What Now, Radio? The Attention Economy is Here!

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  0:00  
The Sound Off podcast starts now.

Matt Cundill  0:05  
Well, it has been quite the summer for radio. There have been a lot of layoffs at places like Cumulus and iHeart, Rogers, Odyssey, Chorus. It's dominated the headlines and social media feeds, and you know why wouldn't it? Companies in radio they ask their people to do social media, go on it, build a mass following, and then when they finally hit that peak, their last post is generally, "Hey, I'm being let go, and our relationship is is over. One of the things radio has constantly gotten wrong is the relationship between the radio station and the listener, and once it's severed, the listener is free to go check out something else. It's not something that can be done on a spreadsheet. There are some excellent stats you can read about radio if you go on LinkedIn. The radio leaders all have the latest data to show that radio is out in front of a lot of things, including in the car listening and tops when it comes to ad delivery. And if you ask a program director though every day to name the best thing that happens on a radio station, it generally came from a person or a personality, something that their staff did. It likely wasn't a song or an ad. Now I know radio still works. I've still got my favorite radio stations that I listen to. Sometimes I listen to those radio shows as a podcast late at night. I listen in the car. A few times I have to activate the VPN to access it. Radio Player Canada is another one I listen to. I listen on the iHeart app, satellite radio as well, and and even sometimes I'll listen to a terrestrial radio station over the air. Dial flipping, though, for me is largely over. The only time I do it is to find out how bad some stations are when they're pre-promoting, like things like the weather, the traffic coming up after the break. But it's information I can already get on my telephone, or I could just yell at the device in the corner, and it can tell me things. I also listen to a lot of podcasts, and these ones happen to be the ones that I listened to last week. Don't judge me. One of those shows, by the way, I watched partially on LinkedIn, and then I went to finish it on Apple Podcasts. Now we've done countless episodes with Dan Meisner and Brian Barletta, and we're always trying to figure out how to count this and get the attribution. But the point that I'm making here is that a lot of these podcasts and radio too don't even involve video. So let me just get back to the listing that I did. I just made it sound like you have to be in video, and you do not have to be on video whatsoever. In fact, a lot of those shows there's just a static image that just sits on YouTube. But back in 2023, it was Jay Mackless and Stephen Goldstein who were at Podcast Movement, and they had a study that talked about the power of video. And it was sort of in that moment that I was like, "Man, this is this is new, and it's but something's over, and it wasn't about audio being over; it's about audio and video, sort of sharing the space, and really at the time it was really about the video. Is there to promote the audio and the content? It's been three years since that happened. It's one of the ways people discover you, the ways people connect with you. YouTube Shorts, Instagram Shorts, TikToks, and now we've got this like zombie-like culture that's just roaming the earth, scrolling for short content. Listen, it's vapid, but I'm here to say that I'll encourage you to participate in it if you want to get your name out there. And I was really, really resistant at first to join the video fund. I'm a firm believer that you got to go where your audience is, though, and they're on phones, right? And they're scrolling, and there's Instagram, TikTok, Facebook has Shorts, YouTube's got Shorts, and yeah, it's all very vapid. So that's why this show, by the way, is now you can find this on the iHeart app. You can also find it on the Amazon Music app in the U.S. on video.

Matt Cundill  3:54  
You can toggle between video and and sound and audio if you want, and we're also on Apple Podcasts. So, what am I really saying here about this? Well, the best time for your radio station to have had a video strategy was 2013. But if your station doesn't have one, now is the best time for your radio station or even you as a personality to get yourself a video strategy. And where are you going to go? Is it TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook? That's that's for you to decide. It could be all of them, it could be some of them, it could be none of them. But before you make decisions on that, I want you to listen to this clip. Okay, so this clip is going to come from Craig Bruce's Game Changers. Craig has been on this show before, and it is Jules Lund who was the guest on the show, and Jules has been doing a lot of work inside the Instagram area with videos. And as the title of the episode goes, he's the OG of IG.

Jules Lund  4:55  
The problem with the radio industry is they think they are an audience. Industry and that ship has sailed, and so if you continue to look at one farcical metric, which is ratings, now I understand that it's the accepted measurement for the radio industry, but if we're not embarrassed about it, then we're in a bigger hole than I thought, and we are no longer in the broadcast business. We are in the attention economy, and attention is everywhere. The old world was broadcast audience ratings, and that was the flywheel, but now it's not broadcast because and and radio hasn't failed itself. You know, the world has just changed. It's not like radio dropped the ball. They're just dangerously under evolved, and they were back then. You know, I I still saw things and that gave me the ick. The new flywheel is attention, participation, community, trust, then commerce.

Matt Cundill  6:13  
So when an Aussie says that the ship has sailed, it sailed, and I'll leave the rant about radio measurement out for now. Canada has something new coming in the next few weeks, which we're going to do a deep dive on and unveil. And you know, in the U.S. they they change the way they count by five minutes of listening down to three minutes of listening. Yeah, changing the way you count doesn't doesn't solve any problem. At this point, though, I want to say congratulations to Craig Bruce for Game Changers Radio for the work that he's done on the show for the last couple of years. I forget the name of your co-host, and I apologize for that right now. But he just took a step back from the show because Kyle and Jackie O have had changes. Kyle has launched a brand new show, and is going to be starting off with that. But I want you to go back to what we just heard from Jules. Attention, participation, community, and trust. These are all elements that we've been talking about in podcasts for about two decades now, and I've never heard it put together like that before. Where you know we've done episodes about these things, but to hear them all put together in that particular order is is really interesting. I think the biggest one there, by the way, is trust. Trust is is like money; you can blow it easily, and it's very difficult to to accumulate. But it's probably the most important one in in in that mix. Now, whether anybody likes this or not, this this is the future. And and Bobby Bones, I don't think I need to explain necessarily who Bobby Bones is to you? If you've heard him speak about his early days in radio, it was apparent he knew how to get attention. This is you know back in the early 2000s, and I posted the the story that that I'm referencing to about him and lunchbox pulling a prank that got into them into some hot water back in 2004. It's up on YouTube, and I've put it up on the episode page@soundoffpodcast.com. Anyhow, this is Bobby Bones, and he is discussing the future of radio. My

Bobby Bones  8:12  
feeling is this is so in the weeds right now that if you can't do long form content, that you can duplicate, and I would say duplicate by putting up in multiple forms in multiple places. The industry, as it is, is not going to last that long for you. Back in the day, you could just sound great between songs, and have a wonderful career. It just isn't. It isn't that anymore. There should be nothing that you're doing that you can't put somewhere else, and hope that that somewhere else also gets streams or clicks or is able to be monetized. Nothing. If there's anything that's going over broadcast radio, it should be able to be reused somewhere else to grow your platform. So that's the new version of radio. You don't have to call it radio, but if you're in radio, you should call it radio.

Matt Cundill  8:57  
Yeah, and it's been like that for I think since 2017, 2018. That was really the time when personalities began to become the most, you know, requested part of a radio station. When people said, when people were asked the question, "Why do you come to the radio station? p1 listeners at radio stations said, "Yeah, because of the personality and not because of the music. And I think that probably was when we learned that Spotify had really sort of made a dent into the music and made music very ubiquitous. But here we are now, and long form-if you can be long form-that can create a lot of clips, and and long form content is going to be sort of the starter point for being a personality that can that can really make it, because again, you're going to be able to distribute it everywhere. So get good at this thing, whatever you're doing behind a microphone. Are you making enough great radio? Are you making enough great content that could be repurposed elsewhere? Now I want you to pay attention to my friend Mel's on the mic. Now Mel's on the mic is somebody that. Had on the show back in 2018, and we I think we had a show we had an episode called Hyper Local Super Social, and he was working in Keely, Texas at the time. He later moved to Tyler, Texas, but we talked about the opportunity in radio and really doubling down into the space of hyper local and super social. Now he's not in radio. He's been out since February of 2025. He he he got laid off, but you know he's still putting out a short every morning. His morning constitutional, he calls it, and he was talking about the recent layoffs in radio, the ones we've been hearing about all summer, and he still feels the same way about about what radio can be and should be.

Melz on the Mic  10:47  
Got to talk about another fumble by radio that's happening right now. They already fumbled streaming. They could have been the worldwide leaders in streaming, fumbled that, could have been the leaders in podcasting, fumbled that. Too late to react to that, and now with them cutting out all these local talents and local broadcast and local everything and abandoning pretty much everything local, they're doing it at a time when, if you check your algorithms on TikTok and Facebook and and all these other platforms, they're more focused on localizing your content. Have you not noticed that your algorithm is giving you more local, closer to you videos and content? Once again, the competitive advantage that radio has over most of the mediums, most other mediums is its ability to be live and local. But now you've xed out all the local DJs and all the local talent. Another all-time fumble by this industry. So if you are a content creator in any way, shape, or form, and and you're looking for you know ways to make money, you probably need to start with something more local instead of trying to chase behind the big advertisers, you know, because radio's leaving them behind and don't care about their dollars. Now, unfortunately, because of the economy we're in, a lot of these smaller mom and pop businesses are going to be struggling and hurting, and it's going to be hard for them to want to spend money with you. But you know, you still got to find a way to go get it done anyway, because it's out there, and they they're they're spending money on the right things, especially those who can provide good content. But again, another all-time Fumble Bar Radio, you know, abandoning local broadcasting at a time when the algorithms are recognizing the value and the importance of localized content and information goes to where your phone is located at.

Matt Cundill  12:48  
Did you get that? There's an opportunity whether you're in radio or not in radio, because the algorithms are now going local, and radio appears to have seated local in many places, and perhaps that's why the algorithms are going into you know local. I know on my Instagram feed, I definitely right at the bottom of my feed it says Winnipeg, right? So I'm getting a lot of stuff fed to me from Winnipeg in the bottom of the of the Instagram feed. Now the good news is is that with the right strategy, you whether you're in radio or not, can claim a piece of that pie, right? Definitely go and get yourself a chance to go and get in and do that. So I started the show with people and saying that radio is about people and connection, and yes, these layoffs do suck. There have been a lot of closures to radio stations as well and AM stations. I'm a little bit torn about. I think in North America we're overserved by radio. There's too many stations in markets. It feels like I'm saying two things at once here. I'm not, so work with me for a sec. I would buy an 80 AM radio station if I could, and you know what? I checked, and I can, but I won't do it because with five employees, we can create content from our homes. It costs a lot of money for a transmitter to run it. The hydro. I'm sorry to see some radio stations go here that I'm going to put up here on the screen. You know, it's tough for Canadian radio stations who can't post on Mett. Because of government legislation that backfired in their face, but it's good though the fake news is is getting through. And Mark Miller, who is the Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, you need to get rid of Bill C 18, all of it, please tomorrow. Okay, we said goodbye to some other radio stations in America just last week, and I'm having this AM radio talk because I do want to point out that Connie Teas in a broadcast dialog on the podcast recently spoke with Matt Kane and Rob Brown about their recent purchase of an AM property, and it sounds like they've got a good formula for you know the future of AM. I know we thought it was going to be DAB. For a bit, no, and there's HD radio out there that's you know kind of hit and miss depending on what part of North America that you're in. But if you go to the show notes of this episode, you can find the link to that podcast, and I've also posted it@soundoffpodcast.com. And by the way, in the time that I've started recording the second half of this show, someone has called to ask me if I wanted to buy an AM radio station. I'm not kidding. Somebody did ask me if I wanted to buy one. I said no. And also, in the time that I've been recording this, Lamont Hollywood from 107.7 The Bone in the Bay Area is out in cumulus cuts. Lamont Hollywood, I think, hailed from from Winnipeg and got his start there, and noticed a lot of man. He thanked a lot of people, and his Facebook post is epic. Again, I'll post that@soundoffpodcast.com, and as well, while we're on to bad news, kcal laying everyone off and going all automated, but their management said that this is going to bring broader appeal for both our audience and advertising partners. And there's nobody who believes that, by the way. So this is a lot to be talking about. I don't like the news disappearing from the airwaves, and I get it. News is expensive. It's tough to monetize since you know everything on air is now politicized, and you combine that with NPR cuts and shitty Canadian legislation that I mentioned earlier. And we got the FCC and the CRTC who are bodies who let operators just you know get away with too much or not enough all at all at the same time. But for you, go seize the opportunity. Go local, sell local.

Matt Cundill  16:41  
As somebody who's worked with agencies every week to get ad money, I can tell you that here at the Sound Off Media Company, the most profitable podcasts are the ones done by podcasters who can cut their own ad deals, and often those are local. If you'd like to partner with us, I'll send you one of my coveted one-sheet proposals, and you could become a partner here on the SoundUp podcast, or maybe you just want to work with me and become one of the great content creators that we have here. If you want to be everywhere and give yourself every chance to monetize, or if you want to just provide feedback to this episode, or maybe you think you'd be an excellent guest on the show, I'd love to have you. That way, I don't have to sit by myself here and and talk to you through this. It's you can reach me, Matt, at soundoff dot network.

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  17:27  
Produced and distributed by the Sound Off Media Company.