The Origin of Ideas
By Dom Theodore
Dom Theodore
We’ve all heard the old saying “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” and the radio industry certainly is no stranger to this concept. It’s practically standard operating procedure to steal a great idea when we hear or see another station or show do something interesting, and to a certain extent, why not? After all, if it hasn’t been done in your market yet, it’s new to your audience, right? The fact is, in our connected world, even if it hasn’t been done ‘over-the-air’ in your market yet, it may still have been heard by your audience who can listen to practically any station or morning show anywhere, anytime. This makes new, unique ideas more important than ever.
So where do innovative ideas come from? And why does it seem like there are fewer incubators for new ideas and innovations in radio programming?
It’s not your imagination, radio stations really do sound similar market-to-market more than ever before. There are many reasons for this: fewer owners, more centralized programming, sharing of so-called “best practices,” centralized production shell services, and easy access to monitoring services where you can literally view scripts of imaging from other stations, are just a few of the examples. There was a time when you had to go through real effort to hear a station in another market… usually though an “aircheck” service, or through use of a “listen line,” which was a dedicated phone line attached to a radio that you could dial into from another market and hear what was on-the-air. Now you can hear nearly any station anywhere in full digital sound. That’s great if you’re just looking to steal a good idea, but at some point, somebody had to have the idea first.
Let’s face it, attempting anything that hasn’t been done before carries a certain amount of risk. If you believe that taking the risk will generate a desired result, and you’ve properly calculated the likelihood of achieving a positive outcome, it is said to be an “intelligent risk.” It’s hard to imagine, but there was a more robust time in the radio industry when you couldn’t get out of the way of the money – even secondary tier stations could cash flow. This was an era when brash and colorful creative types ran the show. Before he passed, my good friend and legendary programmer Bill Tanner told me stories about another legend, programmer Buzz Bennett, who used to name his music categories after drugs – “uppers,” “downers,” etc. Risk-taking was easy in this era, not only because half the industry was on something, but also because even if you failed, it wouldn’t be hard to just move on and try something else.
But in the late 1990’s, as groups consolidated, and took on more and more debt to build mega-groups, they became much more risk-adverse for a variety of reasons: the biggest being fear. There was no room for anything to go wrong. For the first time in my career, I saw radio stations that could have achieved more decide to forego the opportunity because what they were doing was “good enough,” and we didn’t want to “rock the boat” and try something new as it may generate an unpredictable result. The desire for certainty trumped the desire for success, even if it was just “certain mediocrity.” And while the whole world changed around us, the radio industry largely continues to use this late 1990’s model, as our top-lines continue to shrink while we search for ways to cut operating costs to compensate, which only digs our hole deeper.
We need to abandon the 1990’s model, and as fun as it may be to name music categories after illicit drugs, I’m not advocating going back to those days either. We don’t need the return of something old, we need something new: real content experiment on the radio, including intelligent risk-taking on new formats, and non-conformist personalities. Instead of nursing that pathetic 5th station in your cluster that produces nothing more than mediocre revenue, why not challenge a creative programmer to develop something new? Let’s get real, we are nearing the point in this industry where the risk of not being experimental is actually greater than trying something radical. Things are already uncomfortable, this is just a different type of discomfort.
This also means investing in talent, our most unique selling proposition. The battleground isn’t just music, in fact, music is the most duplicatable content we offer. The early days of PPM were mired with the mistake of telling talent to “just shut up and play the hits.” Sure, it was a good short-term strategy, after all, PPM tends to punish any form of talk content, so eliminating it had the effect of temporarily bolstering ratings. But ultimately, history has proven that the audience doesn’t buy the idea that a more music / less talk radio station is better than, or even the equivalent of Pandora, Spotify, etc, because we still have 8 minute commercial breaks. Rather than attempting to duplicate the listening experience of these other platforms, how about creating a more unique experience that can’t be found elsewhere. I contend that talent represents our single best opportunity for differentiation in the crowded audio entertainment space; however, announcers won’t save us, entertainers will. Announcers talk about the next time you can win the cash contest, entertainers actually have something to say – whether they’re telling a story, sharing something interesting or unusual, or eliciting an emotion from the audience, entertainers are the real difference makers that have the power to separate us from the pack. They are radio’s “influencers.”
Intelligent risk-taking requires a cultural change in our industry, not just a behavioral change, and that means it has to start at the top. Managers and the “C-Suite” need to signal the change, and really mean it by backing it up with investment, support, and autonomy. The very survival of our industry depends on it.
