We’re in the market for a car. Sort of. It’s not like our current cars are nearing the end of the line—they’re Volvos; they can last forever — but we’d like a few things the old cars don’t have. That means getting a handle on which makes and models we prefer, whether to go with new or used, how much this is going to cost us, the usual tire-kicker stuff.
I approach this with a mixture of excitement and dread. On one hand, I can’t wait to drive a car with all the bells and whistles that I don’t have in my current vehicle, and we need more cargo space in case we have to evacuate, always a consideration in Florida.
On the other hand, car buying means haggling and the suspicion that the dealer is piling on unnecessary fees, and I can’t stand any of that. There are, of course, a few fixed-price cars and dealers out there, but I don’t want a Tesla, and I don’t want to pay more than a car is worth just to avoid the hard sell. So it’s off to the dealers we go.
If you ask practically anyone you encounter, they’ll say they hate haggling too, and they wish they could just go online, check off all the options they want, and pay a price that’s the same for everybody—no negotiating, just a single price like you’d buy anything else. There’s a price tag; you pay it. That’s it. Yet, with a few exceptions, every attempt at a fixed-price car or dealership has failed. Remember Scion? Or Saturn? They were fixed-price cars, made, respectively, by Toyota and GM. They’re long gone.
Why? Because research told the car companies that there was a vast audience for no-haggling auto sales, based on what potential car buyers told the researchers, but those car buyers weren’t being honest. What they really want is to feel that they got a great deal, that they pulled one over the dealer, that what they paid was a bargain. It’s all about bragging to your friends that you got your car for X dollars under the sticker price or a discount from the invoice price. You go to the dealer, you do the Dance of the Finance Manager, and you walk out with the keys and the feeling of superiority. It’s a powerful emotion, and it overrides what you say about hating the process and wishing it were easier. No, you don’t.
It’s the same thing for radio listeners. They will tell you that they want more variety in music and deeper cuts, yet stations with tight playlists and rotations inevitably beat stations in the same format with a wider selection. They say they want less talk and more music, but when the ratings come out, they’re listening to morning shows that are essentially talk shows. And they say they want “fair and balanced” talk and news, but they only want to hear talk that confirms their own viewpoints.
The graveyard of radio is littered with stations that tried wide playlists and centrist political talk and flopped. Wider playlists mean you’re playing more stiffs, because when listeners say they want more variety, they mean they want to hear THEIR favorites over and over rather than someone else’s. When they say they want balanced, they really watch Fox News Channel.
The dissonance between what people say they want and what they really want has always been the case; the trick is to know what the public’s desires really are, as opposed to what they say they are.
If that sounds like an apologia for the sameness of current broadcasting, or a warning not to try something different, it isn’t. You can reverse the results: what listeners say they don’t want may just be unfamiliar, or the target audience may not be who you assume it is.
Also, look, things can’t really get much worse for radio at this point, and perhaps it’s time to throw everything onto the air and see what happens. Lord knows you can’t cut your budgets much further to help your bottom line. And the audience’s opinions might be changing — maybe there’s finally an audience for well-done liberal talk where there wasn’t before, as polling might indicate. Or not. But if what you’re doing isn’t generating enough interest or revenue, it might be time to try something else.
TL;DR: People say they want one thing but really want something else. Your job in radio is to figure out what they really want. Alternatively, you can just throw all the research out and try something else if you really don’t have anything to lose. You can also go find another line of work that’s not as confounding. I understand Buc-ee’s is hiring.
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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.
