“I’m meeting eleven-, twelve-, and thirteen-year-olds” who say “radio is much better than Pandora or Spotify or other places, because guess what? It is.”
That’s KMVQ (99.7 Now) San Francisco PD Jazzy Jim Archer talking about the outreach his station has done to students, in an effort to expose them to radio. A win, he says, is merely getting a student to see radio as “much cooler than I thought.” But he also hears from kids who used their audio from one of the station’s “high-school” takeovers as part of successful college applications.
Archer and Sarah Cummings, content director of Bell Media, operator of Canada’s Virgin Radio CHRs, were featured on the panel “Youth Radio: How to Do Top 40 in 2025” at Radiodays North America held in Toronto May 8, and moderated by consultant and former Capital Radio London PD Nik Goodman. The entire panel is now available online for Ross on Radio readers.
Archer believes that radio has “a level playing field for the first time in 15 years.” To previous generations, radio was the old medium diminished by new competitors. “But to the Gen Alphas, everything is even. Spotify is old. Pandora is old.”
Cummings also thinks radio has been helped by a proliferation of ads elsewhere. It’s less possible, she says, to have a commercial-free experience. “There’s probably more ad tolerance today. But in a perfect world, the ad is catering to the person listening, the creative is good, the ad is well produced, and it’s not in the middle of 10 minutes.”
Because radio no longer has a monopoly, Archer says, “the people who are left are the people who want to be here.” That frees broadcasters from “programming to the lowest common denominator” allowing it to focus instead on those who are “listening closely. When you’re doing it right, they know more about you than your salesperson does.”
During the course of the session, Cummings and Archer also talked about:
- The Taylor Swift Eras tour activation that created discussion on social media;
- The custom artwork that KMVQ creates for every artist visit;
- Why stations can’t depend solely on streaming, and whether radio can be a tastemaker again;
- What radio has to offer artists who don’t know the value of the medium. Artists don’t think of radio as a way to make money, Archer says, until he explains that the station can generate 100 names for their mailing list;
- The importance of public service promotions, something still more front-and-center on Canadian radio than ours. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a station do an invasive species removal,” noted Goodman about one of Virgin’s promotions.
- How to create family content for listeners whose first exposure to radio is in the car with their parents.
- How TikTok has affected not just radio station music, but pacing and formatics.
This is the quote for me, and I’ve said it to myself many times, whether the rest of radio will actually catch up, well that’s another story.
Because radio no longer has a monopoly, Archer says, “the people who are left are the people who want to be here.” That frees broadcasters from “programming to the lowest common denominator” allowing it to focus instead on those who are “listening closely. When you’re doing it right, they know more about you than your salesperson does.”
I get some of the best reactions and responses from something ive been loathe to do my entire career.
Birthday shout outs.
But for kids of friends of the show they LOVE hearing it. They/I love their parents recording them and their reaction – which we are share. And they love getting the raw audio after its all done. Streamers can’t give them that.
For more than a decade, even before AI, I’ve been wondering when the availability of voice-track technology would get me a semi-customized playlist and a DJ who would wish my wife a happy birthday. If it can’t do that, then we’re still going to need live people.
Spot on Sean!
Thanks, Morris! Great to hear from you.
His remix of Kai’s “Say You’ll Stay” is kinda classic in my book <3
There is opportunity there to leverage radio’s “person to person” (analog?) impact with a young audience who has never really connected with streaming services other than as a jukebox in their pocket. This was a good story and panel to share. Just need radio people to pay attention.
And by that I mean don’t say “corporate doesn’t care so I just track my shift”. You can do that and wait for the next round of cuts, or you can engage your audience and put yourself on the “right” side of the ledger. When Mel Karmazin was running Infinity (CBS radio), one of his questions was “are you revenue or overhead?” Later, when he paid Howard Stern 500M to bring his show to Sirius, he was quoted as telling wall street investors who questioned the size of the deal “Howard is my cheapest employee”. And we know what he meant. Howard brought immense value to the company when they really needed to get out of the commercial-free music business and into something people would pay cash for.
There are stations (and companies) that never got the corporate consolidator memo and they are still delivering local engagement, not just a “live body” in the studio reading the same liners a voice-track talent could read from a thousand miles away.
We have an opportunity to engage a young generation who are actually new(!) to radio. They were left behind during the iTunes revolution and never on-boarded by radio.
Air talent have the goods but it won’t happen sitting in a studio, rat-racing through breaks.
We have plenty of pros out there who already know everything I just stated. The rest will continue to do the least required, claim they’re “live and local”, then wonder why they were cut.