iHeart Media Is Murdering The Radio Star and It’s Almost Dead
They had already put radio on its deathbed. Now, they’ve gone and killed it. iHeartRadio is actually killing the radio star…and quickly. Here’s how they’re destroying radio and how they can fix it if they act fast.
They had already put radio on its deathbed. Now, they’ve gone and killed it. iHeartRadio is actually killing the radio star…and quickly. iHeart Media laid off 10% of its 12,500 employees across the country last January, then followed it up with more cuts through the end of the year, with much of those jobs being local on-air talent. You remember those things right? They were the people that actually differentiated radio from Spotify or Apple Music or any of the numerous other streaming services.
It was bad enough that iHeart put radio on deathwatch by playing the same 20 songs over & over on an endless loop, now they’re taking away the only thing left it had going for it: local folk that were embedded into the communities that iHeart claims to serve.
Now instead of that on-air talent you’ve come to know and love through your workday that would have been attending the parade this weekend and at the opening of the new Mexican place downtown, it‘s some generic voice playing the same exact vague, non-descript recording of themselves at the same exact time on multiple stations all over the country. They won’t be attending any restaurant openings, FYI. They won’t be having the local nonprofit call in about adopting puppies. You’ll never see them because they’re thousands of miles away and don’t even know the name of the neighborhoods they’re being piped in to.
iHeart had one advantage that Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Premium or any of the streamers could never have and now they’ve taken that advantage away. So guess where people are going to go? Hint: It’s one of the services that are already market leaders in streaming. Elton John will never be talking about Topeka Kansas weather on his Apple Music show. Now, Joe The New Syndicated Schmoe won’t even be talking about Topeka Kansas weather on the Topeka Kansas radio station because he’s recording in Texas and has never even been to Topeka Kansas. Yet, iHeart has decided to get rid of most local on-air talent and in their wisdom, thought you’d love to stop hearing the morning show duo you’ve listened to for five years in place of this random guy. Or Elvis Duran. Because Elvis sure knows what’s going on in Topeka Kansas this weekend and will be sure to talk about it on his show.
If you’ve ever followed more than one iHeart station on social media, you’ve already seen where this is heading. They post the same articles at the same time on every station across the country. Try it out right now. Pick your local iHeart station and head to their Facebook and then choose any one of their other stations: same exact article with the same exact caption posted at the same exact time. Most of these articles are barely commented on, even on stations with hundreds of thousands of social media followers. The public is on to the game. This generic facelessness is now what they will be turning our local radio stations in to.
Listeners are rightfully furious with #BoycottiHeart trending on social twice last year. Advertisers are angry that the local flavor they paid for will be replaced with random people nobody will have a connection with. Ratings will go down and iHeart will stand firm in their belief that radio is dying seemingly unaware that they killed it themselves.
To dive a bit deeper, we’ve divided out the biggest complaints (and grave mistakes) we regularly come across or have been sent. These are impactful criticisms that could very well kill the business. Hopefully, leadership at iHeart take note.
The Same Songs Over & Over
One of the biggest complaints we’ve seen is people complaining about the very limited amount of songs played on any given station. Seriously, iHeart social is flooded with these comments (& they don’t get many comments as it is). Here in 2021 we call that a playlist and we can listen to a playlist in full high fidelity audio on all of the major streaming services. In fact, on streaming I can choose any song I want and listen on demand at any moment. So why would I even listen to the radio anymore when I no longer have a connection with the on-air talent, and they never cover anything local? I mean, iHeart rarely even has listeners call in anymore.
The fact that iHeartMedia ignores the repetition complaint is frankly, mind boggling. It’s an easy fix: add more songs to the catalogue. You can still play the key hits regularly while expanding the rotation of everything else by 30 songs. One listener wrote, “I’ve heard TLC’s Waterfalls more in a month listening to this station than I did when it came out.” When a listener is complaining about a two decade old song being played too often, it’s way past time to take action.
No Local Personalities
“What happened to the morning show?” a listener wrote. “Why doesn’t he ever talk about what’s happening in our own area”, wrote another. It’s quite obvious that the iHeart plan is to eventually get rid of local talent and replace it with national or syndicated shows. They’ve already started it with the last two rounds of layoffs which found local hosts shows being replaced with packaged content. In what world would a business think this is a good idea?
“Why are people mispronouncing our town in your commercials?” Yikes! Talk about a dead giveaway to what you’re doing. This is the kind of thing that happens when you have someone in New Jersey piped in to morning shows on stations in 6 other states.
Advertisers are complaining too. “I’m not sure why they think I’m going to spend the money I have been spending with them when I’ve lost the personalities that would come out. Ryan Seacrest isn’t going to be coming to my new store opening”, an advertiser wrote. This hits the bottom line hard. When you’ve taken away the personalities that connect within their own communities, you’ve taken away the value they brought to the businesses supporting the stations. When you take a station from 6 local talents down to 2, you’ve just directly negatively impacted the realized and potential revenue you could have had otherwise. Advertisers are listeners, too!
This is not to say there’s nothing wrong with piping in an hour of Elvis or Ryan and then doing the rest of the daypart with local talent. Or even the “Friday Night” special syndicated shows that help fill out schedules. But getting rid of most of your local talent is quite clearly a mistake to anyone that looks at the situation reasonably. And going by listener feedback, it’s a death blow.
iHeart Social Media Game Is Terrible
As I stated earlier, go to any iHeart station website or Facebook page and look at the article. Go to any other iHeart station and you’ll find the same piece of content. Not only that, but nobody engages with the content because content is posted every half hour or so. When you have a Facebook page with 100,000 people and you have zero likes or comments on your post, you’re doing something majorly, majorly wrong.
You have stations with 5,000 likes auto posting aggregated content every 20 minutes. Any high schooler could tell you that the less people engage with your current content, the less the social algorithm will push the next piece of content out. This is something that Facebook itself discusses in its Blueprint Learning series. It’s a vicious cycle that iHeart has created and refuses to change.
iHeart could and should be a leader in social and they’re destroying their chance. Look at leaders in social. The companies that successfully use social content are commiserate with the amount of followers they have. NBC News can post content every 15 minutes because they have 11 million Facebook followers that engage with their posted content. WXXX station with 3,000 followers shouldn’t be posting content every 15 minutes because they don’t have enough followers or engagement to do so.
Case in point, the photo below is a screen shot from Z100’s Facebook page, which has nearly 400,000 followers. Three stories were posted in a one hour period. None of the stories have a comment or like. They post entirely too much and have destroyed their own socials.
Allow your digital staff to control the frequency of content and when it posts in order to maximize engagement and reach. Allow them to schedule or reschedule the posts as to not step on any local content. Far too many times, a local post will get buried by the Facebook algorithm because the last 15 auto posts got no engagement. Or worse, a great piece of local content gets buried because 3 minutes later a national post about Harry and Meghan autoposts and kills any change at reach and engagement the great local content would have had.
Again, iHeart should be a leader in digital, not in a situation where they have tens of millions of followers that don’t interact at all with posted content.
What iHeart Does Well
There are still things that iHeart does well and they are uniquely equipped to do so. Investing in podcasts early on was a stroke of genius. If they continue investing in podcasts and find unique ways to integrate advertising into the content, they can continue being a leader in this space while making money. They should closely follow the reach and engagement of the podcast shows that are being put out by what’s left of their local talent. There are numerous ways to leverage these into multi platform revenue streams encompassing terrestrial radio, podcasts and social.
iHeart also does events very well. Once again, they’re uniquely positioned to leverage their stations across the country to successfully pull off these massive events both in person, on television, radio, blogs and social.
It’s not too late to make changes to save the radio business, but the window is closing quickly. The answers are right there and your listeners are telling you over & over again in cities all across the country. Listen to them, before they stop listening to you.
