getting their news from TikTok and Instagram, see what they’re watching. Businesses that don’t change with the times tend to die off.
Just “going digital” isn’t changing with the times; the content has to be constantly evolving, and the news and talk industries haven’t changed much for years, possibly out of fear of losing that aging core audience – but those seniors may also have changed (at least, they’ve all taken up pickleball).
Oh, look, I made it to the end of the column without using the term “buggy whip.” Hey, did you know that even the buggy whip industry changed with the times? They now come in your choice of bright colors. Although the buggy whip manufacturers of the early 1900s probably should have pivoted to making automobile accessories. Kind of a missed opportunity there.
Perry Michael Simon is a weekly news media columnist for Barrett Media. He previously served as VP and Editor/News-Talk-Sports/Podcast for AllAccess.com. Prior to joining the industry trade publication, Perry spent years in radio working as a Program Director and Operations Manager for KLSX and KLYY in Los Angeles and New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. He can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @PMSimon.
