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Thirty-some years ago I had what I thought was a good idea: Why couldn’t radio companies with news stations in multiple markets share the efforts of their talented local staffs with the other stations in the chain? For example, say a fine iHeart reporter in Florida produces a great series of feature reports of heart wrenching personal stories of the recent hurricanes. Wouldn’t iHeart stations in markets across the country want to run them? Of course, they would. The better question is why don’t they?
If 1010 WINS, WBBM, or KCBS created an amusing and touching piece about Halloween excitement for kids, wouldn’t it also be a great human-interest feature for Audacy stations KMOX, WWL, WBEN, and many others?
Why, in these days of severe budgetary challenges and fears for the industry’s very survival aren’t radio companies taking maximum advantage of their widespread talents? For some reason, we’re fine with airing network reports, which tend to be dry and monotonous, but we rarely share the creative, emotional, and informative wealth produced in our own studios.
Yes, some stations in some chains do occasionally swap pieces and conduct live chats with reporters in other markets but it’s the exception rather than standard practice. It’s the bare beginning of what I’m thinking, and I don’t understand why it hasn’t grown of its own merit. Whenever I’ve been involved in such an exchange, newsies in both cities involved were very pleased with the result. We loved working with our own family in different markets but for some inexplicable reason, we rarely did it.
The idea first occurred to me in Sacramento in the 90s when deregulation suddenly allowed American cities to explode with new corporate ownership. I was at KFBK when it was sold by McClatchy as a local operation to corporate upstart Chancellor Communications and then Clear Channel. Suddenly one signal with three sister stations had 50 and then 100 and more.
When I was working in L.A. at KNX in the early 2000s, I mentioned it to someone in management and the response was something like, ‘hey that’s not a bad idea.’ No, it was a good idea but at the time KNX was owned by CBS which also had an entrenched national network filled with available feature reports. That may have had something to do with the fact that local O&O affiliates never exchanged content. I’m just guessing. Nobody ever told me.
The problem with feature reporting as it was then and remains today is that topics being strictly local/state or world/national give relatively no attention to the people, stories and issues with universal appeal and relatability. There might be some fascinating things and people in flyover country. We may never know.
I carried the idea with me to my next stop: Chicago’s Merlin Media. I hear you snickering and you’re right, Merlin was hardly the success many thought it could be and never achieved the large stable of stations it dreamed of. Say what you will of Randy Michaels, he did activate the shared features concept between the Merlin stations he ran in Chicago and New York. I had no part in that but was excited to see it happen. Our reporters and hosts got a kick out of knowing their work would be heard in the Big Apple and the NYC talent felt the same of their work airing in the Windy City. With a couple more markets it could have been a model that would now be flourishing among hundreds of stations in markets of all sizes if Merlin had just survived.
From Chicago, I moved to Dallas where I found a welcoming home with Cumulus for 12 years. Dark and early each morning Amy Chodroff and I would settle into our studio with our producer and check the news queue for the fresh crop of sound bites and features available for our show. We seldom had more than one or two locally produced feature-length pieces to air and sometimes none because we had a small staff of overworked reporters.
The networks, Cumulus’ own at first and then Fox, had stuff we could run but they were nationally and internationally focused, and while full of timely information they weren’t usually listener relatable. So again, throughout my dozen years at KLIF, I shared my companywide feature fest idea with three different PDs. They all said it was interesting, but I never heard another word. I assume they mentioned it to corporate management, but it never came to fruition for any number of reasons. There may have been some union hurdles to work around in some of the major markets but I’m just guessing. (We were one of the major markets, of course, but Dallas has no broadcast unions I’m aware of.)
As Amy and I planned each KLIF morning show trying to figure out how to squeeze four fresh hours of news and information out of roughly 90 minutes’ worth of content I couldn’t stop dreaming of being able to log into an audio queue in NewsBoss at 4 a.m. and pick all the fresh fruit available from Cumulus markets across the country.
Why can’t that happen? There might be a good reason, but nobody ever explained it to me. I’ve been around a while and have worked with some of the brightest program and general managers in the business. I’m not the smartest guy in any room. How can I be the only one who ever thought this would be a good idea?
Hey, here’s another logical thought, let’s sell sponsorships to these daily features! And how about giving the local talents who produce them a financial incentive? Say, $100 bucks for every market that picks up a feature. At that price, you could hire additional talented and experienced writer-reporter-producer combos across the country.
Seriously, think about it. Local news writers and editors will have more time to do better work because they won’t be so rushed just trying to feed the beast. Talent and sales execs will have the sound of “KA-CHING!” ringing in their heads and GMs who have been honored with the additional responsibility of multiple markets without additional income could increase their bottom lines.
Everybody wins, including and especially your audience.
Come on Audacy, iHeart, Cumulus, and the rest of you – you too, NPR, why not? You want to keep your audio domination over podcasting? Use your radio superpowers: professional high-quality writing, reporting, and production; live, local, national, and worldwide.
Wait, I was wrong. It wasn’t a good idea, it’s a great idea!
Schedule a Zoom conference! Let’s get on this!
