Now is the Time

Robby Bridges

By Robby Bridges

It’s been 17 years since I first contributed to this column and I recall another story in FMQB that month was “Will the iPod threaten radio listening?” This is funny for two reasons: because the iPod is really 2K nostalgia now and, by early 2005 when that article ran, it had already saturated the marketplace for some time and radio was only then noticing. Many of the pieces I’ve written have followed the theme of radio vibrancy. A former major-market PD wrote and asked me privately after reading one of my columns, “You don’t really believe what you are saying, do you?” The truth is plainly yes and no and it’s gotten to be less and less. There are a few major roadblocks to face:

Corporate radio: The companies that want to cut resources to nearly nothing, that hire Vice Presidents of different departments without investing in their local product, that work their remaining staffers to the bone, that are risk-averse and cookie-cutter, that believe broadcast radio (delivery may not always be a terrestrial receiver) is not their core business, that are over-leveraged, should sell their properties and get the heck out of the business. It takes money to make money, it takes people to make a product, and it takes a product to create demand and passion to move it forward. Radio has more competition for ears than ever before and these issues are self-inflicted wounds on the industry at the worst possible moment. By the way? Corporate doesn’t only mean the big publicly-traded owners. Local companies that pay minimum wage to two staffers in a run-down facility on the edge of town are just as guilty.

Audio: There is a reason we have always called ourselves and been called broadcasters, it was once a source of pride. This isn’t “the audio business,” this is radio. We might deliver our content in new and varied ways into the future but we ought to be loud and proud about what and who we are. When did “radio” become a dirty word and who says so?

Competition and demographics: There are many more options for entertainment and content than there have ever been before and we live in an on-demand media sphere too. Particularly among the under-30 crowd, there is a real disconnect in what radio is doing and what content they might crave. Or to put it another way, why they should care about our brands as an industry. Radio needs to accept that it has got to innovate, create content for audiences younger than the baby boomers and that while, at our best, we offer a unique listening experience the consumer can and will go elsewhere, be it streaming, satellite or wherever, and we cannot stick our head in the ground.

So what can and should radio stations across the land do right now?

• Invest in content creation which means hire people, encourage creativity, take calculated risks, change the formula up.
• Invest in marketing and promotion of the brand.
• Find, coach and groom new talent and put veteran talent to work encouraging them to push their own limits.
• For music radio, accept that “more music, less talk” is dead and was a misread of research from the start. Yes, many radio stations will continue to play music in their given genre and they’ll use the strategies we know to select mass appeal songs and artists. But there ought to be a move back toward full service with personality (s) in every daypart creating content that is compelling, topical, local and has an “est”: funniest, smartest, rudest, sweetest, whatever the flavor of the host. Second, local means an element of news and information in most dayparts and LOCAL contesting.
• Local is key. It is human nature to be part of something and we are all losing what was once the sense of community in this ever-globalized world. Radio can be a connection point, a shared experience among fans
• “Second person singular”-I often get smirked at for being a student of radio’s past but how CAN we know where we are going if we don’t know where we’ve been? I interviewed Dan Ingram a number of years back and he used the term second person singular as the standard for a host communicating to a listener on air; it’s personal, it’s intimate, it’s one-on-one. It generates repeat listening occasions and it moves product for clients when a host can communicate on the mic this way
• Try things. If a station is broken or not winning big, throw out every “way we’ve always done it.” This is another reason radio needs to shed the layers of chefs in the kitchen, talent (especially on contemporary radio) ought to go back to the format’s purest form: allowing hosts to discover and share new trends rather than playing it safe and following the leader. Adult formats should make personality, information, local content forefront with the music a balance

Maybe these aren’t the answers and they certainly aren’t all of them but the owners of today’s radio companies ought to be dedicated to the brands, to growing them, to marketing them, to hiring the innovators to do the job, to making them the core product to compete for consumer attention. It is not too late for the 2020s to be a real renaissance for broadcast radio if we take steps right now to move forward with grand strides and refuse to settle for second best. Now is the time.

Robby Bridges has been a programmer and air talent for nearly 30 years in New York, Detroit, the network level and elsewhere. Currently he is PD and morning co-host at Press Communications Classic Rock WWZY/WBHX (107.1 The Boss)/Monmouth-Ocean, NJ. He also serves as guest host for Scott Shannon on the True Oldies Channel. He most recently worked for M.G. Broadcasting in Northern Michigan.