I'll bet you were around in 1987 - What did you think about Roger Ailes putting that guy Rush Limbaugh on the air with a daytime national talk show? Hadn't ABC just got done failing with that idea? Surely that would NEVER work, and the safe approach would have been not to try.
Something to keep in mind is that Rush did not come out of nowhere. He and his shtick had already been successful in two Top-40 markets. What ABC did was found a successful talk host in large markets and brought him up. Did that decision come with risk? Of course, it did. Every programming change or decision comes with risk, but the decision to bring Rush up was a calculated, well-researched, and managed risk. It wasn't some crazy idea out of left field. It had data that it was reasonably likely to be successful backing it up.
Without having the willingness to try the new, aren't we watching the business collapse before our eyes?
I see major irony around shouting "try something new" while suggesting old time radio, which is literally the opposite of new. Who says, however, that radio doesn't try anything new? Broadcasting companies are frequently researching and testing new ideas, formats and sounds. Far more ideas are tested than ever make it onto radio, and only a handful of what gets onto radio is ever successful. Tightly niched and brand new concepts don't get tried very often because they tend not to work. People seem to have the impression that radio programmers are a bunch of lazy people coasting on their reputations and laurels, and that, by and large, is not true.
The financial situation of Cumulus is less than great, so affording anything new may be beyond their reach.
Last I'd heard, Cumulus still has research and digital departments. It's still testing new concepts.
But there are a lot of malingering decently powered properties across the country that are flirting with .5 ratings and might be able to do more with something different and new.
I think you're getting rating and share mixed up. A 0.5 rating would be roughly a 10 share today. That would make for a relatively successful station.
And with appropriate promotion, maybe attract new listeners to the radio.
The problem with radio is less that people don't listen than that people don't use it as often as they used to. People know it's there, and they know what's there. They just have more options and don't prefer it to other sources of audio entertainment like they once did. I'll grant you that younger listeners use it less and are more likely to be exposed when someone older turns it on, but it's less a case of attracting new listeners than it is of getting listeners to stick around.
However, the start of something new has to start somewhere
What you seem to be failing to grasp is that something new has already started, and it's not on the airwaves. That doesn't mean radio as we know it can't be a healthy and profitable niche for the foreseeable future, but the next generation of audio entertainment is already here, is already being used, and has already reached critical mass. As the younger generation ages, it may well decide that free and easy beats paying for a little more flexibility, but the days when 20% of radios were on between 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM aren't likely ever coming back.
, and that new eventually requires a step beyond the comfortable. No evolution, and I think we know where that leaves FM radio in 20 years.
All technology evolves, and that evolution includes sunsetting the old. I do agree with you that radio needs to continue to invest in programming and continue to research new and potentially innovative ideas, but what will ultimately determine whether over-the-air radio remains viable will most likely be whether millennials and Gen Z use it more as they get older. Radio, in some form or another, will continue to exist, but it will almost certainly move to a new distribution system at some point. That's technology; that's evolution. It may not be the current operators at the forefront of that evolution either. If you'd told me 30 years ago that the internet would supplant brick and mortar retail in many areas, I would've believed you. I would, however, have sworn that Sears would've been the company to do it. It mastered the mail order catalog and seemed in good position to continue that work in online distribution. Instead, it was a bookseller that seemed to come out of nowhere.
