It’s Not Just Radio: All Bets Are Off

Success in business—and in life—is often predicated on a strategic sustainability. That translates to adopting a smart game plan that’s repeatable, providing confidence in its viability over the long haul.

Now that doesn’t mean a strategic pathway that one has always followed is guaranteed to last ad infinitum. Nothing is forever, especially when you’re in the media and entertainment industry. Tastes change—and often quickly. For every Beatles or Stones, there are thousands of The Knacks—music acts that had great potential but somehow never were able to realize it and make it last, year after year after year.

These days, we’re having to accustom ourselves to an ongoing sense of chaos—in the business world and in society in general. Things we could once count on—that we most assuredly took for granted—are no longer “locks” to happen or to keep happening. Here in 2025, many decisions are approached and assessed with some sense of foreboding because for many of us, the return to normalcy post-pandemic still has failed to fully materialize.

Whether it’s breaking a new band or song, promoting a new movie, or launching a new radio station, the tried-and-true, “paint-by-numbers” approach turns out to be a precarious ride in a world where choices are plentiful and few are paying attention.

All bets are off.

All of this uncertainty—and that’s exactly what it is in so many corners of our business—makes for lots of high anxiety and second guessing. Just because it worked before is no guarantee of success the next time around.

That was the feeling I got when I read Nicholas Quah’s recent piece in Vulture, “Fame and Frustration On the New Media Circuit” (behind a paywall). He deftly walks the reader through the minefield that is now omnipresent when promoting and marketing pretty much anything.  

I loved this quote from a veteran publicist who has become unsettled by the lack of rules, guidelines, and conventions. So much is now up for grabs, making the “good old days” highly suspect and very undependable. And the difference between now and a decade or three ago is this:

“You could be lazy! Now you actually have to figure out what you’re trying to do.”

To that end, the sheer number of outlets—podcasts, TV shows (late night, morning shows, etc.), YouTube shows—means publicists are often making it up as they go along. There is no longer a step-by-step formula that guarantees a successful outcome.

Another PR partner explains the turbulence well:

“It’s overwheming….no one’s sure what works anymore.”

So you’re excused if you’re a radio veteran who is the least bit confused by the goings-on, whether you’re running an Active Rocker in the Midwest, an NPR News station trying to navigate your funding model in a threatening environment, or a Christian music station with strong ratings but perhaps lagging donations.

In market after market, situation after situation, there’s that queasy feeling the jig may be up. And no solace comes with the realization that virtually every brand is going through variations on this uncomfortable theme.

We like to think our problems are unique, that they are ours alone. But the nauseating reality is that most businesses, industries, and platforms are experiencing this sense of unsettledness.

All bets are off. 

The NBA Championship Series happening right now is a great case in point. Now playing out between two stellar teams, the Indiana Pacers and Oklahoma City Thunder, you’re excused if you can’t name two players on either squad.

And from the standpoint of ratings, there’s no New York, L.A., Boston, or Golden State playing for all the marbles. And neither surviving team has that iconic, bigger-than-life superstar: no LeBron, Curry, or Kobe. While the matchup is competitive and entertaining, Game 1 ratings were the lowest in 27 years.

But wait….there’s more.

Music festival attendance is now tepid at best, leading to cancellations and rumors of crisis proportions for name-brand events that were once iconic but are now problematic. CNN ran this sobering story earlier in the month:

“Dwindling ticket sales and cancellations: What’s behind the decline of music festivals?” 

CNN’s Leah Asmelash reports there have been 40 festival cancellations already this year. Finger pointing, as you might imagine, is rampant, blaming the lack of enthusiasm for these musical experiences on changing tastes, younger people unenthused by seeing unfamiliar bands, money tightness, severe weather, and a host of other rationalizations and complications. Insiders also acknowledge the “Taylor Swift Effect,” draining considerable dollars from the annual concert/festival budget.

It’s also possible that since the ’90s when the current festival model took flight, there may simply be too many of these multi-day events, outstripping demand. Some critics of the typical festival lineup is that they come up with a certain amount of risk. When you pay to see Beyoncé, you know what you’re going to get. When you go to Bonnaroo or Lollapalooza, all those unfamiliar names in the lineup, you’re taking a multi-day risk.

All bets are off.

And closer to home, there’s radio and our formats. Take Classic Rock, for example, a format franchise with a track record established since the mid-’80s. But time waits for no one, as a wise man once said, and some of the biggest bands and performers are facing life’s inevitabilities.

This is all covered—perhaps ironically—by a story in Ultimate Classic Rock by Corey Irwin. In a headline that doesn’t beat around the bush— “What Will Happen To Classic Rock Once All The Icons Are Done?“—Corey maps an uncertain future.

(Actually, it’s surprising he didn’t use the word “Gone” in the headline, or cutting to the chase, “DEAD.”)

Despite the “bite the hand that feeds you” headline, Irwin does a nice job of outlining the possibilities when performers stop touring, leave their bands, or simply die. And we already know that when it comes to Classic Rock concerts, life— and the show—must go on. After all, Queen has survived the passing of Freddie Mercury, the Eagles go on post-Glenn Frey, while Journey hasn’t missed a step since Steve Perry bowed out.

Yet, as Irwin points out, major changes for the Classic Rock franchise are just around the next curve as some bigger-than-life names won’t be with us forever. Beyond the radio format (and the UCR publication itself), how will all those mega-music brands sustain themselves for an unpredictable and tenuous future?

All bets are off. 

These are but a few of the examples facing various facets of the media and entertainment industries right now today, and most certainly, down the road.

If you’re a member of this community (and most people who read this blog are in that camp), what’s your move? Unlike many of those who came before you who got to ride the wave, your tough task isn’t just to navigate an unpredictable future—it’s incumbent on many of us to create and innovate where we go from here.

Clearly, we need to transition from a mindset of hand-wringing to one of problem-solving. Like those clever stranded-in-space astronauts on Apollo 13, how can we take the reality right in front of us and turn it into a different model for future successes?

There are creative solutions to be developed and considered by all three of the examples I listed above.

Take the NBA’s conundrum. Their current Collective Bargaining Agreement may be the first thing to be scrutinized. More than anything else, it is creating a league where parity reigns, making it less possible for certain teams to dominate the action. And that can be boring.

Consider this: Hoops Habit tells us that in the last seven years, there have been seven different championship teams. It’s the longest streak of no-repeat winners in the NBA’s 77-year history.

While sports fans have disdain for THOSE TEAMS—the Yankees in baseball, the Celtics and Lakers in basketball, and the Patriots and now perhaps the Chiefs in football, it seems healthy when fans have a team they love to hate.

After what will undoubtedly be disastrous ratings for this year’s NBA Finals, the league might want to re-examine that restrictive CBA. It might also want to rethink how their teams are promoted, along with the next generation of league superstars. Another Bird, Magic, or Jordan sure wouldn’t hurt.

In the world of concert festivals, the solutions may be gnarlier. As more performers have concluded they make more money with their own tours rather than be one of a hundred bands at Coachella, the festival industry will have to get more creative.

The CNN story explains that some festival organizers are already creating non-musical experiences into their festivals—yoga classes, workshops, speakers, and concepts like sustainability.

There’s also the idea of redefining music festivals to perhaps focus more on discovery, and less on seeing the same acts at every show. As writer Leah Asmelash reminds, “The hunger for new things is vital.”

All bets are off.

And most of you know the details behind how Classic Rock is already reviving its brands. Despite the ominous “click-bait” headline, Corey Irwin covers many of the innovations already taking place.

These include avatar virtual reality concerts, first pioneered by ABBA, and soon to be followed up by KISS.

New venues, like Sphere, in Las Vegas can rejuvenate bands still performing, while residencies keep artists fresh by eliminating the incessant travel associated with touring.

Let’s not forget tribute bands. Similar to how symphony orchestras keep dead composers like Beethoven and Mozart alive, brilliant copycat performers like Australian Pink Floyd allow ardent fans to enjoy seeing a reasonable facsimile of their favorites onstage.

But all this starts with the recognition the medium or industry is being seriously challenged by the ravages of time, intense competition, the pressures of being new, and the need to shake it up.

If you love radio (or did at one time), the one thing we can likely all agree on is that change—and the need for innovation and creativity—are long overdue. After all…

All bets are off. 

So let’s put a pin in this conversation for now, and return to it on Friday with some (hopefully timely and even provocative) solutions. Tomorrow, we’ll “time trip” through the JacoBLOG archives for #TBT, and return to this “heavy lift” on Friday. See you then.