“No One’s Sure What Works Anymore”

Today’s comforting words – in fact, the name of today’s post – may lead to motion sickness.  Even if you’re not moving.

That’s because the theme explored in Wednesday’s blog post – the breakdown in desired content for mass audiences – is a central problem for anyone in the media or entertainment industry.  Whether we were talking about low ratings for the NBA Playoffs, the waning popularity of concert festivals, or even the inability to create successful and sustainable radio formats, the harsh truth is summed up by today’s blog post headline.

“No one’s sure what works anymore.”

It turns out these words were spoken by an anonymous PR professional in a Vulture article by Nicholas Quah.  But they could have just as easily been uttered by a movie producer, a television writer, a radio programmer, or the cluster’s DOS.

I’ve heard various interpretations about the frustration over the difficulty of creating bona fide hits.  Likely so have you.

You can probably feel it, too.  We’re at an obvious juncture – OK, an “inflection point” – where both content and distribution norms are very much up for grabs.

If there’s good news, it’s that many consumers say they’re looking for something new, interesting, stimulating – or all three at once.  The not-so-good news is that for many jaded media consumers, they have been there and done that – ad nauseum – with our radio product.  And sadly, there’s a sizable faction of these folks that have heard it the way radio has always done it for a long time now.  Can we blame them if they want and expect much more?  Because there’s so much content available to them, they flit around trying to discover content that works for them.  For incumbents – like radio – there’s been inevitable erosion – both in the audience and the advertiser ranks as a result.

Wednesday’s post made the point that other industries have come to grips with the notion the old models are wearing thin, becoming less viable, and that they need to change.  In the examples cited, you have to believe their executives, their teams, their consultants, and their researchers are furiously working to come up with new stuff, new treatments, new innovations, and new variations on old themes.

Will these efforts move the needle?  Will they change the equation for these industries?  Will they lure old fans back and will they attract new ones?  Will they WORK?

“No one’s sure what works anymore.”

This is what is keeping us up at night (OK, among other things) – key questions every entertainment brand and vertical need to ask their existing followers along with their not-so-happy-with-the-state-of-the-product consumers.  It is not easy, nor is it what we hoped we would be doing at the midpoint of an already challenging 2025.  But here we are.

The “radio playbook” has been wearing out over the past several years.  And now, we’re feeling the effects the same-old-same-old can have on both ratings and revenue.  It is not enough to cobble together run-of-the-mill digital content and hope it will ensnare enough eyeballs to move the needle.  All that scurrying around may be a steroid for the bottom line this month, but it does nothing for the audience or the brand.  And know this:  simply shifting revenue from the OTA column to the digital column to drive up the latter’s percentage isn’t solving any meaningful problems, outside from the ones radio broadcasters are engaged in to appease the investment community.

The audience can see through the attempts to put up empty, blaring content designed to attract web hits versus content that is relevant, compelling, and different. In some circles, there are suggestions that content is no longer king, and that audience engagement, the attention economy, or a vague sense of community are the new pots of gold at the end of the radio rainbow.  None of that stuff works if the content strategy and the machinery that cranks it out is broken, misguided, understaffed, or underfunded.

“No one’s sure what works anymore.”

Ever since the era of the Internet, many broadcast practitioners think strategic thinking is about owning a the “most music hill’ against five other stations.  But in the modern media era in which we all now live, these are shortsighted tactics that have precious little to do with present or future success.

It is less about positioning statements and much more about definable differences that matter to consumers.  Is it entertaining?  Is it informative?  Is it relevant?  Is it trustworthy?  These are all questions broadcast radio stations should be racing to answer.

What did our industry fail to see where media and content were headed twenty or even thirty years ago?  Why are so many broadcasters still doing business in the “radio snow globe,” as my friend Tom Calderone calls it, when the game has expanded into a digital version of the wild, wild west?

And the convenient scapegoat?  The evils of consolidation, of course, that took flight in the 90’s, leading the radio industry down the dangerous trail littered by soulless private equity companies, greedy venture capitalists, rampant debt, and the incessant demands of the Wall Street bulls and bears that will never ever be tamed.

But if we get beyond the finger pointing and look at what’s really happened – or hasn’t happened – it comes down to a lack of innovation, the demise of company culture as we knew it, and the toxic grip of risk aversion.   You might argue these are the true paralyzing conditions triggered by consolidation, a state of play that lulled many owners into believing the game was won, that there was little need to invest long-term in R&D, strategic thinking, or innovation.

When broadcasters actually started believing their size and scale – fueled by deregulation – would be all they needed, it ushered in the age of hubris and arrogance for some.  In fact, it should have been the event that stimulated invention and an urge to compete with the big boys.

I think about Howard Stern, one of radio’s all-time greats at moments like this.  Many think his greatest gift was his shock tactics and his knack for making headlines, when in fact it was his paranoia.  When you live in fear it could all blow up tomorrow if you don’t work your tail off and keep churning out hits, it inspires you to be competitive and sharp in good times and bad.  That’s what keep him going and innovating.

So I am encouraged by a recent innovation hatched by iHeart, still radio’s biggest company and one that has rolled the radio dice on many bold innovations over the years.  This one, “True Crime Tonight” – a novel way to reconfigure some of its podcast content into broadcast programming.  And where and when is this two-hour live program going to air?  At night – 10pm to be precise, Sunday through Thursday – a time of day virtually every programming “guru” will tell you isn’t worth the effort “because there are no listeners and no meters” during this time slot.

We shall see. The show has started airing on 20 iHeart stations – no, not HD2s – to give this show every opportunity to find its audience and succeed.  It’s been put together with KT Studios under the umbrella’s iHeart’s “Podcasters, Meet Broadcasters” initiative.

(Wait – wasn’t this originally called “Broadcasters, Meet Podcasters?” at those early Podcast Movement conferences?  Maybe we had it backwards.  🙂 )

According to the Radio Ink story, “True Crime Tonight” won’t just repurpose existing podcasts.  It will include “live call-ins, commentary, expert analysis, and audience interactions” – all elements you can only get from broadcast, and not podcasts.

And that’s the beauty of it.  Podcasts and broadcasts are all part of the audio family, even though podcasts are on-demand while broadcast, of course, is live and in the moment.  Notably, the one thing fans of both platforms would just as soon forget about is commercials.  They’re universally skipped during podcasts, while the main reason of “button punching” in the world of over the air radio.

Incidentally, many of the iHeart stations carrying the show are in the AC or Hot AC format?  What could the company be thinking?

 

Kudos to KT Studios founder/CEO Stephanie Lydecker (pictured), iHeartMedia Digital Audio Group CEO, Conal Byrne, and iHeart Chief Programming Officer, Tom Poleman.  And somewhere in the cavernous iHeart system, a visionary named Bob turned on the green light.

Will it work?  Who knows?  After all…

“No one’s sure what works anymore.”

Who knows?  Maybe it will become the next big format?