Is it happening to you?
When I hear a "story" about what awful thing happened to day in Iraq, I switch off. When I hear about attack ads in politics - I switch off. When I hear about Polar bears starving in the arctic, I switch off. When I hear one more CBC Victim story - I switch off.
Do I just want to hide my head in the sand? No I just cannot cope with "Stories" that keep repeating where I cannot get involved myself.
Headlines - how many were killed today in Baghdad - I quickly scan on line. Yet news organizations invest so much in them.
So where do I spend my time when I want to know what is going on? I spend it interacting with my friends on line or in person.
If I wish to talk about global warming I am much more interested today in what I can actually do about it. To act, I need advice and support. I don't need any more stories about melting ice. I know what is going on - my "Story" is about what am I and my friends going to do about it.
If I am concerned about Iraq - which of course I am - I have reached a conclusion - The more my community can reduce its dependence on imported oil, the more we can disengage. The more we can introduce transparency into politics, the less risk we will have of being hoodwinked by political leaders. So again, My Story is now about what we do and how we do it.
The Radio Station that facilitates this type of conversation will pull ahead of the Commodity Story Radio that tells the story in the helplessness creating manner.
Mark Ramsey has an excellent interview with Watts Wacker (Podcast Included) that goes deeper into this idea. Snip follows
Perhaps the biggest trend that I would pay attention to in the short run is that while consuming is never going to go away, consuming as the defining criteria for individuals is. We are now using our media consumption as opposed to our physical consumption to explain who we are.
So you don't go to a party anymore and say, you know, "Where'd you go to college? What kind of car do you drive? Where do you live?" Now you say "What do you blog? What websites do you surf? Have you read the article in Vanity Fair on terrorism in South America? Are you an Imus or a Stern person? Have you seen The Departed?
Whatever it is, we are revealing ourselves through our media. We are becoming focused in life around ourselves as media. So today, "I am the medium."
You can see this play out in the creation of synthetic economies, where people are literally making a quarter of a million dollars in Second Life, which is a very popular emerging metaverse. They’'re making a quarter of a million dollars in the virtual world and downloading it onto their ATM card in this world.
And when that happens, suddenly you want to be in the broadcast industry and the content business, not just in the physical world, but also in the virtual world.
Where do you see the future of radio?
One of the reasons that I think radio could have such a vibrant next 50 years or so is the issue of imagination and particularly intuition and the allegorical composition of what radio represents. With radio, you fill in a lot of the blanks yourself. And I think that's one of the great hidden opportunities of the medium you really notice when you hear great radio, whether it's content or advertising messaging.
You use the expression “great radio,” and I'm wondering what you feel great radio is, and what great radio will be in the next five to ten years?
Well, my favorite closing statement from any broadcaster is "I'll see you tomorrow on the radio." You can fill in your own thoughts and develop the story in your own metaphors. That allows you to dig deeper into your own experiences, and it’s one of the greatest hidden assets of the medium.
People are so conflicted by a world awash in uncertainty and complexity that allowing people to answer as if you're providing a question as opposed to giving a prescription is literally what the medium can do. Because radio doesn't have pictures, it actually becomes more of a benefit over the next 25 years.
Take an all-music station where someone was smart enough to realize they could buy it for four months and remove all of the advertising on it, which Snapple did in Boston, and you're touching that dimension of what I'm talking about. Even though it's a format of all-music, you're doing it in the way you're presenting your commercial messages as opposed to strictly "running spots."
There is a real opportunity for talk radio storytelling. You know, the only constant today in the world we live in is storytelling. And when you start putting forth questions instead of answers and you do it in a storytelling format, you could take talk radio to a whole new 2.0 - involvement with people.
I heard this on a student radio station for a local high school, which I listen to with great regularity, because these kids are figuring this out. If I was in the broadcast industry I’d pay a lot of attention to student broadcasters and what they're doing, because the alternative formats are being delivered and developed for you right in front of you.
And what were those high school kids doing that you can't hear on your local radio station there in Westport?
They were dealing with the tribe. They were clearly in a very micro-market. These kids knew that they had a different kind of audience, and they were talking to a tribe. They were not doing a format. They were touching all aspects of that tribe's interests as opposed to developing a format that could go to people who like that format on occasion.
And so they are holding their audience throughout the entirety of
their listening availability. They're not channel-surfing radio
anymore. They're staying with one station that has all formats rolled
into one – for them and just for them.
You’re describing a scenario where it's not one radio station
with a massive audience. It's lots of radio stations digitally,
internet, whatever, with tribal audiences.
Correct. See, you're a genius. You said it better than I could.
This is why change usually comes from outside an industry: Because the leaders in the industry are afraid that change results in them losing power, market share, revenue, profits, whatever. All of the above.
And so the disruption is ready to happen, and it's really whether or not the radio industry is willing to realize that the pain of staying where they are will be greater than the pain of changing.
