If this was a normal year I would be amongst thousands of colleagues in the craziness of Radio Row at the Super Bowl, a beautiful mix of the mainstream and the unique. It is truly an open marketplace of storytelling, a place where you will see Miss Universe sitting next to a WWE champion next to a Harvard physician next to…Shaquille O’Neal. From convention centers to hotel ballrooms to the Mall of America, there has been nothing quite like Radio Row. Here is a summary of what last year in Miami was like.
This year, we have 18 inches of snow in New Jersey, a Pandemic and lots of Zooming and virtualling. While it will not be the same, and those precious few stations in Tamps this week (as few as 10 or as many as 30 depending on the day, when it is usually around 150 or 200), there will be lessons learned and best practices installed that hopefully when we all get back to Los Angeles for next year’s Super Bowl we will have a mix of all things good storytelling amongst friends, colleagues, crazy’s and business partners. Hopefully.
The good that can be applied:
–Quality of audio, and the ability to bring in video. Most outlets have been able to pivot to using everything from Zoom to Microsoft teams to bring in guests far and wide. The ability to see people, not just hear them, has actually led in many cases to very focused and more expansive storytelling. There are less chances to be distracted when someone is looking at you, not just talking at you. The ability to stream video has also led to more opportunities for sponsorship for outlets, because video just lends itself to more opportunities to snapshot content. Now bring along the adaption of 5G in the coming months and year, and the quality just keeps improving, and that’s good news for those on both ends of the connection.
-Anyone, any time. Not being tied to people walking around and physically being in the host city has also led to more expensive storytelling opportunities for brands and athletes and the like. While in past years being in the room at a certain time was a necessity, now platforms and outlets can pull people of note in from around the world as schedules permit. Yes before the old phone was an option, but being present was so much more valuable. Wider lists of topical guests more consistently on such a critical week has seemed to have been amped up and accepted.
Then there is the bad:
-Missing randomness. The beauty of Radio Row was not the interviews, it has been the people, those you would see once a year, but also so many you would know, or know of, who you would cross paths with roaming the aisles of talk going on. The chance meetings, like with the original “Rudy” or with a media member you have only connected with on email or a call, and the partnerships and opportunities that came out of that encounter was really the beauty of what makes Radio Row such a special event, and what is missing in the Zooming.
What’s also missing is the opportunity for stations, especially those who hustled, to use the social platform of an athlete or a celebrity to help grow their brand and impact. Maybe ESPN San Antonio doesn’t have the biggest reach, but the Insta photo they can share, and have their guests share, with a Deon Sanders sitdown amplified the value of the trip and brought cultural relevance to the station and the talent. That is not always easy to do behind a Zoom call.
You also miss the innovative…the guys from Cornhole brining in boards, random pizza deliveries, even one year the Girl Scout selling cookies or the Northern California Wine growers pouring a few glasses, are all in a void this year. Learning about newer platforms or disruptive ones and how they are engaging fans…Twitter, You Tube and the like…is also in a gap this year.
So what will the lessons learned bring us for the future? Assuming we are well on the way back next year, the lessons and immediacy of streaming interviews, be they on small screens or large ones, will be here to stay. What won’t be lost hopefully is that mix of interactivity and relationship building that only comes from being there in person, mixing with colleagues young and older, and learning in an exhaustive, but fun, several days leading to the big game.
That mix, of tech and traditional, is the path we can go down to be impactful. We can’t look back, and looking forward can be pretty exciting. Now we just have to shovel out and get there in 2022.
