I’ve wanted to write about this for a couple of weeks now, but I felt like everyone was a bit “Cracker Barrel fatigued.” So, I wanted to wait a bit to share my thoughts on the matter. When Cracker Barrel hit the headlines, it wasn’t because they reinvented themselves – it was because they flirted with drifting from what made them great.
Radio, are you listening?
Because right now, too much of our industry is chasing trends that will never define us. We’re experimenting with corporate-driven AI voices, automating away personalities, and convincing ourselves that efficiency is the same thing as connection. I hate to break it to you: it’s not.
Radio’s DNA has always been about people. It’s about the morning show that knows your kids’ school mascot. It’s about the host who cracks a joke that makes traffic on I-75 a little more bearable. It’s about voices that are real, live, and local. There is no algorithm, no radio consultant group that can replicate this. Radio stations must lean into what they’re great at – Authenticity. When they deviate from that, they fail.
The bold warning is this: if corporate radio continues to dilute what makes us special, we’ll end up as bland and forgettable as any other content feed. But if we double down on being human, authentic, and local, radio won’t just survive—it will thrive, the same way Cracker Barrel does when it leans into being unapologetically country.
I’m not just an AE who works in radio; I truly LOVE radio, and I’ve loved it long before I worked in it. I hope that radio can either lean in to what makes us great – or risk becoming irrelevant noise in a world already crowded with it.
Radio is like any tangible product. It needs to offer a unique user experience to thrive and that went by the wayside when the big shots tried to compete with the (non existent) threat from Satellite radio. It hasn’t recovered yet and has since faced an uncountable number of audio services that continues to distract listeners. Radio can still be unique, live, vibrant and relatable if we let it. We just won’t let it, save for a few awesome local operators. (I work for one.)
I have long thought radio needs to be live and in the community. Corporate, syndicated, voice tracks cannot replace what we did even just a few years ago.
As a friend of mine who worked on air in major markets said to me recently in an email…
“A cautionary tale of what happens when lawyers and corporate stooges try to create something creative and vibrant. It is official. Radio has become the audio version of The Dollar Store.”
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