Bertolucci Out at KFI

[henry]

KFI opened a Twitch account. Woot. They did step 1.

They made ZERO effort to use their Twitch account.

It's the strangest corollary on this message board, and I've seen it for the almost 25 years I've been participating: Radio fans who ostensibly don't pay attention, yet opine anyway.

Imagine a model train enthusiast never having heard of Lionel.

(I worked in the industry for 14 years, but that's beside the point).

Perhaps if the radio industry actually LISTENED to what younger listeners (e.g., those not on Social Security) want to consume as part of their media diet, they might find themselves in a stronger position.

I worked for a small cluster, where my opinion would be heard, but Boomer generation bosses ignored me mostly. And in the big clusters like iHeart and Audacy, it's irreparable. They have this dangerous 20th-century mindset that they are OWED an audience simply for holding a broadcast license because that's how it was for 80 years. They focus on stealing listeners from another FM across town, rather than winning back new people who don't listen to radio at all (And then they keep crying all the way to the bankruptcy court as the audience slowly erodes.)

Radio's content CAN be extremely relevant to Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences, who consume more media than any generations before them. We can win audiences, with or without a broadcast license, if we give them a reason to give a damn about us. Throw formatics out the window. Throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Be everywhere all the time. Spend the money to be live.

Specific idea: Can't do 24/7 on all 8 stations? Cool. Consider hacking Wide Orbit to feed an almost-live local show with one jock TO ALL THE STATIONS IN THE CLUSTER. They can make a show relevant to your city. Relevent to your audience. Relevant to right now. And it's gonna be far more engaging than the 8 stale format-specific voice tracked shows you're running now.

Live-stream the show, anywhere and everywhere. Show the jock both on and off air. Have the jock interact with Twitch, texts, calls, etc. and make the show the hub of all the action. Record the segment and feed it out to air on all 8 FMs within minutes of recording between music segments. And when news breaks, dump the music and just go live on 8 stations.

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But no, we keep churning out CHR formats that act like it's 1995 (but with less live/local content) and talk radio formats that act like its 1995 (but with less live/local content), we end up with zero audience from anybody younger than 1995.

And then we blame them.

Guys, it's never the listeners' faults. It's always ours.

 

[TheBigA]

Perhaps if the radio industry actually LISTENED to what younger listeners (e.g., those not on Social Security) want to consume as part of their media diet, they might find themselves in a stronger position.

We KNOW what they want. We listen to them by watching what they do. They want what they want, when they want it, and they want it for free with no commercials. They want their music list, delivered on their device, uninterrupted. We know that. Radio isn't in the on-demand music distribution business. So they subscribe to Spotify.

Can't do 24/7 on all 8 stations? Cool. Consider hacking Wide Orbit to feed an almost-live local show with one jock TO ALL THE STATIONS IN THE CLUSTER. They can make a show relevant to your city. Relevent to your audience. Relevant to right now.

So you're saying young people want the same programming on ALL the stations? You're saying they want fewer options and less choices? That's not what THEY say. One of the big complaints we see has to do with multiple stations in the same format. Does Los Angeles really need two alternative stations? Does Seattle really need three country stations? Well, no, but that's what exists.

Name all the local DJs on Spotify. Name them. There are none. Young people don't want JOCKS. Start there. They don't want one-to-many programming. If you narrow that even more, you make it even worse. They don't care about local either. KFI does local talk, and who listens? KNX does local news, and who listens? Old people. Old people are the ones who want local talk.

The real problem with young audiences is attention span. It's very short. They aren't going to sit and LISTEN to anything. They're multi-tasking, so radio is in the background. It's just there. You don't have to overthink it, because it doesn't matter to them. It doesn't have to be local to get them to listen. We know that, and we see it every day.

But no, we keep churning out CHR formats that act like it's 1995 (but with less live/local content) and talk radio formats that act like its 1995 (but with less live/local content), we end up with zero audience from anybody younger than 1995.

Here's the funny part. Back in 1995, when radio WAS in fact live & local, audiences were leaving radio for other options. The reason why stations started replacing live & local with national was because younger people were leaving broadcast radio for other things. WHY? Because they want what they want when they want it, and they want it for free with no commercials. You say we're acting like it's 1995, and what you really want is radio from 1975. When people had no other choices, no other options, no other devices except what we fed them on the radio. That's not the reality we live with today.

Programming radio with live & local jocks makes sense when you control the media, when you're the only option, and when the music business is devoted to your device as their primary outlet. That's the other part that's changed. The music industry used to cater to radio. They signed artists who made commercial music, they signed small, limited rosters of artists to fit the small limited formats on the radio, and they serviced those radio stations with anything they wanted. Artist visits, free concerts, and local give-aways that catered to the local audience. All of that is gone. Record labels service the streaming companies. They get whatever they want. Record labels sign lots of artists, most of whom make music that isn't focused around formats and Top 30 playlists. In fact, record labels are making music that crosses all of those old radio formats.

This is a much bigger problem. It's way bigger than just hiring more local jocks. If that was the solution, we'd all be doing it. Hiring local jocks isn't the solution to the problem. Most of LA's music stations have local jocks. It's not strictly a radio problem. It's bigger than radio. Boomers believe "If you build it, they will come." That's not what young people believe. THEY want to build it. They don't want to be an audience, they want to be creators. The amazing part is they have the technology and the skill to be creators. They make their own videos and post them on TikTok. I know young people who make more money from making short TikTok videos than they'd ever make as local jocks. Young people use Twitch for gaming. They're not going to sit there patiently and watch some jock tell them useless information. They want to create it themselves.

Guys, it's never the listeners' faults. It's always ours.

You're right. Who taught them to do this? We did. This is what happens when the "me generation" has kids and grandkids. They all want what they want. When they were 2 years old, we asked them what they wanted, and they liked it. They liked being asked to choose. So now they're adults, and they want to choose what music to listen to. They want to choose, not have some jock tell them. It's a very different world, and we're the reason why it is this way. So yes, it's not their fault. It's ours.

 

[Robert Douglas]

BigA - your problem is that you are focused on music. Everything you say is true but it doesn't matter. The future of radio, if it exists, is not going to be music, except when it comes to presenting an unknown artist or doing an interesting historical segment.

(side note: maybe if radio people could get their hearing aids fixed to be able to actually hear what they are shoving out of their distorted, compressed transmitters, then the end of music radio could be delayed a bit.)

Think bigger. Talk, Podcasts, Sports, News, Teaching, Comedy, Companionship, a sense of community, maybe even radio theater. Lots of possibilities out there, but not jukebox music as we have it now with massive and ghastly commercial breaks.

For those of you who think that talk, news, teaching, etc. are only for the old folks, think again. Every day thousands of people are becoming "old people". Time marches on.

 

[FledSoCal]

i;m just a normie, having started my life with a portable computer the size of a lunch box. during my salad days, driving in SoCal traffic 120 minutes a day, the radio was the way. i actually enjoyed listening to phil hendrie's crazy show, for example. but then technology exploded, maybe starting with the ipods, and you had options that gave you control.

fast forward to today, my biggest thing is just efficiency - not to pick on kfi, but wow having about 30 minutes of commercials and filler for every hour is nutty. hence just signing up to spotify and creating my own bespoked programming - and yes, I listen to one or two kfi podcasts and speed thru all the commercials. which is the last point - the public wants free stuff, which is crippling to local radio - local radio does not have scale to make the economics work well, and the obvious outcome was consolidation (e.g. iHeart) - but even iHeart now knows that consolidation within consolidation is required, as I would surmise the ration of revenue/measurable hour ratio versus expenses is not working, and it remains a volume issue (pun intended)

i'm probably 100% wrong, just a random observation from a consumer who pays money to Spotify but nothing to iHeart, but listens to each pipeline.

 

[TheBigA]

BigA - your problem is that you are focused on music. Everything you say is true but it doesn't matter. The future of radio, if it exists, is not going to be music, except when it comes to presenting an unknown artist or doing an interesting historical segment.

I agree with all of that. My post was in response to someone else. My point was that more than radio has changed. That's why radio companies have been broadening their focus from broadcast to other forms of audio.

Think bigger. Talk, Podcasts, Sports, News, Teaching, Comedy, Companionship, a sense of community, maybe even radio theater. Lots of possibilities out there, but not jukebox music as we have it now with massive and ghastly commercial breaks.

That's what they're doing. KFI doesn't play music. Neither does KNX. Of course there's also KPCC that has no commercials. So options exist.