I was invited to a panel on the dearth of local news operations in Canada and America. And, after talking to my fellow panelists ahead of the event, I found they were way ahead of the curve than the U.S., even though they said it was the other way around.
I'm not even talking about radio and television studios per se', I'm talking about newspaper operations too. Canada is working to beef up local news. America feels like its not interested in bolstering it.
Last week at Radio Days (North America) I was on a panel about the "Future of Local News". To be fair, I had never even heard of this conference, but it sounded interesting so I did a little digging. I also asked around and found it to be a worthwhile convention that is growing every year.
One of the best ideas I heard from a fellow panelist was that radio and television stations should pool funds with newspapers to hire reporters and/or anchors to serve their communities. Brilliant, right?
Many years ago I teamed up with a local newspaper site in Lake County, CA, the market where I found my first client. The publisher was all in! She voiced her own written reports into broadcast style, giving me a second voice, and giving her a new audience.
With newspaper operations dying across the globe, let's stop looking at this as competition for ad dollars, and instead as a way to serve our communities. The ad dollars will come based on your ingenuity and tenacity.
Many of the panels at the conference were about A.I. and one bigwig surprised us by saying (essentially), you cannot replace humans, but that A.I. is a great tool. We were reminded too, about how an audience in Australia felt betrayed when they found out their mid-day "girl" was not human at all, but a machine.
I talk a lot about this: humans should not be expendable. Just because you thought you were a genius for creating a robot for radio, it doesn't mean you will be popular for it.
Another great panel reminded us that radio is king in a disaster. The Southern California wildfires earlier this year showed us when cell towers were inoperable, radio stations were the go-to for information and news. Some blew out regular programming and put their talent on the air to talk about their own devastation related to the fires. (They also blew out advertising and went wall to wall with the information their listeners craved.)
Another fantastic panel was about politics in podcasting. I'm not going to lie, here in the small town where I live, there's only one talk station and they aren't hitting the major stories the way I need, so I've been turning to various podcasts to fill that void.
🚨 The whole thing was a reminder to get after it and stop laggin! Pool your resources and find the best human talent possible, so we can continue to service our local communities, because if we don't, we won't have any anymore.
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