The Short Happy Life of an Old Radio Broadcaster
I Can't Keep Up as the Ground Shifts Daily
Broadcast and cable TV are fading fast. I read last week that in the most recent May sweeps, Nielsen measured more people watching streaming platforms than broadcast and cable television combined. The story came from a guest columnist at the Washington Post, who explained that when you remove the political sniping, late-night comics on TV are still an anachronism.
I believe it was 2017 when the BBC noticed there were more people listening to audio streams online than to the networks over the over-the-air transmissions. Or at least in some parts of Britain. Not long afterward, a news radio station in Los Angeles estimated a slightly larger online audience than over the air. In April 2020, as the country was coming unglued during an unnecessary panic, I walked into the office of my boss one morning. She explained that some 27,000 people had listened to me online that day. A huge number for us.
100 years ago, radio was in its infancy. At a company Christmas party in 2010, I told our general manager that I had read that week that the web would take over in five years. He said it could be as soon as 2012. Well, I’m not sure where the demarcation line is, but roughly a decade ago, a parallel media empire rose, and today, it’s dominant.
The Only Constant in Life is Change
That’s not to say the old models are dead, but like nations, some survive but won’t ever rule the world. I’ve been citing something a young adult told me as recently as July. He works as a manager at a local grocery store, and we often talk about football and politics when I’m shopping. One morning, he said my radio station had great content, then explained he was from the Spotify generation. Many years ago, I had a coworker named Ruth Wilson. She had a very self-deprecating sense of humor. We were at an event and someone asked about our audience demographic. “55 to death,” she replied.
We were all young people, and we shared a laugh. We were living at a time when cable was suddenly offering up to 50 channels!
A decade passed, and I was at a Radio and Television News Directors Association convention. Working for an affiliate of ABC (the Almost Broadcast Company!), I attended an affiliate party with a friend from a sister station. We were walking back to our hotel when he explained he was leaving broadcast news. He said that within a few years, people would be getting their information in entirely different ways, and we would be like carriage makers in 1912. It wasn’t a shock. This was a little more than 25 years ago, and I was looking over the technology on the exhibit floor and taking notes for my company. The firm bought one system I examined and used it to cut jobs and expenses. Friends said I should’ve kept my mouth shut, but if it hadn’t been me, it would’ve been someone else. Regardless, it didn’t save the company. The remains of the outfit are wreckage on some old broadcast highway.
I got out of bed Friday morning, and there was a note from one of our roving engineers. Our AM transmitter was down. Or it’s sneezing. It seems to be coming and going. We’ve been having issues since late August. The new equipment failed after only a month, but it should be replaced once more this weekend. Unlike 25 years ago, we’re not a stranded ship. The FM alternative was launched half a dozen years ago. Streaming has been around for nearly 20 years, and a phone app allows listening anywhere there’s cell service. In Idaho, there are still some spots where phone coverage isn’t guaranteed.
This is Like Riding a Tsunami
The old transmitter was down for a week in August, and it wasn’t pleasant for people who hadn’t adopted the new technology. Trust me, I heard from them! You would’ve thought I’d pulled the plug, twirled my mustache, and laughed diabolically.
I was miserable. I make my living by being heard, and I want to be heard by as many people as possible. But an unusual thing happened. The operations manager told me we had more app downloads that week than we had seen over the previous several months.
Where’s all of this going? I have no idea. When you consider the short lifespan of mass media in relation to human history, we’re traveling right now at warp speed.
We’ve had a great emphasis in recent years on web traffic. Short stories and mostly topics you would’ve read in the lifestyle section 30 years ago. It was a slow build, but impressive, too. Then AI arrived in force a couple of months ago, synthesizing stories on the web and providing a couple of succinct paragraphs in reply to searches. To put it bluntly, web traffic cratered across the Internet overnight.
I had a recent dream that I was driving with a friend, and we skidded off the road and began careening down a hill. I managed to turn the car around, and momentum carried us uphill to a gas station. Good news, right? Then some thugs held me up at the pumps!