I like to think that I always seized the day, even when each new day was merely an ordinary miracle, but nobody really does that consistently enough, and that applies to the Ross on Radio newsletter as well. Even in my most prolific weeks as a writer, I had more to say than I could possibly get around to writing, and a few things that I didn’t know how to say diplomatically.

I sometimes felt more gridlocked about writing candidly in recent years. Working for multiple parties in the business and writing about it was a challenge — even if people seemed to trust me to offer my objective opinion anyway. Even in happier, pre-COVID-19 times, the industry was jolted on a regular basis — again by iHeart’s layoffs and consolidation in January. My sense of urgency was mundane — the industry I loved was shuddering and I was, gasp, 57 years old — but I felt it nonetheless.

There is urgency now even for those of us who are healthy and safe today, so there is no reason not to say what I need to say now.

Especially because the first one is “thank you, radio.” Radio has given me more than 50 years of inspiration, and now it inspires again under dire circumstances. Any challenges to find the right tone at this moment are more than offset by radio’s continued ability to keep on keeping on, something that has only gotten harder as the weeks have gone on and the layoffs and furloughs have continued. After the last few weeks, it might seem odd to be optimistic, but …

Radio is again giving me hope. For much of the last 5-6 years, my message to broadcasters had a thru-line — the need to take control of the infinite dial and remain the chief purveyors of audio, something they could only hope to do through an industry-wide initiative. In saying those things, I often felt like I was calling for the mandatory issuance of unicorns by an industry that was too overwhelmed to get through each day, much less make ambitious plans. But if that wasn’t the answer, what was?

There is something oddly encouraging in knowing that radio has left itself with no choice but to regroup. Up to a point, it was possible to position all consolidation as “better local through national.” Now the seams in that strategy are showing. Crisis confirms that local information still matters and the numbers for our all-news FMs make it empirical, not merely broadcasters’ convention rhetoric. It is increasingly possible to reimagine radio as a smaller number of brands, both local and national, done correctly, rather than compromised faux-local, if only broadcasters will embrace it.

Broadcasters have been overwhelmed by the need to organize more than 15,000 domestic stations for listeners, to offer one-stop shopping — produced radio, your jockless playlist, our podcasts, and to make listeners aware that we’re offering it. That seemed naïve in January. But a smaller portfolio of brands will be easier to organize. Beyond that, broadcasters are operating under such challenging conditions now that when happier times return, anything will feel easier and more doable.

There are 15,000+ radio stations, and they all have the obligation to do what’s right for them. Lynda Obst’s Hello, He Lied is a self-help book disguised as a Hollywood tell-all, one that I have always found to contain helpful advice. In it, the veteran film producer explains that the person across the negotiating table whose interests are counter to yours is not malicious, but “playing the role assigned them by God.”

While the iHeart Media layoffs sent shockwaves through the industry in January, only their timing was truly a surprise.  iHeart has been an advocate of “better local through national” since Jacor met Clear Channel more than 20 years ago. Its consolidation was only a continuation, and probably not yet even a culmination, of a decades-long mission.

Through that consolidation, iHeartRadio — specifically the streaming service that bears that name — has emerged as the most prominent national platform operated by broadcasters. iHR is closer than any other U.S. broadcaster to offering one-stop shopping. If iHM is indeed absorbed into a combined Sirius XM and Pandora radio, as rumored, there will be a formidable combination of national radio, local radio, podcasts, and on-demand music that other broadcasters will find hard to compete with.   

That said, iHM operates 855 of America’s 15,500 radio stations. Confronted with the prospect of competing with one-stop shopping, America’s other 14,600+ broadcasters have the right and imperative to use their economies of scale as well, particularly when it comes to their own ability to offer a one-stop audio shopping platform of their own. In addition, those other broadcasters have also been effectively given a chance to make a true franchise of “local,” and should make the most of it.

However you view their efforts to date, iHM has made the most public progress of any commercial broadcaster in the quest to reinvent itself as a podcaster and digital company. Only through large-scale cooperation can our 14,600 other stations hope to replicate anything other than their cutbacks.  And even if other broadcasters are given the relaxation of ownership rules they are likely to ask for going forward, the need for cooperation will continue. The challenge will be to field a viable national platform, not merely for individual companies to own every station in a medium market.

Going forward, there is really no excuse for cruelty among broadcasters in any form. Being a rough-and-tumble business was part of radio’s legend in its barnstorming days, but during the challenges of the last 15 years, it turned radio into Lord of the Flies.

Going forward, broadcasters need an industry code of ethics — no more predatory pricing and no more FM translators broadcasting your competitor’s format commercial-free for the sole purpose of hurting another radio station would be my first two items. You probably have your own list. There should also be a new interpersonal code. Those lucky enough to continue working in radio need to treat those who no longer are with more grace: You are not more relevant than your peers of the same age who the business has left behind. You are just luckier.

Support broadcasters. Ross on Radio’s audience includes both today’s decision-makers and those who left the business, or whom the business left, a long time ago. Recently, I retweeted a news anchor’s advice to college students to “take any job.” It was both the most-liked and most-disputed advice I’d ever shared. Many in the business took it the way I did — “be versatile and don’t be precious.” But others responded to it as “sacrifice your dignity, and allow yourself to be taken advantage of,” something perhaps exacerbated by a tweet-sized paraphrase of comments that I didn’t think the speaker intended that way. Not surprisingly, the responses largely split along the lines of those still in the industry and those who’d moved on by choice, necessity, or both.

There are a lot of ROR readers who tried to love an industry that didn’t love them back. They come by their disillusionment honestly. But I’ve also been dismayed by others who appear to be gloating over radio’s travails of recent years. There are music- and broadcast-industry observers who have found a franchise for years out in “everything you do is wrong.” Broadcasters have had to make hard, easily second-guessed choices for a while now, but they are truly operating under wartime conditions now and I try to remember that. I see the fallout from choices made two decades ago, often by people who have long cashed out, but I don’t see a lot of malice on the part of those struggling to deal with it now.

Finally, I want to say . . .

Thank you for letting me be part of radio. In my first 20 years as a journalist covering the radio industry, I got the chance to meet and learn from most of the heroes of my formative years in the business. In the 15+ years that have followed with Edison Research and through my own consulting, I’ve been able to work directly with a lot of the radio stations I loved, and be treated as a peer by programmers and managers I admired. The sudden lack of normalcy has underscored just how many things we all took for granted, but being able to help create radio alongside you has never been one of them. 

That’s what I have to say to radio. How about you?