“Imagine if you will that one hour never existed. No babies were born. No one died. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!”

Rod Serling

It was an hour that never existed. We changed our clocks from 2am to 3am.

That hour doesn’t matter.

You wait through the first part of a boring movie. You hope it will get better.

You sit down at a restaurant. The waiter is slow to come over. Minutes tick by without giving your drink order. You hope it will get better.

In this world of instant gratification a better choice is only a push of a button or a click of a mouse away.

I hear too many radio stations that sound like that hour right now doesn’t matter. They’ve been stripped of meaningful content, branding that connects emotionally with the listener’s life, and a human presence. Too many stations have become nothing more than a commodity, known for nothing beyond the music that they play, and much of that is unfamiliar.

Nielsen claims that radio listening has declined by a third over the last three years. And that in a world where listening to audio is up 14%. I reckon’ folks would say they’ve moved to audio that matters to them.

We can’t treat our stations like the hour right now doesn’t matter; that it doesn’t exist. It may be the very first time someone ever listens, and whether they will ever listen again.