Something strange is happening, and if you work in radio, you should probably be paying attention. CDs (yes, actual compact discs) are showing early signs of a comeback. Wired headphones are showing up again. “Dumb phones” have become a legitimate trend among some younger consumers who are intentionally trying to spend less time staring at screens.
For a group often accused of being chronically on TikTok (and there’s data to support this), Gen Z is no more glued to their smartphones than almost every granny and pawpaw in America. It’s an epidemic.
But apparently, the generation we assumed would happily live its entire life through a screen is starting to wonder whether maybe we’ve gone a little too far.
My wife, who teaches high school math, has told me for a while now that there is a real skepticism toward AI among many of her students, and there seems to be a growing appreciation for things that feel real, tangible, and human.
Gallup recently found that while 51% of Gen Z uses generative AI at least weekly, their enthusiasm for it is actually falling. Only 22% now say they feel excited about AI, down 14 points from last year. Among Gen Z workers, 48% say AI’s risks outweigh its benefits, while just 15% say the benefits outweigh the risks. Most importantly, 69% say they trust work completed without AI compared with just 28% for AI-assisted work.
That doesn’t sound like a generation blindly marching toward an entirely automated future. This past weekend I saw a Chase commercial that seemed to agree.
The commercial follows a young man through an increasingly automated day. Machines. Screens. Technology. Very little actual human interaction. The commercial ends with the man walking into a brick-and-mortar Chase bank, being greeted by a human. As he walks in and appears relieved, the announcer says: “Instead of building new ways for machines to talk to people, Chase is building new places for people to talk to people.”
Think about that for a second.
One of the largest banks in America is spending millions of dollars advertising the revolutionary new concept of…
Wait for it…
Talking to another human being.
If I’m in the radio industry, I’m paying very close attention to this. Because for the last 20 years, practically every industry in America has been racing in the opposite direction. Automate it. Streamline it. Digitize it. Replace the employee with a kiosk. Replace the call center with a chatbot. Replace the local show with another voice in the company 800 miles away or something syndicated.
Efficiency became the goal. But maybe we underestimated something along the way: People actually like people.
This can become one of radio’s greatest opportunities with the next generation. We have spent years hearing that young people don’t care about radio because they have Spotify, podcasts, YouTube, TikTok, and virtually unlimited entertainment in their pockets.
But what if unlimited content eventually becomes the problem? When every song in recorded history is available instantly, maybe somebody introducing you to a song becomes interesting again. When AI can generate endless content, maybe content created by an actual person becomes more valuable. When algorithms know exactly what you already like and endlessly feed more of it to you, maybe discovering something because a local personality said, “You have GOT to hear this” starts feeling refreshingly human.
Radio doesn’t have to beat the algorithm at being an algorithm. Radio can offer the thing the algorithm can’t manufacture: actual human connection.
But here’s the conundrum. We have to actually have humans.
If this cultural shift is real, radio cannot capitalize on it by becoming more automated, more generic, and more indistinguishable from a playlist. We need personalities. And perhaps more importantly, we need to start developing the next generation of personalities.
If your radio station operates anywhere near a college with a communications, broadcasting, or journalism program, why aren’t you building a relationship with it? Create an internship program. Invite students into the station. Put them around great radio people. Let them learn how to run a board. Let them cut production. Let them sit in on a morning show. Let them cover a high school football game. Let them interview a local artist. Let them learn how to tell a story without needing a ring light and a TikTok account.
And when you find somebody with it, develop them.
Radio spent decades being one of the greatest talent-development industries in America. People started on weekends. They worked overnights. They learned from veterans. They made mistakes when nobody was listening. Eventually, some of them became personalities that entire cities knew by their first names.
We need that pipeline again, AND I think it’s realistic to develop this pipeline again. I totally understand that this might be easier said than done for so many amazing radio folks reading this – But I want to encourage you to start somewhere.
Yes, recruit young people who understand social media. That matters. But don’t just search for young social media talent. Find young radio talent.
Find the 20-year-old who is funny without trying too hard. Find the student who can tell an incredible story. Find the sports nerd who knows every high school quarterback within 50 miles. Find the girl with the unmistakable voice. Find the kid who can walk into a remote broadcast knowing nobody and leave knowing everybody.
Then teach them radio.
What if the next generation eventually discovers radio because it feels human?
