Steve Jobs receives ample praise for his innovation.
Every product announcement results in endless analysis about how he’ll once again change the course of western civilization.
But one area where he’s had a major impact that has gone totally unnoticed is radio.
We may have Steve Jobs to thank for a second golden age of radio.
It doesn’t take extensive research and analysis to figure out why TV slayed radio as an entertainment medium. The difference between TV and radio is like a talkie vs. silent film. The visual aspect simply makes TV more engaging than radio. Radio does have a major advantage over TV: because it’s purely an auditory medium it can be highly portable. But until recently, radio has never been able to capitalize on this.
Let’s be clear: great radio programs never stopped being made, and some of the best entertainment is on radio. But radio has always had a distribution problem. With NPR, for instance, most stations relegate the flagship shows to weekends so they won’t compete with primetime TV. And because there is competition with weekend activities, the shows typically come on in the morning when stations figure people aren’t doing anything except eating breakfast . More so than TV, radio needed a DVR.
In the late 1990s stations began streaming shows from their websites (remember RealAudio?) and some shows were available for download at Audible (for a fee). People in radio clearly realized that an on-demand method of distribution was needed, but streaming and downloads still required people to be tethered to their computers. A DVR for radio was never created, but Apple came up with something better: podcasts.
Podcasts, iTunes and iPods have allowed radio programs to easily reach listeners by completely bypassing the actual radio broadcast, liberating programs from a schedule. But even more important, is that the technology has made the medium highly portable. Yes, you can watch TV and movies on your MP3 player, phone and computer, but because TV and movies are visual, you cannot watch programming while you drive or jog, or at least not well. I personally download half a dozen hours worth of radio a week and listen to it while I cook, cycle, drive, etc. It’s a huge lifesaver when I have to drive more than an hour.
The final technological breakthrough is that iTunes aggregates all the radio content – you don’t have to go to a website to download a show. (And the NPR iPhone App – perhaps the single greatest iPhone App – aggregates all NPR content from all stations – when you think about how much programming it provides, it’s pretty incredible.) So Steve Jobs has set the stage for a revitalization of radio, freeing it from having to compete with TV, maximizing its portability.
As I said before, some of the best original programming is on radio, and you no longer have an excuse not to listen to it. This American Life can go head to head with just about anything on TV. It features stories from Americans that capture the American experience; some are funny, sad, bizarre or news related. Its strength is its storytelling style. It doesn’t feel like a documentary; instead, it feels like the story is being told live. One of the recent episodes on corruption in the NYPD, which was revealed by a beat cop who secretly recorded his workday for 17 months, is pretty thrilling – it’s like The Wire, but sadly, all true. This American Life was adapted into TV format for Showtime, and it just didn’t work. It wasn’t necessary to see anything. The show’s successful storytelling style was the result of having only audio to work with. And it also lost its portability element — you had to be near a TV to watch the episodes.
My personal favorite show is Wait Wait Don’t Tell. There are few comedies on TV that have me laughing out loud so much in an hour than Wait Wait. The show is a news quiz about the more bizarre news stories from the week, featuring guest panelists who are reporters, writers and comedians. Because the show is audio only, they cannot rely on sight gags, or even a reaction shot of someone’s face. This results in sharp writing and rapid fire witty banter. And of course there are other classic NPR shows, like Fresh Air and Car Talk.
I’m sure a lot of you will realize that these shows have been around for a while – they’re hardly new – but podcasting has made them infinitely easier to listen to. Radio is undergoing a realignment of how shows are broadcast, moving away from AM/FM to and to podcasts. For example, This American Life has over 400,000 weekly podcast listeners.
I say we’re entering another golden age because pretty much any radio program from any station can be podcasted (I haven’t mentioned satellite radio because its more talk, sports and news, but it does similarly aggregate content). I’d argue that this is as big a deal as something like YouTube. For a while high quality content was being created in large quantities for radio, but there was no way to easily get it to people. Only a few radios shows were lucky enough receive national syndication, and then they had to fight for the few prime programming slots, which really weren’t all that great.
But now, none of that matters.
