Give them a reason.

Last weekend, I was on a panel at a college radio and podcasting conference at Cal State Long Beach, the Intercollegiate Broadcasting System's west coast gathering, and I talked and I observed and I saw a good number of people of varying backgrounds and ages eager to get into producing audio content. If you'd been there, you'd have been struck by the enthusiasm. You'd also think there was hope for commercial radio, that there really IS a next generation to carry the torch.

But they don't see the business the way you do. Commercial radio isn't the goal. Podcasting, streaming, public radio... those are equal or paramount in their minds to commercial radio. That's the effect of generations coming of age with choice, with audio coming not necessarily from an AM/FM receiver but from the devices in their pockets, with entertainment and information of all kinds delivered on demand. They want to know how to get started and get ahead in podcasting. The well-appointed studio in the student union is for a stream because the college leased out its FM to another operator a few years ago, and that stream, to someone whose listening is on a smartphone, is as radio as, um, radio. The question from them isn't whether that generation is going to do podcasts and streams, it's how to monetize and how to grow an audience. In fact, it's mostly the latter; they want to do it to be heard more than they want to get rich from it.

Things look different from the top floor. The disparity between management and rank-and-file in the perception of a business isn't breaking news, but it's real and it's what I observed covering the latest industry conference this week. At the Digital Hollywood podcasting ...

What happens if your media company is run by people who don't really understand or even care about the ultimate product? Oh, we can tell stories about that, can't we, radio folks? That's what came to mind for me when following the recent implosion of Deadspin, in which ...

The radio industry prides itself on its service to the community in emergencies, and so, with large swaths of California on fire once again and utility company-imposed power outages affecting large numbers of people, I dutifully checked up on key news and talk radio ...

Let's stipulate first that voice command is how we're going to summon our audio entertainment and information moving forward. That's not in dispute. At some point, everyone will just say "play X" and X will play. That's going to happen. In fact, you can do that now with ...

It's just now starting to feel like Fall in much of the U.S., so, naturally, it's time for radio stations nationwide to plot their annual all-Christmas music format flips. No, this is not going to be a column criticizing that move, or complaining that, dadgummit, these ...

They're putting another Target store in the empty shell that used to be an Orchard Supply Hardware store in the shopping center at the top of our hill. The shopping center has been there since the hill got developed back in the 1950s, but it's changed a lot, and the fate ...

There was a little stir caused at the radio convention in Dallas last week (the "Radio Show," named by someone who clearly doesn't quite grasp the value of SEO) when iHeartRadio CEO Bob Pittman proclaimed that "podcasting is our birthright," "our" referring to the radio ...

Sometimes, you have to tear it down and rebuild from scratch. Or at least build from the ground up. I thought about that in observing how radio is approaching expansion into podcasting and streaming, but it applies to the radio medium itself, too. As I've written way too ...

There are some things on which a business can't skimp. You might have noticed that when you read about one large broadcaster's woes with ransomware that made it very difficult for it to conduct business this week. It's 2019, and no company of any size should be conducting ...