Radio has always been special to me since receiving a transistor radio for Christmas when I was six years old. Ten years later my broadcasting career began a few weeks after my 16th birthday at a little 3,000-watt radio station in rural Iowa. Over the next 35 years, I worked in the radio industry in variety of roles including on-air personality, program manager, college instructor, and sales. Five years ago, I walked away from radio and moved to television because I could see radio as an industry rotting from the inside out. The slow decline of the radio industry began with the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and the loosening of ownership restrictions and with technological advances.
 
The recent Alpha Media bloodbath resulting in the firings of local on-air personalities, news staff, and sports announcers doesn’t signal the death of radio. The bloodbath signals the death of LOCAL radio which is even more devastating for the communities to which these radio stations were licensed to and committed to serve.
 
Until now.
 
The phenomenon of corporate ownership announcing mass layoffs of staff certainly is nothing new. This has been happening for many years. However, what is different is for an ownership group to move away from staffing morning drive announcers, news staff, and sports staff enmasse. Local radio stations – and newspapers – have kept us informed as to what’s going on in the community, have covered city council meetings, school board meetings, county taxation hearings, reported on crimes in addition to sharing local human-interest stories about our community members. Local radio has also given high school sports an important platform, providing a way for family members and friends to listen to their local athletes and teams as they compete in their sport of choice.
 
And now, sadly, communities in small markets across the country have lost that connection to their local heartbeats in all of those contexts. Local broadcast television does a terrific job in covering the big stories and the important goings-on in the communities it serves BUT local television stations do not have the resources – human or financial – to be in every one of these communities covering all of these meetings and events with the depth and intimacy that their local radio stations do.
 
Or used to do.
 
Local radio stations in small market communities will become automated, voice-tracked, syndicated, soulless automatons with no more heart than the human beings at the corporate levels who decided their investment bankers were more important than their FCC mandate of reflecting the communities in which they were to serve.
 
Granted, the slow decline in radio – and local radio in particular – has been coming for a long time and it’s been easy to see if you’re paying attention. To be fair, the decline is not solely corporate driven. Technology, the economy, and society have all played a role in an incremental decline in the radio’s viability in all sized markets.      Here are factors that contributed to the slow erosion of an industry:
 

1. The “land bubble”. In the 1980s corporate farm operations began buying family farms but they bought the land at a price that would be difficult to sustain profitability. There are only so many bushels of crops that land could produce each year and the ridiculously high values at which they were purchased. When the market could no longer support the over-leveraged farmland, the bubble burst and the farm economy with it. The same is true with radio. Consolidation brought forth a “land rush” of radio stations, purchased in multiples that were far above their actual value and sustain profitability. Corporate ownership groups could barely keep up with the debt load. When the market corrected itself, the value of radio properties collapsed along with some companies, unable to get out of the debt load it created. Cost-cutting measures i.e. layoffs were the easiest way to try to get radio’s financial house in order.
2. The “Would You Like Fries With That” philosophy.  In the late 1990s former Clear Channel CEO Lowry Mays said that he wanted his stations to be like McDonalds restaurants on the programming side. His philosophy that – like McDonalds – despite where a listener traveled in America, the quality of the product would be consistent. That’s a nice sentiment in principle but it flies in the face of radio’s mission – to operate in the best interests of the community it serves. The tastes, beliefs, and priorities of each community are different, regardless if those communities are in the same state or across the country from one another. Radio – local radio – was never meant to be homogeneous. Radio was meant to be a reflection of its community.
3. Commercials are a bad thing. Research is important but it can also create a trap from which you can never escape. Radio is a prime example with one phrase: “More music, less commercials”. Yes, when asked, people will respond that they’d rather hear less commercials but the “more music, less commercials” mantra trained listeners into thinking they didn’t like commercials…that they were, in fact, bad. Radio commercials are bad because radio professionals are clueless about writing effective, engaging (not necessarily entertaining) commercials. People watch the Super Bowl for commercials, right? Every radio commercial has become homogenous, interchangeable, and meaningless because of laziness and lack of training for its production and sales staffs. Every business proclaims “great products, great prices (we won’t be undersold!), great staff, great location, conveniently located, been in business 100 years” and all of it is boring. It’s no wonder why listeners want more music.
4. Voice tracking. Personally, I think voice tracking is a cool tool. To be fair, automation is nothing new to radio. Voice tracking is slick and allows you to do an on-air show that is so close to live it is tough to tell it’s recorded. However, voice tracking has turned into a crutch rather than a tool. As “land values” plummeted and revenues dropped in economic downturns, voice tracking was utilized as the ultimate cost-cutting device. Announcers from markets across the country could voice track other stations in their local group of stations or voice track stations in cities in which they didn’t live. Ownership groups also could have an announcer in one market voice track a handful of stations it owns across the country and save money by paying the voice track talent less than the full-time announcers it used to employ. What radio has now is a live or syndicated morning show with voice tracking the rest of the day…for now, anyway. Which, thank God, gives us even more music and less commercials.
5. The digital love affair. The final radio company I worked for positioned itself as a “digital marketing company that owns radio stations”.  Advertising revenue fell across the board before corporate types realized their core enterprise – radio – had lost market share to other media and scrambled to recover (if it is ever able to do so). Every medium has fallen in love with digital because it provides more direct access to consumers and there are big dollars to be had. Radio has gone all in on digital to drive new revenues at the expense of its core product. Print and phone books HAVE to sell digital to survive. It won’t be long until radio is in the same boat as print and phone books because radio has fallen in love with the shiny object and has forgotten what made it special. Digital is important but it is not special; regardless if you claim your digital offerings are different than your competitors. Digital connects advertisers to consumers but it does not connect nor serve the local communities. Digital simply serves ads.
6. Radio forgot what it was. The corporate types and the researchers thought radio was a communication enterprise. It most assuredly is not. Radio is a relationship business. Once upon a time, radio was the most intimate medium. Radio is a relationship between the personalities and the listeners. The “people at the top” thought that websites, email, and social media would connect listeners to the radio station and to its personalities in a way never before possible. And it’s true, they did. But in – again – falling in love with digital, the connection became more disconnected and less personal. Digital provides listeners greater access to seeing their favorite personalities, learn about them, and communicate with them BUT the greatest connection between the personality and the listener was the request line. Forget social media, a listener can have instant interaction – a relationship – with their personality. Or just call to find out if the “cue to call” to win a contest is coming up or if they missed it. Radio forgot who it was and lost touch with the people who made radio the most powerful relationship builder and community connector ever.
7. Radio became just another jukebox. The cumulative effect of points 2-6. When iTunes, Spotify, satellite radio, eta al, came along, radio had one very large collective bowel movement (“Why, they have even more music and less commercials they radio does!!!”) and further turned away from their mission of super-serving their community and their most fervent fans. Television didn’t poop itself when cable tv came along or when satellite tv appeared or now as connected devices/streaming services have emerged. No, television never forgot who it is but adapted to the new developments/new technologies/societal changes while maintaining its core mission. Local television still super-serves the communities in which it broadcasts and reminds people who they turn to for happenings i.e. severe weather that the other television outlets will never be able – nor want to – compete.

 
In the final analysis, the radio industry is the epitome of a man going through a midlife crisis…panicking at his loss of youth, his receding hairline, and those couple extra pounds around his midsection who buys a Corvette, divorces his wife, turns his back on his kids, and starts dating a 20-something blonde with “legs up to here” in a desperate attempt to recapture something he lost. When the days comes that the man finds his life has fallen apart, his ex-wife and kids want nothing to do with him, the twenty-something blonde moves on to another sugar daddy, and he’s alienated his friends, the man wonders where everything went wrong.
 
I’m not going to be one of those people who proclaim that radio is dead. People have been beating that drum since broadcast television came into existence. Radio is not dead.
 
Local radio is.
 

​​Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are the hot item of conversation across America, across pop culture and social media, and across sports fandom. But are they really an item? We’ve only seen her cheering on Travis and the Chiefs from a luxury box in two games. The only time we’ve actually seen them together is when the two were leaving Arrowhead Stadium in Travis’ convertible following the Chiefs 41-10 drubbing of the Chicago Bears. The conversation since then has raged around the question: “Are they or aren’t they dating?”

This past Sunday night my family had our monthly family supper with our daughters and their significant others. As we waited for kickoff of the Chiefs-Jets game on NBC’s Sunday Night Football, my Taylor Swift superfan youngest daughter weighed in.

“I don’t think they’re dating,” she bluntly asserted. “It’s just a big publicity stunt.”

To which I replied, “So what if it is just business? What’s wrong with that?”

Let’s take a TMZ timeout for a moment and take a look at this from a different perspective. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are not just performers in their respective career endeavors…they are two very powerful brands. What if their “publicity stunt”  is a cross-partnership to expose each other to different fan bases to further elevate their individual brands? What’s wrong with that?

Absolutely nothing.
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​National consumer brands partner all the time. Apple has partnered with Mastercard  (Apple Pay) and with Nike (activity trackers) provide value for both consumer bases as well as for the brands themselves. And we don’t ask: Is Apple acquiring Mastercard? Is Apple acquiring Nike? Is this just a big publicity stunt? Nope. Or, maybe we are attracted to doing business with one because we already due business with the other. Or, we just shrug and go on about our lives. Consider the impact of the Taylor-Travis partnership according to Forbes:

• Fanatics reported a 400% increase in Kelce’s jersey sales which put him in the top 5 players in the NFL.
• Kelce’s podcast with his brother Jason (another NFL player), called New Heights, ranked first on Apple’s charts.
• Kelce added 383,000 new followers on his Instagram account.
• Stubhub reported a threefold increase in Chiefs ticket searches.
• The Chiefs sold more tickets in a single season since the start of 2023 season.
• According to Taboola, Swift and Kelce have been dominating the most-read-about entertainment topics: Taylor Swift is the #1 entertainment story and Travis Kelce is #2.

Of note, the first game Swift attended was also the most watched program with females including Woman 18-49 in which Roku TV reported ratings growth of 63%. Females are another group the NFL has been reaching out to. According to a survey conducted last April and reported by Statistica, 24% of the females called themselves avid fans of the NFL, with 42% responding they were not fans at all. By comparison, 51% of males considered themselves avid fans of the NFL with 19% calling themselves not a fan at all.

The partnership has already paid dividends for Travis Kelce and for the NFL. However, Taylor Swift is benefiting too.
The Taylor Swift: The Era Tour concert film will be released in 100+ countries on October 13. Industry analysts project the opening weekend will generate over $100 million in box office. During its Sunday Night Football several promos for the movie aired. Swift’s global concert tour resumes on November 9 in Argentina. Next year, the Eras Tour continues with tour dates in Europe, Asia and Australia, before returning to North America in the fall. During Taylor’s hiatus between tours, she has lost none of her momentum – and could be gaining even more momentum – by virtue of her headline-making partnership with Travis.

Oh, and Capitol One – who Taylor is a spokesperson for – ran ads during the Chiefs-Jets game – which was seen by potentially 29 million people.

If this is a business partnership, it’s a damn good one and smart.

What, then, can your business learn from “Traylor”? Is there a complementary business (or brand) that you can partner with that – in combining forces – elevates both brands and the value you create for each other’s client/consumer base? Can you in an image show the consumer increase their level of curiosity/interest in checking out your product or service from the other “fan base”.

Brand loyalty is still a thing (just as NASCAR has proven) and people will follow a beloved brand…even if it’s something they’ve never tried or had an interest in before due to this simple fact: their beloved brand would never do anything to steer them wrong. This dynamic does not guarantee you new business but it does provide a new opportunity to expand your customer base.
 
If you’re looking for ideas, strategies, and execution on how to do this, I can help. Reach out to me today through my contact tab to schedule a strategy session.

I've been a fan of superheroes since the age of four. I'd watch the tv shows, read the comic books, and then act out my own adventures in the backyard. But a superhero isn't a superhero without a mask and a cape which is where my mom came in. Mom was a Jacqueline of all trades and, above all, she was a master seamstress. Now, knowing this and believing Mom could do anything, I asked her to make me superhero costumes. Her first was a Batman cape and cowl when I was four and her last - and perhaps greatest - was Iron Man armor when I was 12. All she had to go on was her son standing next to her with a comic book pointing and saying, "That's what it should look like." She never disappointed in what she created from scratch with no patterns other than a comic book drawing. Looking back on it all, I marvel that she was able to craft what she did almost out of thin air and realizing she should have been given sainthood for putting up with my "requests". But she didn't just create my superhero costumes. Mom sewed my clothes. In fact, I didn't have a store-bought pair of jeans till I was a Senior in high school.

Sew - sorry, couldn't resist - what does this have to do with my lesson on staying relevant? Enter JoAnn Fabrics. Can we agree that Home Economics is a thing of the past and that fewer and fewer women are sewing? Shouldn't they be nervous about their customers eventually dying off and them with it? Maybe not.

JoAnn Fabrics - in an era where they could be in danger of disappearing from existence - has embraced cosplay (or Costume Play for the unfamiliar). JoAnn's not only has how-to books on their shelves but they have signage in their stores proclaiming them as "Cosplay Headquarters". When I first saw this signage and did a little investigation, I was dumbfounded on many levels.

First level - the genius of JoAnn Fabrics in seeing how they were uniquely positioned to take advantage of a growing segment in our culture who are proudly making costumes of their favorite pop culture figures - whether it's superheroes, movies, video games or anime - and want to custom make their costumes to look as authentic as possible.
Second level - being able to pivot without alienating their base sewers/crafters. That's a tough trick for any business segment. And history is replete with businesses who crashed and burned trying to do so. Kudos, JoAnn Fabrics.
Third level - realizing that Mom and I were OG cosplayers. She didn't live to see JoAnn's pivot and would have gotten a laugh at how we were cutting edge in her sewing room all those years ago.
The lesson learned here is that "old school" doesn't have to mean outdated. What societal or cultural trends can your business adopt to keep yourself relevant with a new segment? Once you figure that out you open yourself up to new revenues but, more importantly, you open yourself up to a new generation that allows you to stay in business. Remember, JoAnn Fabrics didn't change their business model nor attempt to create new product lines, they found out with a simple messaging pivot they could attract an audience to use and to experience their products in a slightly different way that keeps their cash registers ringing. Whoever came up with that idea should get a gigantic raise.
Oh, and yes, the picture below is that of me just after Mom finished my Iron Man armor. No patterns, just a kid with a comic book standing next to her at the sewing machine. She was amazing. And I was one incredibly lucky son.