The Infinite Dial

Netscape founder Marc Andreesen recently reminded me of the legend of Cortes, who upon arriving in Mexico, ordered his men to burn the boats so they would be forced to embrace the New World. With no possible way home (and having "escape" removed as an option) his men would be forced to find a way to live off the land and commit to the mission wholeheartedly.

Andreesen's advice (given here as part of an interview in Techcrunch) was more intended towards print media, but the lessons absolutely apply to radio. His point was that as long as old media continues to look for ways to lock audience in to apps, or behind paywalls, they will never fully embrace the New World and will be swamped by those who will. New World explorers aren't building subscriptions, they are focused on the bigger market--the open Web. As Andreesen puts it, ”All the new companies are not spending a nanosecond on the iPad or thinking of ways to charge for content. The older companies, that is all they are thinking about.” If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will be glad to do it.

His "burning boats" analogy suggests an interesting thought experiment (and Larry loves my thought experiments) that I'd like you to try. And don't just try this alone--bring it to your team and get the whole staff involved. Make a day of it. It might be the most powerful advice I could ever give you. Really. Do this.

Your "boat" is your tower--the terrestrial stick that blasts your signal into cars and homes in your coverage area. For the sake of this exercise, burn it. Imagine it was irrevocably destroyed.

Do you have a business?

If the answer is no, lock everyone in that room until you come up with a way to make the answer yes. But make no mistake--the boats are burning. If you are a local repeater of nationally syndicated content, your boat is burning. If you are the 2nd AC station in a market, your boat is burning. If your a non-personalized jukebox (and blaming PPM for the reasons why you have become a non-personalized jukebox) your boat is burning. Almost all of you reading this, in fact, should smell the smoke right now.

When the boats stop burning, there will be remarkably fewer terrestrial radio stations in each market than there are today. If you can genuinely answer yes to the question I posed above, you'll be one of them.