How Radio Can Void the Risk of Joining the Island of Misfit Media

Go to your kitchen. Look at the counter and open the cabinets and drawers. Don’t be afraid to dig way back into the corners. What do you see? I’ll bet you see relics of cooking fads past. But is there a radio?

There’s a George Foreman grill back there, and an Instant Pot. Look, there’s the waffle iron you swore you’d use every day, just like the ones at the hotel breakfast buffet. The juicer is still on the counter next to the rarely-used food processor, because they don’t fit in the cabinet. The Sodastream is there, too. The kitchen scale you bought when you went on that diet that made you weigh every ingredient down to the ounce is gathering dust.

And, oh, look, you have an electric knife, which you broke out once or twice a year to carve the turkey on holidays before it became a chore just to pull it out of the drawer. At least the air fryer, microwave, and Keurig are still active, although the air fryer is teetering on the edge of joining the Island of Misfit Gadgets.

Yes, we’re going to talk about radio.

The average American – not someone working in radio, just any person of any age or occupation – probably owns a radio that’s not on the car dashboard, but they’ve forgotten that they do. It might be the clock radio that once woke them up with some cheery morning show, or a portable they used to listen to the ballgame while doing yard work, or one of those hand-cranked emergency radios that hasn’t yet seen an emergency.

Most people are not crazy like me; I can see seven radios right here in my office, including a portable with HD radio, one with the TEF6686 chip and shortwave, one DAB radio from my European travels, a cool vintage-looking Grundig, a miniature that looks like a vintage radio and doubles as a Bluetooth speaker, a nice Sony portable shortwave/AM/FM radio that doesn’t work and needs someone to clean out battery corrosion, and, probably never to be plugged in again, an AM stereo receiver. That doesn’t even include the Amazon Echo Dot that can stream radio stations, and the iPhone that can do the same.

What do they have in common? I don’t use them that much. In fact, in an average week I don’t think I use them at all. They’re here if I need them. I guess I don’t.

Or, at least, when I DO need them, they’re not always reliable. Being blacked out on TV for this weekend’s Phillies-Marlins series and too lazy/unmotivated to make the interminable drive to Little Havana to see the games in person (with tickets going for $5, no less), I thought I’d put the game on the radio. Let’s hear what that sounded like here on the fringes of the Marlins’ flagship signal:

ZZZZZZZZZZcrackleZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Oh, but they have a West Palm Beach affiliate, too, just a few miles from here. What did that sound like? Same thing. The entire AM band is useless, even for stations right nearby. (The Miami station simulcasts on an HD subchannel of a sister FM, but the HD signal gives out a few miles south of me, so no luck.) The music I like is not aired on any FM station here. The talk stations are all pro-Trump, all the time. All but one station in the noncommercial band run Christian formats and I’m… not that. If I spoke Spanish or Haitian Kreyol, I’d have more to listen to, but I don’t.

So my radios are really relics, like all those kitchen appliances. In fairness, I do use them on occasion to listen to the two FM sports stations here, but that’s about it. In emergencies, we put on local television for weather reports if we have power, and have a battery-powered TV in case the power goes out. And we use our phones for all other audio, because that’s where the music we like is available on demand, the news commentary (podcasts) is always there, the play-by-play is easy to find, and the sound mercifully free of that electrical interference.

Meanwhile, websites and social media have made a lot of news organizations obsolete, and that’s all available on the phone as well. I don’t see smartphones going the way of the SlapChop until and unless they can implant their capabilities in your brain with a chip (no, Elon, I don’t want that).

The assignment, then, for radio is to come up with ways to make itself useful in a way that people will not abandon. Doing things the way they were done when there was no real competition is not an option. Offering things people want – better programming, instant news, on demand options, better sound – would help, but I don’t know that it would prompt anyone to dust off the old radios and start using them at home the way it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Times have changed. There are a lot of gadgets that used to be ubiquitous and are now obsolete or just less necessary. That’s of concern to station owners, investors, and people who thought radio would be an employment option forever.

For creative people, you’re now painting on different canvases. Life goes on, with or without radio.

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Perry Michael Simon

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.