Talking to Outsiders About Radio

In the early 2000s, telling a non-industry person that you worked in radio was to set yourself up for an impromptu press conference. Occasionally you’d run into the person who thought playlists were too narrow and wanted to trash all consultants, before figuring out just what it was that I did for a living, but the interest in radio was usually enthusiastic and the questions were friendly.

In that era, radio was still enough of a shared experience that if I knew your hometown and anything about your current musical tastes, I could probably guess the station you grew up with. My party trick worked even if you were a generation younger. If you were my age or older, we might even have shared a reminiscence about growing up with AM powerhouses like WLS Chicago from opposite ends of the country.

In the 2010s, those conversations morphed to “um, how is radio doing these days?” Even before SiriusXM and Pandora, you got “I don’t listen much anymore,” sometimes punctuated with “except for NPR” from people who had aged out of music radio. After COVID and the rise of Spotify and Apple Music, you might not get much response at all. 

Even among those for whom radio was unquestionably a shared experience, there was a little less enthusiasm for the stations of childhood or high-school years. Those memories were more distant, but I also had to entertain, reluctantly, the possibility that radio was only a situationship for some people in the era before DSPs.

Facebook friends say their outside-the-business conversations about radio are almost uniformly discouraging. That included former KNCI Sacramento morning host Tom Mailey, who comes from a still-successful Country outlet but whose reaction to “do you listen to radio,” especially among younger people, is almost “why would you even ask that?”

Veteran consultant Bob Perry gets a very different response “in the Spanish speaking world, [where] radio is still a big deal.” Longtime New England programmer Ron Valeri says, “I do encounter current listeners of the Boston sports stations,” which remain very much a shared experience in that market.

But Matthew Butler, now working in public radio in Northwest Washington, says, “I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how many younger people value and are finding radio cool again.” While many of us only wish we were hearing this from potential listeners, Butler is encountering those for whom “some of the tech alternatives are too invasive, costly, or not the vibe they’re looking for anymore.”

I recently spent a week on vacation that involved a lot of conversations with new people from outside the radio business, most of them in a 10-year age range of me on either side. I met enthusiastic fans of Australia’s non-comm Triple-J, WXRV (The River) Boston, and KCMP (The Current) Minneapolis. That all these stations were Alternative or Triple-A perhaps reflected the demography of my fellow travelers but also jibes with the surprise ratings success that stations like KCMP and WXRV have experienced recently by choosing not to relinquish the music- discovery franchise to streaming.

Among people of my generation or older, the radio they grew up with was still very much an enduring memory. Two people in the same conversation did, in fact, grow up with WLS many miles away from each other. There was also a mention of “Beeker Street,” the early progressive show on Top 40 KAAY Little Rock that was before my time, but a surprisingly recurring memory among those who grew up west of the Mississippi. One man my age sang me the “93-KHJ” Los Angeles jingle unprompted.

There was also plenty of “how is radio doing these days?” I always prefer that to complete indifference, and my answer is always this:

• Radio is diminished — not demolished, but the enthusiasm I felt growing up now belongs to TikTok among today’s 17-year-old.
• Radio still has profit margins that many would envy, they just don’t get to keep those profits, and stations aren’t able to be their best selves on a fraction of their old budgets.
• Thanks to station streaming, I still find lots of radio that I’m excited about.

The husband of the WXRV listener was probably about 10-12 years my junior. He represented both the challenge and opportunity that many broadcasters encounter. He doesn’t like the new-music recommendations on Spotify or get enough of them. But he doesn’t listen to WXRV (or know about non-comm rival WERS), even though both would still expose him to new music, probably because he has no daily commute. 

My recommendation for my new acquaintance was BBC Radio 6 Music via TuneIn, which, as it turns out, was already embedded in his home streaming device. It is certainly possible that he was only listening politely to my suggestion, but as we were chatting, somebody else ducked over from an adjoining conversation to take down the info as well.

Because it is often discouraging to talk to civilians about the radio business, many of us are less likely to do so these days. (Many of my Facebook friends are ex-broadcasters who aren’t inclined to evangelize for radio anyway.) But beyond the reach of our endless “download our app” promos are at least a few listeners who actually might. Now, the question is how we will reach them on a fraction of our old budgets.