Ironically, Ken may be the “most right” out of all of us.

Ken draws a very precise picture of radio station GM’s across the country: white, older men with absolutely no clue about the Internet (or “Internets” if you’re a certain older, clueless, white male):

It’s not that these older white men who are running radio aren’t smart enough to know a Twitter from a Linked In request. They just don’t care – and it’s not out of ignorance. What’s holding them back from exploring is the human trait of feeling safe in familiar surroundings.

One of the examples Ken uses to show us how out of touch radio station GM’s are with the online world is Google News.  Ken describes a situation from just a few weeks ago:

A few weeks back I was having dinner with a radio exec who’s known by everyone in the business. He has scores of awards, and is highly respected. Yet when the topic of Google News came up he knew nothing about it.

Incredible, isn’t it?  I had to laugh though, because Ken didn’t finish connecting the dots.  You see, Google News is free.  Acting upon this information (the “free” part, not the fact that Google News scans 4,500 publication web sites constantly), all of the radio station GM’s I know would have immediately cancelled their daily newspaper subscriptions to the station and capitalized the refund as “Non-traditional Revenue” on that month’s income statement.

The sad part is that radio really is dying.  Industry revenues are down big this quarter even though there doesn’t appear to be significant audience degredation any more.  Radio is the only media that is truly compatible with multi-tasking, computer-focused users.  And it’s got the jump – big time – on narrow casting over television.

Radio needs a re-boot in order to live again.  It needs to re-invent itself as a viable, local medium that can deliver audience to small and mid-sized businesses who can’t afford the other broadcast alternative.  To do that, though, radio will have to get young and in-touch with today’s multi-tasking audience.

That’s going to take more than learning about Google News.

If radio dies, it will die of old age.