Inside Music Media

How fascinating is it to watch the decline of the establishment?

On both sides of the presidential primaries, outsiders are now in. Insiders are out and very few people even understand what forces are really at work.

It’s like radio.

Those damn Millennials are shaking everything up, radio people say.

Well, that, too.

Analysts say the reason the electorate believes Bernie over Hillary is that he is more authentic.

Hey, radio – haven’t we been talking about authenticity for ages and doing nothing about it? Radio stations are the most non-authentic things around.

That one third of the Democratic voters in New Hampshire exit polling Tuesday said that integrity was the most important thing that helped them decide on who to vote for and 92% of that group voted for Sanders.

Gloria Steinem, a Hillary supporter, got caught telling Bill Maher that young women were supporting Sanders because that’s where they would find the guys.

Ouch, could even Gloria Steinem be out of touch?

Whether Sanders wins or not, these socialist Millennials will not be going away but conservative talk radio will.

And you can blame the kids if that makes you feel better but you would be wrong.

Some of my best friends are conservative talk show hosts but I have warned again and again that Bob Pittman and Lew Dickey did as much to kill the format as Rush Limbaugh and his misogynist mouth.

Dickey and Pittman ran the stations that were conservative talk and they didn’t give a shit what these shows did – just don’t put them on FM. And look what happened? They pandered to their conservative baby boomer audience over 65.

Take optics.

Hillary would stand with baby boomer women behind her during the events leading up to New Hampshire’s election day but Bernie’s kids were behind him. Now, you’ll note, the old folks are out of the picture when Hillary stands at a podium.

Voila, look at the Millennials for Hillary.

We are witnessing a world that rejects bullshit.

That doesn’t want anymore of the same old thing.

That wants you to speak to their interests because, after all, it’s all about them.

As Chuck Todd of NBC News and Meet the Press said on MSNBC after the election, he can easily name what Bernie stands for but he can’t name why Hillary wants to be president – just because she can get things done? Todd suggesting voters may feel the same way.

And my radio friends know that they can’t name what their stations stand for because they stand for cutbacks and cheap programming because they can just do it thanks to digital automation.

When a radio station thinks “Your Hit Music Station” is a compelling reason to listen, isn’t it time to find out what young in demo audiences want not what you think they should want?

And who needs all-news all the time?

A 70 year old, maybe but not anyone with a Twitter account.

When Scott Herman asks his news listeners to give his news stations 22 minutes and they will give them the world, he’s showing how out of touch he really is.

Millennials need just 22 seconds to get the world via Twitter.

In fact, I envision a radio news format that sounds more like Twitter than anything radio currently has to offer.

And the new age radio music stations sound more like Twitter than a traditional radio format.

Some of my readers wrote to me the other day to say they would love to reimagine radio in this way and I think we should continue this discussion at my Philly conference April 6^th.

A Twitter news format.

A Twitter music format.

What’s all that about?

Or this question I get all the time.

I’m scared to make these major changes even though I know it must be done, how is a safe way to get started?

We’ll talk about that more, too. But to stay the same is a death sentence for radio.

Just as it is in politics.

Remain the establishment and some politician is going to lose the election.

Keep doing the unimaginative, non-authentic, older skewing radio that is on the air and the programming will be fit for funeral homes not people who are buying new homes.

This is perhaps a different way to describe the conversation we will have for 7 hours in April. But authenticity and Millennial values are no longer curiosity pieces.

It’s real.

It’s politics.

At work.

At home.

In the radio business.

Take the first step and listen to the future.

Thanks for the independent radio groups that are sending contingencies of their people to attend this timely event.

One station is sending all their employees but one to Philly so they can return on the same page.

This gives me hope that the radio industry will once again be saved from what Bernie Sanders would call the 1% by independent operators.

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