On the March 31 episode of “The Bill Simmons Podcast,” Simmons asked Keith Olbermann how he would fix “SportsCenter,” ESPN’s stalwart nightly sports news show. The show’s ratings have been steadily falling the past few years, leaving ESPN scrambling to find a solution, including the installation of a brand new $121 million set.
Olbermann answered Simmons’ question this way: “All the attempts to modify [SportsCenter] are predicated on the idea that it can be what it was two years ago, five years ago, 20 years ago, and it can’t.” Olbermann went on to say, "There is no motivation except for old-time guys, who are our ages or even older, who want that sort of leisurely, well-done, paced kind of stroll through all the sports news," he said, "but we're dying off. Generations have come behind us who say, 'I just want to know who's the leading candidate to be the Browns quarterback next year,' and that's it."
In other words, according to Olbermann, the curated magazine show is dying. People 20 years on either side of Olbermann’s age (57) feel an obligation to consume news as it’s served. It’s part of the social contract for people over 40: Professionals determine what news is important and in what order we shall receive it. Tell that to 19-year-olds, and they’ll laugh until their earbuds fall out.
A lot of what Olbermann believes about the future of SportsCenter resonates with me in relation to the current arguments surrounding the future of NPR. If people are talking about the demise of a once unshakeable show like SportsCenter, that same discussion can be had about NPR news shows like “Morning Edition and “All Things Considered.”
After all, the same principles apply: The audience for those shows is aging and declining, news of all kinds--even well-written and well-reported news--is available at a pace that was unthinkable even 10 years ago. And as Olbermann pointed out, the desire for the “leisurely, well done” show is very much on the wane. Let’s face it, there’s almost nothing more leisurely and well done than an NPR news magazine.I used to produce one of those shows, and even I grew frustrated by the constraints of magazine format, programming boring stories to fill the time. And as much as NPR believes that what it produces is important and serves the public good (which I think is true), I believe that 15 years from now, that content won’t be delivered by appointment and in that magazine format. Here’s why.
Over the next few years, there will be a tremendous and powerful convergence of voice recognition technology, always-on internet, and more quality content than ever. Today, radio consumption is frictionless; you get in the car, push a button and there it is. People listen to the radio without thinking, which is what radio stations count on.
Listening to on-demand audio takes a little more determination. First, you have to scroll through your podcast aggregator or subscription audio service, like Spotify or Audible, tap a few buttons to create a playlist and wait for it to connect your device to your car’s Bluetooth. Granted, it’s not as cumbersome as it used to be, but compared to your car radio, it’s the difference between buying a cake with icing or buying a cake you have to ice yourself.
But while listening to the radio is easier, it’s not very satisfying for the generation of people raised in a completely on-demand culture. It’s almost unfathomable for them to spend time being force-fed content.
Now, here’s what I think the future sounds like: You will get in your car and say “Play a story about President Obama’s visit to Vietnam, the top three local stories from The Washington Post, and all of last night’s baseball scores, plus audio highlights from the Yankees game, as well as last week’s Vows column from the New York Times.” Then, like magic, your audio system will assemble this playlist from a variety of content sources like NPR, and many from sources yet to be created.
No, it won’t sound the same as “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered,” but you will get the information you want when you want it, and in the order you want it. And with nothing you don’t want.The NPR news shows can’t deliver that. If you are bored by that five-minute story on the Iran nuclear talks--too bad. Keep listening and maybe something will come along that you do like. But in the audio future, you’ll never have to hear a story you don’t care about again.
I ran this idea past David Pierce, who has written about voice recognition for Wired. He said, “There’s really no technical reason, at least in a few years, that would prevent that. Long-term, it’s definitely what [Apple’s] CarPlay and Android Auto want to be: just voice interfaces for you to do whatever you want.”
Think this sounds crazy? We’re already doing it. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Echo are basic versions of this, and they continue to improve. And every night I talk into my TV remote telling it to play my favorite show or even more general commands like “show me movies with explosions.”
Ah, but I hear some of you saying, “That’s bad. What about discovery? What about the importance of knowing the news of the world, whether it interests you or not?” Personally, I think that is important, but millions of people younger than me do not. It doesn’t mean they’re stupid or uncaring about the world around them. In fact, I believe it means the opposite.They have curated for themselves highly specific interests and passions. And the current content delivery system of NPR news doesn’t satisfy those passions.
Even its streaming app NPR One mimics news magazine curation, with the only difference being that you can skip a story you don’t like. NPR claims the app will “learn” what you like based on your skipping, but you can’t eliminate the story nor can you program NPR One to specifically match your interests. In the end, you’re still being force-fed content by people who think they know best what you want.
For NPR and other traditional audio and visual media outlets to survive, they will have to find a way to create content that doesn’t depend on it being delivered at a specific time, and in the format of a show. This isn’t to say there’s no place for shows in this buffett-style audio future. Shows with distinctive personalities will always have value (think Howard Stern or Marc Maron) as well as shows with a specific point of view, but appointment listening combined with the hodge-podge magazine format will die.
This doesn’t mean that there’s not a place for NPR. In fact, I would argue in this new on-demand world, NPR will be as important as ever—perhaps more so. People will want the news and NPR’s problem isn’t content, it’s packaging. In the future, what possible motivation do listeners have to tune into a radio station, with all of its programming eccentricities, when they can assemble the exact content they want as effortlessly as they can speak it?