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Who Killed Radio? How Podcasts Set the Personalities Free · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

0:24
Well, good morning, good evening or good afternoon, wherever you
0:27
are, whatever you do. A lot of things happening in the
0:30
world today, most of them are far beyond our control, you
0:33
might say. So perhaps it's time we took a
0:35
pause and thought about life, thought about the laws of
0:39
economics, radio people, the FCC.
0:44
Don't touch that dial. Just try to hear me out for a
0:48
little while. So I wrote an article this week
0:52
that was sent to me about radio is dying.
0:55
You may have heard this. The question, of course, is why
1:00
is radio dying? Is it because of corporate
1:03
greed? Or is it something else?
1:07
Radio used to feel very intimate and very connected and very
1:13
right there immediate. But corporate interests got
1:18
involved, and experienced radio people were replaced with
1:23
national shows, national formats, centralized playlists,
1:27
if you happen to listen to music consultants, and corporate
1:32
rules. It lost that element of local
1:35
trust. It lost that local element of
1:37
familiarity. And there are those who say that
1:41
in order to make a comeback, radio is going to have to become
1:44
more like what it was, knowing its audience, reflecting its
1:48
community. Now, I agree with that to a
1:51
degree. Corporate radio undervalued
1:56
personalities. It undervalued local knowledge.
2:00
It treated listeners as demographics and categories
2:03
rather than as a community, and it confused standardization with
2:09
quality. And that removed many of the
2:11
things that people actually listened to radio, you know, to
2:14
actually get. So it's hard to say that
2:18
corporate management killed radio at least single handedly.
2:23
There were massive technology changes in in my own time in
2:28
radio, I saw this. We went from cart machines to
2:31
everything was digital audience fragmentation.
2:35
The audience began to break apart.
2:37
Advertising markets changed folks, especially after 2008.
2:42
And all of these things combined would have challenged radio
2:46
anyway, regardless of whether it was locally owned or corporately
2:49
owned. They was still would have had
2:51
those issues. Corporate radio didn't create
2:55
the economics or the crisis that was involved in, but they
2:59
responded to that crisis by cutting the very thing that gave
3:02
radio its value. And of course, most of us see
3:07
that as a mistake. The real value of radio was
3:12
scarcity. And it's a strange thing to say.
3:15
I mean, if you're looking at this from a economic viewpoint,
3:19
for most of broadcasting history listeners only had a limited
3:22
number of choices. You only had X number of
3:25
stations on your dial. Yes, I know the whole bandwidth
3:30
was there, but in one geographical area you might only
3:34
have 357 stations and the formats of those stations would
3:40
be differently would be different and that they had
3:44
geographical limits. Now we're talking particularly
3:47
about AM radio here and to lesser degree FM, but geographic
3:51
limits. KFIV, my old station was a 5000
3:55
Watt station. 5000 watts is not a lot, not when you've got
4:03
50,000 Watt blowtorches out there that you can hear across
4:06
the country at night. But 5000 was was about what we
4:11
had. And once the sun went down and
4:13
the Super heterodyne effects kicked in and we had to power
4:16
down, you'd be lucky if you were able to hear us if you were
4:19
standing underneath the tower. But with those limited choices,
4:25
whether you wanted music, sports, news or even talk
4:29
conversation in those era, in that era, radio was the only
4:34
option, was the only thing you had.
4:36
And it it wasn't being broadcast where you were.
4:38
You were Sol. You had to choose from what was
4:42
available locally. And that was it.
4:45
That made the economics of radio sustainable because we're all
4:51
you got. You want to reach your audience
4:53
with advertising, then you pick the station that's closest to
4:58
what you want demographically. Radio's enormous audiences.
5:03
This was a mistake that was made.
5:04
The enormous number of people who listen to radio, and it's
5:07
still large, does not always indicate enthusiastic demand for
5:13
the programming. Some of that listening, I would
5:17
argue a lot of it was simply the result of restrained choice.
5:21
The listener did not necessarily choose the best program.
5:24
They chose the best of the few programs that were within range.
5:29
And sometimes you just listen to whatever station was already
5:31
tuned in. It became an action of
5:34
familiarity and habit and that to corporate minds can look like
5:39
loyalty. But reality is it's the absence
5:44
of competition. There's nobody competing for the
5:48
for the ears to to hear it. You, you look at radio today,
5:54
and I would argue to you that radio survives largely through
5:58
convenience and habit. You get in your car, you turn it
6:02
on, Radio's already on. You didn't have to open an
6:05
application. You didn't have to select a
6:07
program on your phone. You didn't need an account.
6:10
You didn't need a subscription. You didn't have to enter your
6:12
password. You didn't have to, you know, do
6:15
your Bluetooth thing. You're given a program without
6:20
any conscience choice on your part.
6:23
And that's radio's remaining economic advantage is extremely
6:28
low friction, especially amongst older listeners who've retained
6:33
decades old listening habits. We do it because we always have.
6:38
Commuters will often accept whatever's available.
6:42
I live in the Puget Sound, folks.
6:44
We have lots of radio stations here, but many of those radio
6:47
stations only reach a little ways.
6:53
There used to be a station here in in in Silverdale, Bremerton,
6:56
this area, but its reach was literally maybe to Port Orchard
7:01
and maybe to Poulsbo. And if you got outside of that,
7:05
you were stuck. Our biggest talk radio station
7:09
in the entire Puget Sound region doesn't reach the east side of
7:14
Seattle at all. You have to change the signal.
7:16
You got to go over there FM station to get it over there.
7:20
Breaking a habit requires a reason to do so and an easy
7:24
alternative. So in order to get us out of
7:27
that mindset of tuning into that station, we've got to have a
7:32
valid option. Radio gives us some value even
7:40
when our listening is habitual. That value may be convenience,
7:45
it might be familiarity, might be local weather, some sports,
7:49
background, companionship. I heard someone talking the
7:52
other day about, you know, baseball is just a bit, it's
7:55
just background noise. It's just, it's just buzzing.
7:58
And I, and I kind of agree with that.
8:00
I love having a baseball game on in the background.
8:03
The danger for radio began when podcasts and streams became just
8:11
as effortless to access as radio did.
8:15
You moved into your car and all of a sudden you had a
8:16
smartphone. And smartphone integration has
8:19
become standard with newer cars. My car is a 2019 and it still
8:29
has really good integration. I do have to plug it in.
8:31
I could use Bluetooth and I don't like to, but but more and
8:34
more new cars are increasingly allowing you to become connected
8:41
to your smart devices, if if not being smart devices themselves,
8:45
which allows you to access latest podcasts or streams
8:49
automatically. You've got voice control, you
8:50
don't even have to punch on buttons anymore.
8:54
The dashboard of a car is becoming a portal to every
8:57
available audio source there is. And broadcast radio is no longer
9:01
competing with just the other stations in the same market.
9:05
A local AM radio station now has to compete with every national
9:11
show, every national podcast, every every podcast, not just
9:17
national, every single live stream.
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Think about that. I get into my car and I can turn
9:25
on the live stream of Bill's show in Florida.
9:28
I don't even have to listen to radio up here.
9:30
I can listen to radio in Florida, but it's a live stream.
9:34
I could listen to satellite radio.
9:35
I could listen to audio books. I could stream music.
9:39
And if I wanted to, I can go back and listen to something
9:41
from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, or, and this is what's really
9:48
driving a lot of this. There are highly specialized
9:51
shows now serving every interest you can imagine.
9:56
No longer does a radio program have to be programmed for the
10:00
broadest of audiences. You want to do a show now.
10:04
You can live stream or podcast a show now that has an audience of
10:06
five and it can be economically valuable because the mindset has
10:12
changed. It's no longer what we say the
10:15
value of the radio time is. The price is no longer
10:20
determined by the supplier. It's no longer it no longer
10:24
matters how much money or time went into something.
10:27
It's what the listener chooses to listen to or go elsewhere.
10:31
And once they can do that with ease, it becomes, well, pretty
10:39
much the death knell. Corporate radio some years ago
10:42
began treating human personalities as expenses, you
10:46
know, line up companies, you know, this joke.
10:48
Our most important asset is our people.
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So why do you keep cutting your people?
10:53
Because they're also the most expensive asset we have.
10:58
In the process of this, local producers, reporters, support
11:02
staff constantly being cut because that increases your
11:06
overhead. If you centralized this stuff,
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it cuts down on all that stuff. It gives you short term savings.
11:13
A single radio program, a single disc jockey can sit in a city
11:18
somewhere, let's just say San Antonio for example, and voice
11:22
track the same radio show around the country and you wouldn't
11:27
know the difference. He could talk about what the
11:29
weather is in Bismarck, ND and unless you were there, you
11:33
wouldn't know. Not a corporate Ledger.
11:37
This appears very efficient, but it misunderstood how value is
11:42
created. The transmitter that the radio
11:47
station owns that tower is not what makes the personality
11:51
valuable. The listener's desire to hear
11:56
that personality is what made that transmitter valuable.
11:59
The station's license, its advertising inventory, its
12:02
audience exists only because the program was valuable to the
12:08
listener and the listener was not attracted to the tower.
12:12
The listeners aren't driving around the town going, oh, man,
12:15
look at that tower. I want to be a part of that
12:18
station. In fact, most people wouldn't
12:22
even know where the tower was. They wouldn't know what if they
12:24
saw one. They sure as hell don't know
12:27
about the computers in your studio.
12:29
They don't know about, you know, the satellite.
12:31
They don't know any of that. What they do know is that person
12:34
behind the microphone, and in many cases there's a
12:38
psychological translation that happens and they become friends
12:44
with that person. You may never have met him or
12:48
her, but in your mind, they've become part of your life.
12:53
And when you remove that personality, the company may
12:56
reduce their costs, but they simultaneously destroy the
13:01
demand for the product. We talked about this.
13:05
We've talked about this for years.
13:07
People like Paul Harvey, Rush Limbaugh, stations weren't
13:11
carrying those people because, you know, they decided that
13:15
that's what you needed to have. They carried it because it's
13:18
what you wanted to hear. The stair, the personalities
13:22
created the value of the stations and the advertisers
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then monetized on that. The corporate radio kept the
13:28
machinery dismissed. The people who gave the
13:30
machinery a reason to exist. Now, I experienced this myself.
13:37
Corporate radio sets their rules.
13:40
They set guidelines. There were two specific things
13:46
that stood out in my mind during my radio time.
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Number one was at one point in my career, I was told, quote,
13:54
less Dave, more Sean, meaning Sean Hannity, meaning what they
14:00
wanted was me to be more confrontational, more
14:03
argumentative, more yelling, more intense than I was being.
14:09
They wanted me to be more like Sean Hannity.
14:11
And I went home and changed the changed the profile picture on
14:14
my page to a parrot with a, with a Uncle Sam hat on because
14:17
that's what they wanted. I knew that that's not what the
14:21
audience was. The audience wasn't tuning in to
14:23
me to hear a a rehash of Sean Hannity, but corporate believed
14:28
that that's what you wanted. And at one point I was told, I'm
14:33
not making this up. I was told believe it or not.
14:35
Now some of you today won't understand this, but if you are
14:38
an old afternoons live listener, you will understand this.
14:41
I was told to stop doing Constitution Thursday.
14:45
I didn't stop doing Constitution Thursday because I ran out of
14:48
things to say. Didn't stop it because they took
14:50
John off the show. I didn't stop it for it.
14:52
I stopped it because I was told to stop it because corporate
14:58
didn't want that. It took away something that was
15:05
very local, very. I'm just going to say it.
15:11
I I know that it was appreciated locally.
15:13
I know because people kept telling me, I, I honestly
15:15
believe that in 15 hours of radio a week, the vast majority
15:20
of my listeners were from 5:00 to 6:00 on Thursday afternoon.
15:24
And I'm fine with that. If we had to do everything else
15:27
to get to that hour, great. People liked it.
15:30
They told me that, and it became, in my view, one of the
15:34
most valuable economic assets. But I was told to stop doing it
15:38
because it's not what we do. The good news is that things are
15:46
changing. Technology has allowed things to
15:48
change. Podcasting, streaming have
15:51
reversed the traditional relationship between the host
15:55
and the station. Because now there is no station.
15:58
You will not. You don't see a station logo
16:00
here, do you? All you see is the Dave Bowman
16:03
Show. That's it.
16:04
In traditional broadcasting, the station owned the signal.
16:08
The station owns the access to the audience.
16:11
The host is hired to fill the time slot and when employee and
16:14
when employment gets ends, the access to the audience
16:18
disappears. I keep, you know, I quit doing
16:20
the show and I can't talk to you anymore.
16:25
That's the way it used to work. But now the audience seeks me
16:30
directly. They people who listen to the
16:32
David Bowman show podcast, what the Frog podcast, Dave does
16:35
history podcast, They're they, they're doing it because they
16:37
want to and geography no longer matters.
16:41
I could show you the stats of you know, who's listening where.
16:44
You'd be surprised. You'd think I'd have a huge
16:46
listening in California and Florida and I do, but it's all
16:49
over the place. Geography no longer defines the
16:53
market. That same show, this same show
16:55
can be live as it is, as I'm recording it, hence the name
16:59
plausibly live. It can be recorded, it can be
17:01
clipped, can be replayed, and I can move between platforms while
17:05
preserving the same identity. I could do it today on Facebook,
17:10
tomorrow on Riverside, the day after that on Spotify.
17:13
None of that changes. I I don't need the station and a
17:18
small and, and Rod and I have talked often about this.
17:22
A small committed audience is more valuable than a larger
17:26
accidental audience. I don't need, frankly, I don't
17:31
need an audience of millions. I'm not trying to be Joe Rogan.
17:37
I'm trying to talk to people who actually care about the things
17:40
that I care about and want to hear about it and have those
17:43
discussions. In radio, the station
17:46
essentially loaned the audience to the host, but in podcasting,
17:52
the host brings the audience to this platform.
17:56
Now, this gives us some advantages.
17:58
We can retain that sense of immediacy.
18:01
If something happens and I need to be on the air, boom, I can
18:05
just hit a button. Persistent stream, I'm on the
18:09
air. I'm on the air on Facebook or
18:12
YouTube or wherever people are going to get it.
18:16
You can respond to me in real time.
18:18
I'm actually pretty excited about this road caster board
18:21
because now I can take calls and eventually when we get to the
18:25
point where we're ready to do that, we're going to do that.
18:31
Sorry, I'm losing my voice here. The audience then becomes a, a,
18:35
a visible community because you're following and other
18:38
people can see you're following and your algorithms start
18:40
feeding it to other people. Hey, Susan likes this show.
18:43
Maybe you'll like it too. I can combine audio graphics
18:48
like this. This board, man, you should see
18:50
some of the stuff I can do here or like that, or I can do oops,
18:59
I should turn that off, shouldn't I?
19:01
I can do this. This is one of my favourites.
19:05
See, I can do stuff like that in real time.
19:09
I can share documents, callers, comments, all of this stuff.
19:12
Production can generate a complete episode, several
19:16
shorter clips in no time at all. Sorry, I'm going to leave that
19:23
in there. Just so you know that it's live.
19:26
Live streaming restores that sense that I'm actually here,
19:29
that someone is actually there. Program is happening right now.
19:33
The host can react to breaking news.
19:35
If I turn the TV on, I could. I'm not going to.
19:38
And because of texting, because of calls, because of comments,
19:43
you can react. And just like on a radio show,
19:46
the regular crowd begins to recognize one another and it
19:50
rebuilds that relationship. It's resemblance to local radio
19:54
is is there, but the local community is now around shared
19:57
interests rather than just geography, rather than just
20:02
where we live. And of course, there are
20:04
advantages of this, and I've said this on numerous occasions,
20:07
podcasts and streams. Screw the FCC.
20:10
We don't have to worry about that.
20:12
I can be more candid. I can be longer.
20:14
I don't have a clock. I can get into subjects that I
20:19
was told not to get into when I was on radio.
20:22
I can be flexible. I don't have to have commercial
20:24
breaks. I can take one if I want to, but
20:27
I don't have to. I control the editorial content
20:31
and I can direct criticism of institutions and sponsors if I
20:36
if I have any. I can be critical of things that
20:40
perhaps when radio couldn't had a good friend Once Upon a time
20:44
that was a worked at a station that carried a professional
20:48
football team that I can't name, but it used to rhyme with
20:50
Redskins and the Redskins sucked.
20:56
And he basically said that on his show.
20:59
Yeah, they got upset. Online creators are not
21:04
necessarily completely independent, of course,
21:07
Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, they all have their own rules and
21:11
they have their algorithms. But the the bottom line is, you
21:15
know, copper by defamation law still applied, but it's still
21:20
freer than it was. The Internet removes the
21:24
broadcast gatekeeper, but you can still have a platform
21:28
gatekeeper if you're not careful.
21:30
Look, radio is going to continue into the future, especially in
21:33
the cases of emergencies, rural areas that have limited coverage
21:37
or maybe no good network local sports.
21:39
Although I will tell you, I know for a fact that there are
21:42
multiple professional sports teams that only stream now, of
21:48
course traffic and weather becomes an issue.
21:50
You know, I could, I'd love to with Google and everything else
21:54
and Waze. I could call up my Waze program
21:55
right now and give you a traffic report if that's what you, if
21:58
that would be of value to you, I could tell you that right now.
22:01
Look, let's do that just for fun.
22:03
Let me find the find the app here ready.
22:08
Let's see in my general area, everything's fine.
22:13
There's a there is a car on the side of Hwy. 3.
22:17
Nope, I'm sorry on old Frontier Rd.
22:19
So you want to be careful there up by North Highlands.
22:23
See we can do that too. And it's just as easy as it used
22:28
to be able to do. Radio will continue to do that.
22:32
It will continue to allow for older audiences to make that
22:35
transition. I, I imagine that, you know,
22:38
folks like my parents of blessed memory would have stuck with
22:41
that because, you know, trying to figure out streaming may not
22:43
have been there and there may be situations where free immediate
22:52
reception actually matters. Civil Defense radio's
22:57
infrastructure remains extraordinarily efficient. 1
23:00
transmitter can reach thousands of people, but radio may become
23:04
specialized or supplementary rather than the central source
23:07
of everyday entertainment. I'm I'm just going to flat out
23:10
say it has the technology will be around for a long time, but
23:16
the dominance is going away. Radio dying is really isn't just
23:24
radio. It's the death of radio's
23:26
control of your dashboard. It's the death of the scarity.
23:30
Scarcity. Sorry, scarity, can't read my
23:33
own notes. Scarcity of audio programming.
23:36
It's the assumptions that it's the death of the assumption that
23:39
listeners will just accept whatever's on the air.
23:41
Remember when television used to be 4 channels and you just watch
23:44
whatever was on You don't do that now.
23:48
The station's ownership is going to die.
23:51
That, that relationship between the host and the audience, that,
23:54
that that station's ownership of that relationship is gone.
23:58
I could move from radio to podcasting and in many cases
24:03
keep the same audience, in many cases have the same
24:06
conversations. I could show you my text
24:07
machine. I left radio 11 years ago.
24:11
I was, I've been off radio longer than I was on.
24:14
Still get texts from people who want to talk to me about radio
24:18
stuff. You know, the radio show stuff,
24:21
the desire for companionship is not going to go away.
24:25
One of the few things that someone told me when I was in
24:27
radio was that there is that connection between you, the
24:33
host, and the listener. The listener is listening to you
24:36
because they want companionship, and it's a way of doing that.
24:39
And if you have a recognizable personality, lively
24:42
conversation, storytelling, a sense of community, that human
24:47
voice speaking directly to another person will will just
24:51
move to a different distribution.
24:53
But it will not go away. The radio star is not dead.
25:02
It's just it's just waiting for the next 1.
25:07
The audience still wants what great radio wants.
25:10
Provided I have a whole catalog of old time radio shows that I
25:14
love to listen to. Corporate radio has removed all
25:18
that. Many of those qualities have
25:19
gone away because people are expensive, they cost money and
25:22
signals are scarce. And they just assumed that the
25:25
listener would remain because there was nowhere else to go.
25:27
But now there is somewhere else to go.
25:31
Radio isn't dying because people no longer want it.
25:34
It's dying because radio air quote air quote is no longer
25:39
confined to AM air FM. The personalities have escaped
25:43
the station, the audience has escaped the signal, and the
25:48
dashboard is escaping the tower. And that's advantageous to you,
25:53
the listener, because it means that you now have the
25:56
opportunity to choose and listen to what you want to do.
26:00
Maybe you only want to listen to 5 minutes a day.
26:02
Maybe you want to listen to an hour of me.
26:05
There are other podcasts coming. There are other things.
26:08
Every day something new is added.
26:12
And once you find that niche, once you find that that show
26:17
that you want to listen to, you can do it for the rest of your
26:20
life and be happy, or at least the rest of the life of that
26:23
show. And more and more hosts are
26:26
discovering that freedom that they didn't have before.
26:29
More and more of us are discovering these ideas that,
26:33
man, there is a way to do this now.
26:38
And I'm no longer bound by controls that, you know, just
26:46
ruined my life, made it hard to do things.
26:50
I was there, I experienced it, and I know others are as well.
26:54
And I know that in the next weeks, months, years, more and
26:59
more of people like me are going to move to this.
27:01
And we're going to love doing it.
27:03
We love sitting in front of the microphone and talking about
27:06
things that matter to us and hopefully matter to you.
27:11
And if what I'm talking about doesn't matter to you, find
27:14
someone else to listen to that matters to you.
27:16
If it does matter to you, share it with someone else.
27:19
Tell them about it. Let's build that community back
27:22
so that we have those things again.
27:24
That's the point and that's what we're trying to do.
27:28
And things are going to move much quicker now I think in that
27:32
direction.