Destined to Fail?

The station changes format. A beloved, longtime talent leaves a major daypart. A competitor encroaches on your format. Financial demands lead to an increased commercial load or the elimination of all promotion & marketing.

These things all negatively impact the opportunity to build or maintain an audience. Yet the expectation for performance remains, often unrealistically, and is sometimes considered as if in a vacuum. Yet nothing is clearer than Newton’s third law of motion: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” Change is sometimes destined to fail.

The biggest obstacle to success is that the level of noise from all forms of media is loud and getting louder. Whether radio, television, podcasting, social media, or live and on-demand streaming, the delivery method for content is vast and omnipresent. We have traditional receivers, wired and unwired, satellite, smart speakers, tablets, computers, apps, and mobile phones. Devices. Lots of devices on which to receive content. The choices for content are many. Free and subscription.

Breaking through this high level of noise is difficult. Which is why change, any change, requires deep thought and consideration. It requires financial and intellectual support. It requires a strategic approach. It’s not your birthright to attract an audience. The days of three individual media (Print, Television, and Radio) are decades in the past. Promoting a change, new show, different music, or talk presentation on your own platform is somewhat like a tree falling in the woods, and there’s no one there to hear it.

Changes always require marketing and promotion. That’s still not a guarantee of success.

Competition today is so plentiful that changes require all that I’ve noted … and patience. Which few leaders in media have the luxury of today? That’s not always because of the leadership, but lies at the feet of who they report to, be it stockholders, investors, bankers, or partners. We all have bosses. In my case, they’re my clients. In the case of media leadership, they’re who I’ve identified, and likely some whose existence is unknown.

Because of the pressure to succeed, patience is not a virtue that I’ve seen much of in today’s media environment. Marketing, which is needed when launching a new format or making on-air changes, is scarce. Whenever you make a change on the air, no matter how big or small, you are giving some part of your audience a reason to sample other radio stations, consider other entertainment and information options, and put a rebuild at risk. When you make any large noticeable change, there is likely to be audience loss and advertiser confusion. You need to market the occurrence and benefit of the change.

Despite having marketing, changes that are made have to be noticeably better than what was on the air before, better than that of a competitor, or fill a format hole. You need to provide an incentive to move an audience from a competitor to your station. Connectivity to the audience you desire to connect with is important. Social media is a great way to make that connection, but you still need mass media for marketing to build a raw audience sizeable enough to overcome the wobbles of rating methodology.

It is the lack of these things that leads me to advise strong content providers to maintain their most basic offering, evolve as is appropriate, and look at significant change as an option only when other options have been considered. I understand and accept that at times, the option to change is obvious when failure is so clear because of your current situation that it’s the logical next step. However, change without strategy, realistic expectations, support for execution, and marketing is a big part of why failure happens.

The best-case scenario is that you have the ability to research opportunities, strategize on a plan for execution, and have the human and financial resources to promote and market to break through the noise. These benefits still warrant patience. The commitment to the execution of a plan requires ice in one’s veins. That fortitude is easier written about than executed. Managing others’ expectations is a skill that I had to learn and employ frequently during my career.

The other challenge to avoiding failure is coming to grips with the acknowledgment that strategic design and operation used in some corners of radio today is outdated. The lack of leadership’s acknowledgment of the many choices the audience has today is disappointing. Then there is attention to detail, which is every bit as important today as it ever was, but the details you pay attention to should be influenced by how people use radio today versus yesterday. The use of radio, even in the last ten years, has changed. When people listen to the radio has changed. Where they listen has also changed; so has How people listen to the radio.

The people who create content for the radio have to change their thinking.

Start with the fact that radio in 2026 has to use every part of the cow. Your content can air live, on demand, on a podcast, on social media, free, and subscription-based. Content should be delivered, or edited, with time shifting in mind. It isn’t only pumped out live and in real time. Delivery of content has many options today, too. People listen mostly in bytes. Repeat listening is more frequent, but time spent listening is shorter than in the past. Which means repetition is less of an issue than it once was, and is arguably a way to build Time Spent Listening. The more you play a person’s favorite songs or read the biggest stories, the more frequently they return to your station. The negative perception of repetition remains, though, mostly internally.

Loyalty to a station brand is much more difficult to develop, but a talent who has that special something can build their brand more rapidly. The smart broadcaster hitches their wagon to a talent that can pull the station with them. Striving to diminish the talent’s image and branding, to prevent a talent from growing bigger in notoriety of the station, is a mistake. Talent is that element that attracts an audience in a habitual fashion.

We’ve seen the audience grow in Afternoon Drive, dependent on format, to rival or challenge morning drive audience shares. A lot of that is lifestyle. We depart and arrive at work at varying times. We leave for home in a more consistent manner. Where the audience listens has also changed. More and more people work at home. It’s poor judgment to assume that at-work listening is 9-5 and in an office. We work many hours.

It’s also a mistake to ignore the new world where the audience uses radio beyond weekdays 6:00am-7:00pm. Despite what a national advertiser may think, evenings have value. Radio listening is around the clock, seven days a week, despite the size of the audience growing or diminishing based on the time of day. There’s an audience listening. Listening at night leads to listening in the morning. No hour of the 24 in a day is worthless.

Working as a part of the consulting team on Quu, the in-vehicle visual/audio system that connects the sense of sight to that of sound, I can tell you that the research I’ve seen underscores the importance of getting “the last listen” before the listener exits the vehicle. When someone reenters their vehicle and starts their car, you want your radio station to be what comes up first on the center stack of the car. In-auto listening is one of the few areas where radio still dominates. Own it. Embrace it. Imagine the audience listening in a car when you create and deliver content.

Change doesn’t have to be the initiation of failure. Changing without forethought and the tools needed to build a new audience will.