Culpwrit

By Rob Hart

I first spoke into a microphone as a professional broadcaster on April 22, 2000. It was the 10:30 p.m. newscast on WTMJ Radio in Milwaukee. It was the first step of a long journey in terrestrial radio.  But the digital revolution was knocking on the door.   

Change has been the only constant since then. 

Traditional media is criticized for not adapting to the times. Nothing could be further from the truth. WTMJ was embracing its digital future in 2000. Some of WTMJ’s talk show hosts were using the web to add content to their shows or add extra context to a discussion.  We promoted the stream as a place where you could listen to midday programming at work without a radio. It was sold separately as a new source of advertising revenue. 

That was Plan A. 

What’s left of traditional media is now on Plan X, Y, or Z. The landscape has shifted considerably, and we have no choice but to keep up. It can be an exciting challenge to meet the future.  But the future is a moving target.  Meeting that target can be an endless source of frustration for businesses, advertisers, and content creators. 

Looking back on the last 25 years, I can track four disruptive moments that changed traditional media.   

The first disruptive moment was the Great Recession. Commercial advertising fell off of a cliff in 2008-2009 and never really recovered.   

The second disruptive moment was the mass adoption of social media, starting around the same time. Traditional media embraced social media as the ultimate free marketing tool.   But it wasn’t free marketing. Social media aggregators were not a source of traffic. Instead, they turned into the venue for online fights between users who argued over headlines.  Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey were able to monetize the traffic. We were left in the cold. 

The arrival of streaming media was the third disruptive moment. YouTube went live in 2005.  The iPhone was introduced in 2007. Netflix began streaming titles as early as 2009. The success of “House of Cards” in 2013 demonstrated that there was a lucrative audience attached to the ever-growing number of households with connected TVs. You could watch original content on your smartphone or access all of the collected works of human history with nothing more than a few streaming subscriptions and a high-speed data connection. It is the most powerful weapon in the war for our attention. 

The most recent disruptive event was the COVID-19 pandemic. The population that was sequestered inside discovered that they didn’t need traditional media to be informed or entertained.  It also didn’t help that legacy media productions left their expensive studios and began broadcasting from home. The Tonight Show and TikTok content creators were in the same space, talking into a camera in their living room.  Months of Zoom calls gave others the comfort and confidence to try their own hand at content creation. 

Traditional media thrived on scarcity, exclusivity, and pricing power.  A media consumer in 1993 had no choice for entertainment outside of the options available at that moment in time.  An advertiser in 1993 had to live with rates set by the newspaper/broadcast station/cable company/network.  In 2025, a media consumer has an infinite array of options. Advertisers have multiple tools to reach a specific subset of the audience at a price point that is a bargain compared to the rates set by traditional media in the 20th century. 

We now live in an on-demand world that is driven by creators. YouTube’s advertising revenue dwarfs the combined advertising revenue of broadcast and cable TV. YouTube generated $9.8 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2025. According to MoffettNathanson Research, that is more than the $5.9 billion generated by broadcast and cable TV combined.   

For those of us raised on traditional media, the current environment may seem like a different planet.   

The digital creator economy allows for entrepreneurial media outlets that cover travel, sports, news, business, cooking, and more.  If you have the time, the passion, and the stamina, you can fill gaps in coverage left by traditional media. You can provide coverage of a particular subject that is better than the legacy outlets that have fallen by the wayside.  All you need is a keyboard, a camera, an internet connection, and a consistent production schedule.   

While the new media landscape has opened infinite avenues to storytelling, it can also create public perception crises that seemed unimaginable a decade ago. An office romance would have been the subject of water-cooler gossip in 2015. Today, the Kiss Cam at a Coldplay concert is the catalyst for a public relations crisis that reverberated across the world. Social media performance artists target people or institutions just because they can. Entrepreneurship is the key to navigating media in 2025, but vigilance is just as important. 

Technology has changed. But the basics of communication have not. Relationships still matter. The influential columnist or beat reporter has been replaced by the owner of an influential Substack newsletter. Storytelling skills are even more valuable. I’m a radio veteran, so I am no stranger to the never-ending battle to keep the listener from punching away to another station.  I can say from experience that in a world of infinite options, nothing stands out like a unique brand, interesting facts, compelling production, and a story well told.   

Rob Hart is a veteran communications professional. He is currently the Midday News Anchor and host of the Noon Business Hour on WBBM Newsradio in Chicago.