It is something few broadcasters could have imagined four months ago, and yet it was the only possible response to our times.
There is news again on major-market music radio. Sometimes it is the bulletin from the news station down the hall. Sometimes it is the on-air host negotiating a new set of duties.
There are listeners again being heard on the airwaves of music radio stations. We thought they wouldn’t call a radio station anymore for anything other than the “Impossible Question.” Now we have too many impossible questions to answer, none of them trivial. And if a host says to listeners, “maybe you have something you want to talk about this afternoon,” they usually do.
Ten years ago, as PPM measurement became currency throughout the top 50 markets, and its resulting programming dogma impacted all radio, many stations asked their personalities to say less. Got a piece of useful info for listeners? Share half over an intro and tease them to the station website for the other half, they were told. Hot AC stations and R&B stations had both found a working model with personality throughout the day. After PPM, far fewer stations had a “morning show in every daypart.”
As for news on FM music stations, particularly outside mornings, it was already the exception that proved the rule by 2010. The discussion was usually the same—there’s already a News/Talk station in the cluster. There were increasingly other places to get traffic, as well, but traffic was sponsored.
None of this entirely jibed with what we were telling ourselves about radio’s future. We said that personality was the thing that broadcast radio’s competitors couldn’t duplicate. We said they’d be back from their streaming services when the hurricane came. But we always spoke of those emergencies as spot occurrences.
It is remarkable what on-air personalities have done since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly after a decade of being trained to do the opposite. They have done it amidst radio’s own fiscal crisis, with colleagues on furlough, kids in the next room, and concern for their own well-being. We’ve urged them to share some of their own stories, but we’re still watching them like flight attendants in times of turbulence, hoping not to see too much concern in their eyes.
Listeners wanted information—the rise of all-news FMs in the March PPM and almost all news/talk outlets in April shows that. And yet, there was always a feeling that there was never quite enough information on the air, particularly on music radio. Through all of this, I have had the feeling that music radio needs regular news content again.
I’ve felt that particularly this week. Admiring the work of R&B stations from WBLS New York to 92Q Baltimore to WDAS Philadelphia to the syndicated DeDe In The Morning and The Breakfast Club has confirmed what George Floyd’s murder has proven to all, R&B radio has no choice but to be ready to respond at any time. Other stations scramble. The pre-recorded blurbs from the News/Talk station down the hall sound wrong in tone, but they also sound so four-hours-ago. AC radio morning hosts struggle through news bulletins they never trained to deliver. And in talking about all of radio’s response, there is no intent to discuss anything as trivial as “good radio” at times like this, merely our ability to be of service.
If music radio had news directors, there would have been somebody to reflect their audience’s sensibilities.
If music radio had news directors, there would have been a resource for the music personalities suddenly having to talk about larger issues for the last six months.
If music radio had regular access to information, I can’t guarantee whether those stations would have benefited in PPM—won the punch, won the quarter-hour, won the week, won the month. I can say that the U.K.’s music radio, without PPM to contend with, is considered relatively healthy, despite the daytime news bulletins on its commercial and even younger-targeted stations.
We’ve already discussed the need for radio to regroup in these pages. When radio emerges from its budget crisis, and particularly if it does not, it can allow national radio to be national—with the Breakfast Club again confirmed as our most important talk show, we know that some content transcends geography. But the stations that choose “live and local” as a franchise need to make it more than a positioner, and they need to be “live and local” even on weekends and overnights.
Broadcasters will not be able to spend on everything, but the events of 2020 have given local news a new priority. (And some irony, since the most famous music radio news of all time is the “20/20 News” of the ‘60s and early ‘70s.) Listeners won’t just need us when the hurricane comes. They need us now.
Thanks to Scott Fybush for the opportunity to discuss this topic and others this week on his “Top Of The Tower Podcast“.
This is all well and good but I think a lot of the News/Talk stations no longer have news directors. The iHeart owned “Newsradio” station near me used to have 2 or 3 local anchors but really no field reporters. They had a morning anchor/news director who also worked overtime doing field reporting but when iHeart bought the station he bailed out (good thinking). Since then no one else put that much effort into it.
Once he was gone the stories all seemed to come from the newspaper or from the competing, locally owned radio group that REALLY has a news operation supporting 4 music stations plus a web site. A year or so ago the so called Newsradio station’s familiar anchors disappeared and now local news appears to be people from out of the area recording it. Voice tracking is pretty good so its a bit hard to tell but there is no interaction between news anchor and the local morning talk show host as their used to be which is a good sign. Outside of that morning talk host – not one other show weekday is a local show so that whole place is on auto pilot (plenty of dead air to prove that). On the weekends they still have some local shows but I think most of them are brokered. In my market the best place for news is not the “Newsradio” station but the music stations run by the locally owned competitor.
An excellent point, thanks.
-as a partial observer of the state of radio these comments are sooo right on the money. My first few jobs in radio were spent researching, writing and delivering the news. Did I know what I was doing? Nope. I was emulating the newscasters I heard growing up. Then our little 1,000 watt station went up against the local 50k blowtorch with – a real commentary delivered by a real journalist. It worked. In the meantime we’ve heard of the amazing newscasters like J. Paul Huddleston. Lee Marshall. Byron McGregor. Dick Smythe. News was always part of the winning Drake formula. Compare that with the totally disconnected “services” that many stations provide today- like reading a list of traffic problems or a weather forecast delivered by what sounds like an intern. The information that’s out there today is just begging for a place on all types of radio. (In its most successful days our local 250 watt daytime country station had a fully staffed news department.) In 2020 people are talking about Beyonce, Kanye and Adam Levine. They’re also talking about Trump, Biden, George Floyd and Covid 19. If radio has any competition from podcasts, it’s because of the podcast cover age of these topics. The beauty of radio is that it can be immediate and relatable. I’ll bet though, in 2020 -in most cases it’s not. Yes broadcasting is in the middle of a budget crisis but I’m probably not wrong in suggesting that there might be humans out there willing to learn and practice their craft while getting ready for “the big time”. Just a thought. Your license is to serve and you can certainly do it with a little forethought. Thanks for this, Sean.
Thanks, Dave. Appreciate your perspective, especially because of your history in full-service Ac.
It’s been specifically about the pandemic, but I do want to plug the listener research that NuVoodoo has done over the past few months: The latest analysis is at https://nuvoodoo.com/coronavirus-updates-still-necessary, while the basic data is still being updated pretty much daily.
It’s been close to 30 years, but I remember when one of the AC stations and a AAA station where I lived did news during PM drive, and this was before there was someone in the cluster who could do it for them.
Since then, when I’ve been abroad I’ve always thought that the news I heard on UK stations would probably play well in the US if someone had the guts to try it. Fast paced, well produced with music beds, actualities, and stingers that sound like they fit the format, stories that fit the audience and don’t sound like repurposed content from the station down the hall, they were great service elements. But it’s been years since anyone thought we needed that here. Anyone who wants to try it needs to give UK radio a listen for inspiration.