When commercial radio was born in the 1920s, radio’s WHY was thought to be a technology that could provide nationwide communications that would be a unifier for cultural and social systems. Radio’s regulatory guiding principle was to “operate in the public interest, convenience and/or necessity.”
When people were still trying to wrap their minds around what exactly radio would be, there was one common reoccurring theme about what radio broadcasting could do, and that was to unify a nation and create an American identity.
It could accomplish this in several areas:
- Physical Unity: the ability to unite America from coast-to-coast, border to border, with instantaneous wireless communication.
- Cultural Unity: through entertainment, news and the spoken word (English); radio could create a kind of national homogeneity.
- Institutional Unity: corporations and the federal government would come together on a mandate that this new powerful form of communications needed centralized control.
- Economic Unity: through advertising, radio could now offer national, regional and local opportunities for businesses to expose their products and services and grow our nation’s economy.
Radio vs. The Internet & Artificial Intelligence
Just about every business has found its original business model challenged by a population connected to the internet. Think about the original radio WHY areas and you can easily see how each of them has been overtaken, embellished – and depending on your point of view – improved upon by the world wide web and artificial intelligence.
The internet, it turns out, is a better innovation for addressing those original foundational tenets of radio’s purpose than radio itself. So now what?
Radio needs to re-think its “WHY;” its reason for existing. Then it needs to communicate it, clearly and simply or suffer the consequences. Bud Walters of The Cromwell Group loves to say, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.” Until the radio industry figures this out, getting new people to listen (or former listeners to return) will be a challenge.
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
-Simon Sinek
Two Questions
To help you get started on defining radio’s WHY for the 21st Century, I’d like to share two questions that GOODRATINGS Strategic Services consultant Tommy Kramer asked his clients:
- What do you have that I can’t get everywhere else?
- What do you have that I can’t get ANYWHERE else?
Tommy says that coming up with the answers to these two questions will decide your future.
I would add that working through these two questions might just uncover your new WHY for your radio station(s) in the 21st Century.
DickTaylorBlog 
The world in the 1820s was much different that today. One of the promises of radio was to reach out into the “hinterlands”, affectionately called “the sticks,” or the “boonies.” Specify an area that is far away from a city or town on country roads which in the 1920s were many times dirt or mud roads. Allowing rural residents a seat in a church or a classroom. So radio was hoped o be educational, as well as unifying. Not really necessary anymore.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Paul, that’s so true.
When television came on the scene – financially built by radio revenues – radio re-invented itself and found a new “WHY”. Both the transistor and car radio contributed to this new mission.
We are at that point in time once again, where radio needs to re-invent itself in order to stay relevant — if it’s even possible.
-DT
LikeLiked by 1 person
Radio should do a modification of what was old is new again. 1) chop the commercial load in half 2). make it relevant to the community not real estate property 3). live and local attracts the listeners not recorded and wall paper 4) one PD does not FIT ALL in a company.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank You Ray for adding your perspective to this subject.
-DT
LikeLike