There were two major industry news items this past week, neither of which directly involved commercial radio, plus one earlier this month that did. Put together, the events including NPR, SiriusXM, and Audacy are part of a far broader trend.
First, unless you were living in a cave during the week, you heard about the recission of federal funds for public broadcasting. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise as the issue has been talked about for months and President Trump was firmly behind the legislation, cajoling wavering Republican members of Congress and senators to vote for it.
It was interesting to see both the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and National Public Radio (NPR) release last-minute studies showing broad support for public media. As a researcher, I tried to find out some of the specifics behind these studies, for example, the questionnaire wording, but there was little to see.
CPB’s study was conducted by Peak Insights, which is a Republican pollster (firms that do work for candidates or parties generally work for one or the other, but not both). Peak’s website lists clients including the National Republican Congressional Committee, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and Jeb Bush’s 2016 campaign, so the choice of a firm more closely aligned with the president was a smart move, even if it was ineffective.
NPR chose to use the Harris Poll, a well-known name in the survey world, currently owned by Mark Penn’s company, Stagwell. Previous owners (post-Lou Harris’ retirement) have included Gannett and Nielsen, yes, that Nielsen.
In both cases, support for public media came in well ahead of what the Pew Research Center found in March, and I discussed here in April. At the time, I castigated Pew for conflating the support for PBS and NPR into one question, which still showed only a plurality in favor of federal funding. Regardless, the best advice for both entities would have been to save their money.
If you’re interested, check out two very different approaches to public radio’s future. Uri Berliner, a longtime NPR editor whose bombshell revelations about bias in the NPR newsroom made headlines last year, offered his thoughts in The Free Press.
Meanwhile, Lance Venta, the publisher of RadioInsight, offered some excellent thoughts on how public radio could cut costs without cutting editorial staff. Much like the one-word piece of advice given to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate (“plastics”), Lance says “consolidation”. I suggest you read both pieces.
Meanwhile, SiriusXM is back in the news with yet another attempt to add to their slowly declining subscriber base. This time, it’s an ad-supported tier at $7 per month. If you want some solid background, check out my good friend Roger Lanctot’s LinkedIn piece.
My take is that the FCC should be looking into this announcement. As I’ve said in the past, SiriusXM holds FCC licenses, just as your stations do. If part of the FCC’s role is to make sure that local radio remains a relevant medium, why allow a satellite broadcaster that is supposed to be national to compete with local radio stations for local ad dollars? The SiriusXM 360L platform may allow just that. The NAB Radio Board should be telling Curtis LeGeyt and the NAB staff to look closely at the potential effects on local radio revenue going forward.
Finally, an exciting announcement was the addition of Audacy stations on the iHeart Radio app. In 1953, Charles E. Wilson, then president of General Motors, was nominated by President Eisenhower to be Secretary of Defense. During his confirmation hearing, he was misquoted as saying “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”
At times, iHeart’s approach seems similar, in other words, “What’s good for iHeartMedia is good for the radio industry,” regardless of whether the rest of the radio industry agrees. Nevertheless, I think the industry needs to coalesce around one platform, even while stations offer their individual apps. If that platform is going to be the iHeartRadio platform, well, let’s get on with it.
All three of these events have an overarching theme, which is the continuing effect of consumers’ changing media habits. Having nearly all US radio stations on one platform may help. NPR needs to look at ways to cut costs without cutting services, something commercial radio has been doing for years (see Saga’s announcement last week about AI voiceovers replacing human voiceover talent as just the latest one) and SiriusXM appears to be throwing things at the wall in the hope that something will stick and allow their currently profitable enterprise to stay that way as the media world changes.
Instead of the NFL’s pathetic “Inspire Change” slogan on the boundaries of football fields, our mantra must be “Adapt to Change”.
Let’s meet again next week.
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Ed, I think there are two options for public broadcasting. The first is to take a real mainstream editorial content approach welcoming both those on the right as well as those left-of-center on both NPR and PBS. The idea is to be “fair and balanced” with taxpayer support. The other alternative is to allow public broadcasting to freely sell commercials with a “call to action” just as their commercial brethren are allowed to do.
Regards,
David Frankel EdD candidate