WHATEVER HAPPENED TO LOCAL RADIO NEWS?
Local radio news has undergone an astonishing metamorphosis over the last four decades—from too much to hardly any. Where Top 40 stations once routinely aired five-minute newscasts hourly, 24/7, and twice an hour during drive-times, they now air none at all. Where every major market station worthy of the name had a news department, now only the news-talk stations bother. And where local-market stations made news their bread-and-butter, many now don’t even bother to interrupt the satellite to talk about what happened at the city council meeting last night. (Many others, to their credit, do.)
It is not only time to stop this erosion of information—it’s also possible.
Why has local news disappeared from radio in many markets? General managers and program directors offer the same two excuses:
- budget restrictions
- changing listener tastes.
Let’s laser in on these oft-cited reasons.
“It’s the budget, stupid”
When the economy sours and sales budgets nosedive, managers who are looking to lop off a quick limb here and there to cut expenses almost always zero in on news. News is an expense, not a profit center, they say. One station owner actually said to me: “It’s like the engineer. I don’t know what he does but I know I need him. Can’t say the same for news.” Good lord.
A line like that points out an issue in common between engineering and news: unlike sales and programming, engineers and news people are not temperamentally wired to “sell” themselves to management. As far as most engineers and journalists are concerned, they exist to provide a specialized service which requires solid training and expertise.
My father, a mechanical engineer, once remarked, “My name is my resume”. He could have substituted the word “work” for “name”. That’s as far as many news and engineering professionals will go to self-promote.
Programming, on the other hand, can offer ratings as proof of its reason for being. At the very least, they provide the noise that’s heard on the air all day. Sales, of course, is the most easily quantifiable department in the building. Even the office staff produces obvious output such as logs, bookkeeping and tending the phones.
News doesn’t provide any of those “proofs of performance”. It provides the who-what-when-where-why and hopefully punches them up with sound. Good news writers turn even short news updates into sparklers of information. But they don’t play music, spout bombast or sell advertising.
That makes news fair game to many cost-desperate managers.
Here’s a two-pronged fix:
1. Go back to selling news sponsorships, which were staples of radio advertising for decades. I’m not talking about Old School fifteen-minute newscasts with three :60s plus billboards. Even rookie news people can practice tight writing and conversational delivery while making room for a :30 within a three-minute news update. Or a :15 in a two-minute ‘cast. They can, that is, if you give them the opportunity.
News sponsorships aren’t hard to sell if you make up your mind that you’re going to consistently do so. When you do sell them, you’ve monetized your local news!
2. View news as a loss leader. You can also look at local news the way retailers view certain items: as “loss leaders” or “doorbusters” that lure shoppers inside, where they will presumably buy more stuff. Same with your local news: listeners tune in to find out what’s happening in their world and how it relates to them. If you’re the only station in town that actually provides that information—not who won Dancing With the Stars last night but actual news—then they’ve sampled your product and can stay for your entertainment offerings.
“Our listeners don’t want it, dude”
Forget the news-talk stations—focus only on the music stations in your market or nearby. What do they offer as news content? If they bother at all, you can bet it will come from the “morning show sidekick” (often a giggly female) spouting celebrity and entertainment shtick. Yes, Letterman had a funny monolog last night. Oh boy, that Charlie Sheen!
But why is my water bill skyrocketing? Why can’t I get a cop when I need one? Wait, they’re cutting the fire department’s budget?
If all politics is local, so is all news. Almost every national and world event has a local corollary—if you have a local newsperson to work the story. Most of your listeners live with at least one foot in the real world. They have jobs or are looking for them. They have relationships. They have money but not enough. They’re subject to local laws, regulations and taxes.
Their lives are about more than Lindsay Lohan’s rehab.
And here’s a shocker for some radio managers: Every listener does not acquire information from social media and word-of-mouth. Many, many of them want more. Where will they get it if you don’t provide it? The newspaper? Get serious. Social media for local news? Come on.
Here’s another bulletin: Every listener is not 22 years old (or 17). It’s hard for an adult to take seriously some local and cable TV news anchors who are essentially pretty people who sound like they’re 16 years old. You can uniquely provide information within your format that your core listeners will appreciate.
Unlike the younger crowd, these people listen to radio. A lot. In the car, at work, everywhere. As an industry, we've dug up piles of statistics that prove it beyond doubt. So what do you have to offer them in addition to yak about the latest YouTube video that’s gone viral?
When you approach news as something you can actually sell—and as a valuable commodity even if it isn’t entirely monetized—it becomes an attractive business investment.
When you present meaningful information—not entertainment updates disguised as news—it makes a positive contribution to any format and jumps you way over the competition as a valued medium.
