(By Mike McVay) The news cycle over the last four weeks has been spinning faster than anything we’ve seen since early 2021. President Biden’s decision to step out of the Presidential race this past weekend set off alerts for news bulletins, text messaging, social media direct messages, and a spate of emails from digital periodicals.
Reports and messages interrupted the lives of many. Opinions from pundits, journalists, and the general public interrupted their weekends to assess the situation and either report the news or listen/watch the news.
The announcement of the President’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris ratcheted up the news to an even higher level. The almost immediate cries for the President to resign his office, and the accusations of a “coverup” of his health status, pushed the average American to seek news beyond what is their normal need for information.
The President of the United States deciding to step away from reelection isn’t just national news: it is global news. These historic moments are few and far between. Whatever the future holds will be studied and analyzed in years to come, but in media, this is our present.
Rahm Emmanuel, the onetime advisor to President Obama, former White House Chief of Staff, and former Mayor of Chicago, is often credited for the statement, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.” Winston Churchill is the most acknowledged originator of the statement which was, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” The two nearly identical statements bear a message for media. The word good is the one to be emphasized, specifically for radio.
The news-hungry consumer has many options available to them, but it is radio that has an opportunity to engage to a greater extent those who are current listeners and to entice those who have abandoned the medium to return for news and commentary.
The same importance and urgency that’s put upon auto manufacturers to keep radio in the car should be put upon your own programming and product lines – which is to provide credibility and satisfy the audiences’ ability to depend on your station for news and information. The opportunity to reinforce your brand, deliver more frequent reports, compete with social media for immediacy, and make advance plans on how and when to deliver the biggest stories, including having staffers on-call.
These are actionable suggestions from longtime McVay Media News Consultant Holland Cooke:
- Be known for knowing what JUST happened, and as the source for what happens next.
- Your news network has never been a more valuable asset. Use it to invite occasions of listening, “for a quick [name of network] update, every half-hour, throughout your busy day.” Say that around 15 and 45.
- After I recommended that a client station add its network’s half-hour headlines, our promos crowed that, “We’ve doubled down on Fox News,” explaining the times to keep coming back.
- Hosts: IF EVER there was a time to make “callers” the show, it’s now. On-hour/half-hour newscasts are facts. Fill in-between with callers’ feelings and you’ll own this story. Windy monologues risk relinquishing dialogue to social media.
- Music stations: Identify your News/Talk cluster-mate as owning this story. Point to them for frequent news updates.
- Sales: Work the phones NOW. A bank, insurance agency, or other advertiser can sound blue chip by title-sponsoring network newscasts.
Cooke said, “No other President has left a race for reelection this close to election day. But the Brits just accomplished a whole election in less time. What’s next? Suspense is gold.”
The opportunity to reignite News and News/Talk radio audiences is now. The immediacy of radio is a benefit that’s often touted by media leadership, but it has to be real and credible. That means interrupting programming, including paid programming. Do you, and does your company, have the stomach it takes to win?
Mike McVay is President of McVay Media and can be reached at [email protected]. Read Mike’s Radio Ink archives here.
All laudable and spot-on recommendations, as is expected from you, Mike. Your suggestions reflect the essence of good radio branding and promotion. In this news cycle there will be a lot to “unpack” and present to the public. There is where all communications, radio, TV, cable, satellite and internet will have the opportunity to flourish, but there is a downside.
The allure of being “first’ with a story weigh heavily on a news outlet’s long-term credibility. Therein lies the hidden temptation to get a story wrong, by either misinforming or editorializing, at the expense of credibility if the content is proven to be erroneous in the future.
When the lines between newscaster, political pendent and blogger become blurred, credibility is at stake. This not only erodes sustained believability, but is just bad for the country, where free and diverse “opinions” are encouraged, however “hard” news is supposed to be factual allowing the consumer to come to their own conclusions. Once a news outlet is identified as biased, unless presented and billboarded as an individual’s opinion, it loses believability as a credible news source. In other words, it can’t be trusted. News outlets, like people, develop reputations. Opinion is fine if it is not presented as objective fact.
If a news facility presents itself as a reliable news source, regardless of format, it must do everything it can to present facts before reporting information as news. Accuracy and objectivity are the cornerstones of credibility.
Bill and Dianna … thank you both for your comments. This type of dialogue and debate is necessary.
Great points, Mike. Wish there were the bodies there to implement them.
Large-to-Major Markets may have the players, but alas, smaller markets do not. Many are piping in their news from national companies with contract workers, and few of those are getting paid the bucks needed to dig for local and relevant content. So they don’t dig. Most of the rest of them are not doing news at all, if they’re music stations (and even if they’re not.) Do I think that can (and should) change? Heck, yeah. Any time soon?
News people are not viewed as valuable assets unless they’re in the majors. And sometimes, not even then. Contract workers 15 years ago were offered five bucks a newscast.(I know – I got one of those offers. No, I didn’t take it.) Think it’s changed much since then?
I don’t teach my students to do radio news – I teach them to do multi-media news. When they cover a news event, they shoot video, too, and think about composing stories. That’s the only way they’ll be able to make a living in today’s digital and broadcast news business.