INK TANK

When A Tragedy Happens In Your Town

Grief surrounds an event like the one taking place in Aurora. And an event like this, or something equally tragic, could occur in any big or small town. At a radio station, you have to make a rapid decision about how to respond. If you're a News/Talker, like KOA/Denver, the natural response is to report the news and reflect the response of the community. But what if you're a normally upbeat music station? Do you keep playing the hits and pretend nothing is happening?

Very few of us will ever have a situation exactly like this in our markets, but we should always anticipate what we would do -- even if an automated, voicetracked, or satellite-fed station may not have the staff or resources to do anything in the short term other than continue to play the hits. Acting like nothing happened should never be an option.

As one who operated hit music stations for most of my radio career, I would opt to make a rapid short-term format change, having my known air personalities allow listeners to phone in to express their feelings and grief. Your youthful audience may not even know a News/Talk station exists, and an outlet will be needed for them. I think continuing to play music without some form of acknowledgement of the community's mood is simply not reflecting your proper role. Perhaps you'll lose some listeners who want music for the couple of days you change your programming, but I believe you'll be serving the larger community.

Another option is to play the music but to offer a deep, heartfelt acknowledgement of what's happening. Breaks might be longer than normal and involve listeners, or you may set a somber mood with messaging like, "We honor the men and women who died by
continuing the music without interruption or commercials." Though you certainly must not be promotional.

The other major issue is with your advertising. Is it right to carry glib commercials right after an event like this? Will advertisers even want to be on the air? Some will, because they know listening levels may be increased, but can it be done without being distasteful? During the days after 9/11, most broadcasters dropped commercials because it did not feel appropriate to break from programming.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the community of Aurora and to the broadcasters there who face these and other decisions. Sometimes we don't know the right thing to do until the time comes, yet it's always best for each of us to think it through just in case. I'll be curious to see the comments and feedback about what you think is the right on-air response for music stations.

You and I are living in perhaps the fastest-changing times in history. While much of the "old media" business still exists, the new world of media is vastly more powerful and more influential -- and it's moving so fast that even the experts cannot track the rate of change. From the perspective of my friends in Silicon Valley, you and I are employed in dinosaur media. They respect what we have done, and they want to steal our audiences and advertisers for their online audio services, but they think we're being silly when we cling to our transmitters. After all, the concept of "broadcasting" one signal to many radios is so very 1920s. They believe our model is broken, and it's just a matter of time before we lose our audiences and our advertisers -- to them. What do you believe?

Is Radio Immune To The Changes?

Many broadcasters I speak with think the radio industry is immune to the sea change that has been seen in other industries. They feel that, because it hasn't happened yet, audience loyalty has saved our industry from its digital downfall. But maybe we've just been lucky. Many buy the argument that radio has weathered the storms of other past attacks -- 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, cell phones -- so it will weather any new attacks too.

The newspapers believed they were safe, too. And though they pretended to embrace digital and were among the first to launch websites, the mistake they made was trying to create a "hybrid media." They should have fearlessly cannibalized the print papers and developed the next big thing so they could control it. Newspapers should have put newspapers out of business, rather than allowing others to launch competing services and take their businesses away.

When you live with one foot in the old world and one in the new, the tendency is to approach every decision based on the way things have always been done. For far too long, newspapers refused to allow their news to hit their websites until after it had been in print. Is radio acting the same way?

Are You Willing To Cannibalize?

What you believe matters now more than ever, and radio's success as an industry will rely on our willingness to cannibalize ourselves. You can try to maintain the status quo, or assume that your station website is your digital insurance policy, but the real danger for all of us is ignoring facts and trends. Are you writing off Pandora, saying it won't last? Or are you looking to invent something better -- not a copy, but something consumers will embrace even more?

Though I think aggregation services like TuneIn and iHeartRadio are important and believe every radio station needs to be a part of one of these services, we also need to follow other listening trends. Though an aggregated player allows the listener to pick from a variety of station types, that's still re-purposing a broad product in a narrow, personalized digital world. The only reason we have broad formats is because there is a limit on the number of signals we can have in a market. Radio needs to be reinvented for the personalized experience of a digital environment.

Can You Say Audio?

My passion for radio began as a kid who was fascinated by stations with entertaining personalities and my favorite music. To me, radio is audio entertainment, and whether it comes from a car radio, a home radio, a tablet or mobile device, or a transmitter is irrelevant. If you're clinging to your transmitter or have an idea that you don't want to stream to out-of-market consumers, you're missing a lot of opportunity.

Are You Admitting the Game Has Changed?

I continually hear complaints about change, about how big radio companies are cutting out local personalities and changing the way they do business. Though it's sad to see so many displaced radio soldiers, the reality is that this environment, this economy, and improving technology will increase this trend. Those who are caught in the crossfire need to realize the game has changed, certain positions will never return, and you'll have to keep reinventing yourself in order to stay employable. You don't want to be an out-of-work telegraph operator in a smartphone world.

The Past Will Return. Sure

I'm a nostalgic guy, and I love to think about the days when radio personality was at its peak and we had 15 share radio stations. They were fun times. I appreciate them, but I don't pine for their return, because there is no force in this industry big enough to make that happen. Big companies are not finally going to come to their senses and add back what they've cut out over the last 10 years.

It's Time To Become Relevant Again

Every industry is facing tremendous change. Every industry is seeking efficient ways to survive through technology -- and that results in jobs lost. Those of us in radio who have seen jobs eliminated, and those who have lost jobs, should not just try to shift to another station, we should realize that change will follow us all of our careers, and the only way to remain relevant and employable is to stay ahead of change.

So what do you believe?

Though I embrace change personally, I also find myself fighting it daily. It's human nature, and overcoming it requires a personal plan to embrace and make change for change's sake. We cannot wait for our companies to implement change. We cannot follow everyone else. We as professionals need to step up and force ourselves to reinvent, time and again. The way you reinvent yourself today may become irrelevant in another year. As Bob Pittman said, "Change is in our DNA." It should be in your DNA, and you need to force it to occur in your career.

Are You a Follower Or A Leader?

I always used to think radio people were trendsetters, and some still are, but it seems that many today are no longer leading the pack. The same people who put radical FMs on the air, spat in the face of traditional AM programming, and changed the world are now the people protecting their turf rather than inventing the next radical change. Even though it's frightening, history tells us that someone else will reinvent us if we don't do it ourselves. It's happening all around us. You can't prevent it, but you can embrace it.

Radio -- audio entertainment -- will change, and if we don't each individually embrace and seek change, we will never catch up. We'll be remembered like the newspaper industry: changed, but by someone else.

The Weakest Link

 When I ran a tech company, my chief technology officer, Rich Sadowsky, always used to harp at me about making sure there was no "single point of failure" -- that one tiny thing that can bring the whole system down. You may have massive backups in every possible area, but the single point of failure is the one thing you fail to anticipate, because it never happens. For instance, a 10 cent fuse can bring down an entire radio network if there's no redundancy in one little box.

We're living in a digital world, and we've come to rely on our digital devices. They're always there for us (unless we forget to recharge them). We rely heavily on our phones and our laptops, and many of us even rely on a digital connection to watch our televisions via Roku or Apple TV. Yet there is a single point of failure for all these devices that no one ever anticipates. Power.

This past week we've been reminded about the critical importance of the power grid in America, and the devastation when millions of homes and businesses have their power wiped out by a single storm. Suddenly that website we rely on for weather, for news, is gone. That connection to e-mail our friends and family to see if they're OK is gone. In my home we have Vonage and an Internet-connected phone. Gone. Landline phones might work after a storm, but many households today don't even have them. Yet when power is down, local cell towers can't function and a cellular phone won't work. 

It seems impossible in modern times for a community to go without power for seven to nine days, but those are the predicted downtimes in many communities. When the power grid in New York blew out a few years ago, there was no power in much of the Northeast for close to a week. No power means no communication, no information. Your phone, your iPad, your television, your cell phone are without power, and batteries soon run out with no way to change.

Storms that take out the power may be infrequent, but when it happens, there is a feeling of helplessness. You have no idea what is going on around you, and there is no way to know what you should do next. At these moments, there is a 100-year-old technology that is almost 100 percent sure to be operating.

Radio towers are designed to withstand hurricanes, and most radio stations have 10 days of fuel to operate their transmitters from a generator, and often their studios as well. Two-way radio also works, allowing police, fire, and ham radio operators to communicate with one another and push that information to local radio stations, which keep America informed.

What do you do if you need information? Your cell phone may have power, but there is no cell tower to connect with, no Internet to connect with. You turn your radio on.

Today most households still have an average of six radios in the home. Virtually every automobile in America has a radio in the dash. And almost every American over 15 has a mobile phone, which could contain an FM radio chip.

That makes the phone into a radio -- one that uses little power and lets the phone battery last long enough to let you hear the instructions that can get you to safety. The chip can also send messages to the phone itself, to communicate when phone service is down.

They say that sometimes it takes an act of God to change Congress. Washington, DC, found itself without power and helpless. Only radio was able to come through.

I've waffled about FM chips in cell phones because at times it seems so strange to make such an old technology part of a new technology. But it is in these moments when the purpose is clear.

Once the power is back, people will quickly forget about the days of inconvenience -- until the next time. While this massive power outage is fresh in the minds of your representatives in Congress, give them a call or send this note their way to remind them the power of radio and its reliability during these moments, and encourage them to consider the FM chip in every phone. The chip is already there in most smartphones, it's just not activated. It could be, and should be, in every phone in America.

Get contact information for your Congressional representative here.