If ever you needed a barometer of exactly how geeky I am, there’s always the fact that I am insanely irritated by a logical fallacy that lies at the heart of so many surveys published in the popular press: Post hoc ergo propter hoc. After, therefore because.
Someone’s always announcing the death of radio. It’s usually brought about by the advent of a new medium or the popularisation of another seemingly competing technological form. MTV’s video killed the radio star. Satellite radio heralded the death of radio.
At the moment, it’s the turn of the iPod to kill radio. But it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s been a new piece of commercial research about Youth Media Use (link not Firefox-friendly) that asserts:
While the first phase confirmed perceptions that young people are spending less time listening to the radio as a result of using the Internet, this update uncovers new youth perceptions that radio can win them back!
Okay, this represents all manner of faulty thinking and PR nonsense – and many a bad decision will no doubt be made on its shoulders.
First of all, internet use does not cause a decline in radio listening. It might contribute – but these things are always complicated.
News and talk radio stations soar in popularity during times of crisis. Pop music stations become more popular in the summertime. People go away and come back for the most unexpected of reasons.
Too many ads. Too much talk. Not enough talk. Talking over intros. Inane banter. Stupid competitions. Changes in personal routine. All these things conspire to drive people away from radio.
My former mentor John Haynes maintained that there was a three-year cycle to radio programming philosophies.
Personality-driven radio would get three years in the commercial market and the likes of Jamie Theakston would get telly ads. Then someone would do a survey that “proved” people wanted ‘Less Talk, More Music’ – and so the slogans would reappear for a few years: ‘Ten in a Row’, ‘Non-Stop 50-minute Music Block’, ‘Triple-plays’. And on around it would go as soon as the next survey “proved” that what people really wanted was to be entertained and informed by someone they felt they knew and trusted.
Since he first mentioned it in 1993, I’ve been keeping an eye on it (actually an ear). He was pretty much spot on. Why radio stations see these two positions as mutually exclusive is beyond me – but that’s an observation for another day.
A new technology shifts the environment, of course, but there are far more powerful forces at work than simply ‘a new toy is on the market’. That whole ‘people are complex’ thing exerts a far greater gravitational pull on trends than ‘this technology makes us act in a certain way’ could possibly hope to claim.
To say that 18-24 year olds prefer iPods to Radio is like saying they prefer sports cars to surfboards. And that the increase in the sale of sports cars is bad news for surf shops.
I can’t drive and surf at the same time (actually, it’s quite likely I can’t surf at all) and I can’t listen to my iPod and the radio at the same time. But that doesn’t mean I don’t listen to the radio BECAUSE of my iPod.
It’s becoming a central theme with me. I may be a McLuhanist – but I’m not a technological determinist. The technology doesn’t make me act in a particular way. It may afford me that option – but I have agency in this.
Like the central argument in my conference paper about the social impact of iPods, my main point here is ‘Well, it’s complicated…’
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. After, therefore because.
* Teenagers listened to heavy metal and then killed themselves.
* Someone lit a cigarette and then the bus arrived.
* Downloading came along and then the music industry was in trouble.
* iPods became popular and then radio listening decreased.
I don’t dispute these things happened. I just dispute that there is a direct causal relationship between the two.
And so… any report that claims to uncover “new youth perceptions that radio can win them back!” is, of course, largely nonsense.
There are things that radio stations should be doing in the 21st century that they’re not. Some of those things are technological. Others are merely communicative (or even, dare I say it, ethical). Perhaps the internet and the portable digital players highlight this. But radio should be doing these things in order to be good radio on its own terms – not in order to compete with or pretend to be like some other platform.
That said, radio can make good use of internet technologies. Podcasting would be great for radio stations that just understood what it was and what it could do. I strongly believe there are fewer than five radio stations worldwide doing podcasting well. I haven’t found them yet, but they must be there.
Streaming of programming is perplexing for most radio stations because they instinctively know they should be doing it – but they don’t know why or to what end.
Websites should be more than a brochure. Most radio stations get that wrong. But that’s not why radio suffers.
There are other forces at work that are at the heart of what’s wrong with radio.
It’s important that radio stations understand the internet and the opportunities that lie within. But they should not try and BE the internet, nor compete with it. Radio has its own strengths – and if there’s anything to learn from surveys with broken logic and overly simplistic conclusions (avoid research that over-uses the exclamation mark, incidentally) it’s that the world is changing, and engaging with it is a far better strategy than fearing it or attacking it.
I’m constantly reminded how mainstream this technology isn’t. James Debenham and I did a presentation to an entire class of MA students specialising in media production. If you’re looking for smart tech-savvy youths, surely that’s where you’d start looking. Of the three who’d ever heard of it, not one could actually say what podcasting is.
Podcasting is not what happened to radio.
Perhaps the internet takes people’s time and attention from other media – but radio’s biggest danger lies elsewhere.
PS: Many thanks to Peter McLennan for pointing out a conference and event called DJs For Life that’s going on in my backyard this weekend. I’d have completely missed it – and that looks well worth making a point of not missing. Much appreciated.
Links:
Marshall McLuhan
Michael Bull: Professor iPod
The Radio Studies Network
Tags: mcluhan, ipod, radio, media
Previously: I Love Airtunes and Last FM… Why can’t they get along?
