If you follow the radio broadcasting industry, I’m sure you’ve heard of the term metrics from time to time. That term can mean several things depending on the person using it. For example, a radio sales metric could include key performance indicators, churn rate, or cost per point. For programmers and talent, metrics could include listening cume, time spent listening, and reach.
There are so many metrics in and around radio broadcasting that it could lead the brightest minds in the medium into a collective headache of information. Fortune favors the bold who can spin a winning formula from an ocean of metrics.
However, there is one metric that unfortunately hasn’t seen much if any growth in some time, and it’s the most important metric to the viability of broadcasting’s future. People.
When you work for Barrett Media, you tend to spend a lot of time on a computer. Between scouring websites and working sources for information, you get caught up in a slew of Google searches and social media timeline drivel. On Monday, something caught my eye that instantly made me think about the past couple of months as radio broadcasting companies experienced their annual slash-a-thon of layoffs and budget cuts.
A Radio Company Investing In People?
It was a post by RAMP with the headline “Alpha Media Portland Is Hiring!”
I thought to myself by God, let’s crack the champagne! There’s a radio broadcasting company that’s not putting talent people on the street and looking to grow! The headline lured me in, so I shared my click to the posting, and what caught my eye was the first sentence on the story.
“Against a backdrop of mass industry layoffs… we have stumbled upon that proverbial silver lining on a cloudy day — Alpha Media is actually hiring!”
Let me repeat what was said there. Against a backdrop of mass industry layoffs.
The story about a job posting began with the biggest dose of reality that everyone in radio broadcasting faces, layoffs.
What Audacy’s Latest Reduction In Force Signals
When Audacy went through their recent reduction in force a couple of weeks back, I was asked to share my perspective on what the roster cuts mean for the industry. Audacy isn’t the first broadcasting company to cut its workforce by more than 3% in one weekend, and they won’t be the last. Audacy is just the latest example of mass industry layoffs, as the RAMP article mentioned.
I wrote than that radio is losing the battle for its own livelihood. I wrote that it’s become a constant “look over your shoulder” business, where there are more fires to put out than sparks to ignite. I wrote that If it continues to neglect investing in people, it must ask itself: Why should people continue investing their time in radio?
If a silver lining on a cloudy day for radio is a single job posting, then radio is in worse shape than we can imagine.
Consider these metrics as examples.
If you read Kevin Robinson’s piece last week, he pointed out a list of the companies that have severed ties with radio broadcasting employees since 2009. It’s hard to not find a broadcasting company on the list.
iHeartMedia, Cumulus, Audacy, Saga Communications, Hubbard Radio, Beasley Media Group. Good talented people all out of work and all too recently unfortunately.
If you read Dr. Ed Cohen’s piece last week, he again called for radio broadcasters to try something different. Invest in people! Only then the good doctor noted stock prices of companies such as iHeartMedia, Cumulus, Beasley Media Group, Urban One, Saga Communications and Townsquare all near or below less than the cost of a large Coca-Cola at your local McDonalds.
Audacy of course not listed in that group because they emerged from their 2024 bankruptcy as a privately owned group instead of a publicly traded company.
That cloudy day referenced in the RAMP article is starting to look like storms, or is it?
Time for more metrics!
Radio Consumption Is Still King?
Jason McCollum is a director of operations for iHeartMedia in Dallas, and he posted to his Facebook page to dispel noise of those claiming radio is dead. McCollum simply wrote, and I’m a fan of simple, the latest 2024 Q4 Edison “Share Of Ear” findings support the notion that in his words “radio is dominant.”
“Let’s keep it simple,” McCollum wrote. “61% of Americans listen ONLY to AM/FM radio. 22% listen to both digital audio and AM/FM. Only 18% are digital-only.”
McCollum used metrics to quantify why advertisers need a strategy to buy advertising on radio, and he’s right. That 61% is key for an advertiser to consider, but that was 71% only seven years ago. So while AM/FM radio may not be dead but instead still be alive, is it fair to consider it “dominant?”
I had a pleasure of being a panelist at the NAB Show in Las Vegas, NV last year entitled “Creating Unique Sports Radio Programming.” The panel was hosted by Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media, and he shared a slide form the 2024 Jacobs Media TechSurvey asking sports fans why they’re listening less to AM/FM radio.
47% of those surveyed said because their favorite personality or show is no longer on the radio.
With every layoff and budget cut, that’s a metric that shouldn’t surprise. If radio broadcast companies don’t stick with their own people, how can they expect the consumer to stick with them?
The audience is telling you exactly why they’re tuning out, are you listening?
Radio Needs To Try Something Different; A Suggestion
It is with this understanding that I’ve come to this conclusion.
This week we marked the five-year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic, which changed how the consumer searches out and finds compelling content. The world was told to stay home and not travel. Living rooms became the driver seat, searching out for that connection we all so desired. People who couldn’t wind a wristwatch began experimenting with YouTube, Twitch, and other free distribution platforms to find that connection that was lost in a global health crisis.
Why? Cause radio didn’t invest in its own people to adapt to those technologies when it had that chance to.
Radio in the digital age has historically played from behind, and COVID was no different. As damaged as it was then, it still has not fully recovered and it’s only because of it’s own doing.
Radio broadcasting at its core is connection. Where the audience comes first while embracing changes in consumption habits and experiment with innovation. Without people, there is no connection.
Radio is a business that’s operated on metrics, from ratings to revenue to downloads and more. You can program strategically to raise listening cume. You can create a new endorsement campaign to build a new revenue stream. You can lock yourself in a production room and crack out some amazing content for a new upstart podcast.
To do any of that, you need people. A metric forgotten too long ago by too many.
It’s way past time for radio broadcasting to try something different, get back to investing in people. Instead of buying up digital audio or video property that’s available everywhere already and chasing the ever-growing digital dollar, which now makes up one of every four dollars of the average station’s total revenue.
I advise radio to re-invest that growing revenue stream in people now, and build radio’s future. Because fortune favors the bold who can spin a winning formula, from an ocean of metrics.
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John Mamola is the sports editor and columnist for Barrett Media. He brings over two decades of experience (Chicago, Tampa/St Petersburg) in the broadcast industry with expertise in brand management, sales, promotions, producing, imaging, hosting, talent coaching, talent development, web development, social media strategy and design, video production, creative writing, partnership building, communication/networking with a long track record of growth and success. Honored to be a five-time recognized top 20 program director in a major market via Barrett Media and honored internally multiple times as station/brand of the year (Tampa, FL) and employee of the month (Tampa, FL). Connect with John by email at John@BarrettMedia.com.
