Seek and you shall find.
At least when it comes to sussing out the opinions of more than 200 mostly current and employed radio professionals about…
…RADIO.
On Monday, I blogged about an article that ran in Content Marketing Institute. Robert Rose asked readers to submit one word that sums up the year ahead. I put on my consulting hat (actually, it’s almost always on), and flipped the question into a “vox populi” measure of radio’s image in its own community – among today’s radio pros and those who once worked in the business. Knowing that comprises most of my blog readership, I figured we might be able to put together a good cross-section of current and former radio people.
And you did not disappoint. All told, more than 225 of you submitted a word. Very impressive. And perhaps true to form, many turned out to be one-offs – single entries that didn’t appear again. The insights, of course, are in the repetition. And there were a handful of words that generated four or more responses.
Here’s the question again:
What’s your unique “take” on broadcast radio in 2025? In a word, how would you describe this next 11+ months? What’s the state of radio in 2025 – in just one word?
I opened all my channels – the “comments” section of the blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Bluesky. (I left Twitter/X last November.) By far, Facebook was the most productive.
So, what happened? See for yourself. The exercise yielded one very dense and crowded word cloud for us to stare at:
If you’ve ever wondered why conversations about radio with friends, colleagues, and even listeners can get contentious, the word cloud reveals some insight. Many of us view the same industry quite differently, often in highly contrasting ways.
In much the same way political discussions turn into angry debates, we’re looking at a highly divided community (and I used that term carefully). Many of these responses strike me as highly emotional and personal, not a surprise given that we’re talking about people’s avocations and careers. There is a lot of emotion behind many of these word choices. I invite you to play the radio version of “Where’s Waldo?” with this graphic. Rather than trying to find a specific word, giving the cloud a few minutes of your time may help you better understand the extreme career roller coaster many of us feel we’re on.
To provide a bit more perspective, we chose four umbrella categories – “positive” and “negative” on the two poles, with “problems” and “potential” occupying the middle ground. We did our best to ascribe each of the 225 submitted words to one of those buckets. And here’s how it broke out:
Takeaways:
- Three out of four responses leaned or were negative as opposed to one in four that were positive.
- By far, the most popular response pointed to radio’s perceived problems. Nearly half fell into this group.
- The smallest category turned out to be “potential,” which characterized fewer than one in ten responses. To me, this was one of the more disheartening aspects of this exercise, that more people didn’t see a pathway to success, despite the challenges.
And the contrasts abound. The most common responses with six mentions each were “local” and “lost.”
With four mentions each, it was “dead” and “evolving.”
Even with three each, the responses (in alphabetical order) are telling:
“antiquated”
“dying”
“free”
“generic”
“homogenized”
“opportunity”
“underestimated”
“undervalued”
And we wonder why radio discussions on social media turn into debates, while often devolving to rants and responses in ALL CAPS.
We may as well be talking politics. Actually, we very much are.
Is there any validity to this exercise? What do these numbers mean?
I’d have to say everything and nothing.
While a sample of more than 200 people in and out of radio should not be ignored, there is absolutely nothing scientific about this sample. It is merely a “poll” that many in the business – especially in its upper echelons – likely ducked.
I think it makes a statement about how polarized we are about something that is near and dear to us. When we enter the realm of a highly personal topic, the emotions flow. I think you can see a a lot of that in the word cloud.
I will dust off this post at the end of the year, and perhaps use it as a point in time to redo or revisit the process.
In the meantime, please accept my best wishes for 2025. May it be a better year than you think.
What about my word for radio in 2025? I’m glad you asked. Saddened the word “potential” was only mentioned by one person, my choice is “unrealized” – yes, it’s a one-off. As in, we could be/should be/must be doing better given the givens the industry is facing from external and internal forces.
I would also submit the absence of certain words speaks volume about a medium that’s in transition.
No one mentioned “unified,” and I suspect this was not an omission on the part of participants who played this game. In many ways, it might just end up containing a clue about the problem and the solution. The lack of speaking in one voice is striking at a moment in time when pulling together might be the only strategy that makes sense.
So, are you up for a helping of radio word salad? Snark on the side, of course, and hold the cynicism.
Thanks to Bill Jacobs for the analytics used in this post.
Originally published by Jacobs Media
