Two months ago, when massive cutbacks and consolidation again rocked the industry, I asked Ross on Radio readers to tell me what stations they thought were doing things right. I was happy to get a long and varied list—the oft-cited big city radio stations; the small-market stations that did big city-quality radio; the Adult R&B powerhouses that have long been “more than just music”; the small-market Triple-A stations that I knew of, but hadn’t heard recently.
I filled up a legal pad with listener suggestions. For the first week or two, I worked my way through the list at a good clip. Then projects, presentations, conferences, and the other business of the first quarter kicked in, and I wasn’t able to listen as much. This week, as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to escalate, I went back to the list and listened to another dozen or so stations. It was still only a fraction of recommendations (or others offered this week), but I wanted to document what I heard on the radio, particularly at those stations already known for best practices and community service.
What I heard over the course of the week was broadcasters figuring out their tone. Was music radio’s job to offer a pep talk? A semblance of normalcy? A pivot to news and information mode punctuated by music? On Monday and Tuesday, I still heard long stretches that sounded like they could have been taped days earlier, and some morning shows taking calls about perennial topics. On Thursday, I wondered why I still hadn’t heard a station tell listeners what to do if they developed symptoms. But that afternoon, I heard both WBLS New York and KILT (The Bull) Houston talk about where drive-in testing centers had opened.
It was impossible to avoid the ironic, particularly in the advertising that hadn’t yet changed. “In this moment, who has your back?” asked one local insurance company, but they were talking about auto claims. It also became clear how much radio still depends on medical advertising—even though it’s safe to say those hospitals no longer want you to want you to drop by for a consultation on anything discretionary.
It was impossible to avoid the ironic in the music—but I’m viewing it all as defiant in intent. I heard an Urban AC play Chic’s “Good Times”—with the jock’s acknowledgement that these times were no such thing—and Chris Janson’s “Good Vibes” at Country a few songs later. BBC Radio 2’s Ken Bruce came out of “Lay All Your Love On Me” by declaring “there are very few things that can’t be made better by an Abba record.” Those songs were indeed easier for me to hear than the Country station playing “The Ones That Didn’t Make It” and “I Wish Grandpas Never Died” within a few songs. But that may have been exactly what another listener needed.
Other songs, probably scheduled far in advance, took on greater resonance. WDIA Memphis played Billy Ocean’s “When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going,” which a month earlier would have been the most trifling of oh wow songs, and the O’Jays’ “Survival” within a few songs of each other. Leona Lewis’ “Better In Time” used to sound like a throwaway. This week on KISQ (The Breeze) San Francisco, it was needed encouragement. So was hearing Delilah start the hour with “Fight Song” on WIKY Evansville, Ind.
By the middle of the week, a lot of the jock topics had turned to the realities of social distancing and working from home. KISQ’s Jack Kulp and Carolyn McArdle talked about seeing certain people out walking for the first time—including her mother. She also added that by the time the crisis was over “we’re all going to know each other’s real hair color.” Afternoon host Déjà Vu on WBLS had watched so many “Gunsmoke” and “Bonanza” reruns that her sister had asked, “Are you turning into our dad, or what?” N/T KMBZ Kansas City’s morning show interviewed ABC’s White House correspondent Karen Travers about President Trump’s response to the crisis, but also got her to share her own situation: “I’m in the basement; my kids are upstairs running laps.”
Toward the end of the week, I heard stations where every break was crisis-related, whether it was “we’ll get you through this,” or local information, or information about artists’ online crises or what they were doing during their unplanned touring hiatus. I also heard Triple-A WXPN Philadelphia’s Mike Vasilikos do a great hour with only one brief reference to “uncertain times.” That worked, too. I’d been listening earlier to WTOP Washington, D.C., one of readers’ most-admired stations. I knew WTOP would do a great job, but hearing any news station for an hour was like having a days’ worth of devastating news alerts all coming in at once. I was happy to have the escape.
It’s important to note that anything cited here is a snapshot—a few minutes at a time of what will be weeks of crisis coverage, even under the least dire of circumstances. There is absolutely no intent to critique, only to write in the journal that we’ve been encouraged to keep of this extraordinary time. Great radio stations already have a playbook for emergencies, but not this one. Suddenly, every air personality is tasked with being Walter Cronkite in November 1963, but while broadcasting from a war zone and with their own well-being and that of loved ones to worry about.
By the end of the week, I also heard radio more effectively reminding listeners that it was there to serve. This morning, Hot AC WLBC Muncie, Ind.’s Steve Moore was still on the air in middays, and told listeners “Google is good” for sharing information in a crisis, “but radio is better.” Moore encouraged listeners to reach out by Facebook Messenger, “or @ us on social media. We have a phone, too.” If it’s still OK to praise good radio as we used to know it, WLBC was that small-market station that sounded big, the sort that listeners had called to my attention. But it was good radio for our times as well.
Then there was the promo I heard on KILT-FM: “Houston, it’s a place that was built on beating the odds. In our lifetimes, we’ve faced many great challenges that stacked the odds against us [from] the terrorism of 9-11 [to] the destruction of hurricanes like Ike and Harvey . . . There’s still a lot we don’t know but . . . just like in the past, this great city will come together like no other. And just like in the past, the Bull is here for you … with the music you need to help you make it through the long days and nights, along with the info and updates you need about what’s happening right here in Houston. Together we’ll get through this,” before declaring the station “Texas proud; Houston strong.”
