The more you profit from the status quo, the less inclined you may be to make the moves necessary to thrive in the future.
This was the puzzle facing Steve Jobs when his company consciously introduced the iPhone knowing that it would cannibalize his cash cow, the iPod, but knowing that if Apple didn’t cannibalize the iPod then everyone else would have done so because it was inevitable that mp3 players would eventually merge with that device formerly known as the mobile phone.
Radio is likewise constrained by a model that rewards broadcast licensees with agency dollars but invites radio’s competitors to compete for everything else and even for the growing fraction of agency dollars transferred out of advertising and into marketing.
He who lives by the ratings shall die by the ratings, but more and more of radio’s competitors don’t play by the ratings at all.
This is leading us to make some bad decisions. It leads to questions like these:
Should you delay or get rid of your podcasts?
Should you dump out of streaming altogether?
Should you care about consumers of your content who don’t live in your backyard?
Why are you even ON the World Wide Web?
What does it mean for radio to cater to consumers in an era when THEY, not WE, are in control?
This is the central question that is oh so critical to radio’s future, and I take it up in this short video:
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