There are numbers in this business that everybody watches. Ratings. Revenue. Shares. Cume. Streaming sessions. Engagement. Page views. Quarter-hours. For decades, radio has measured almost everything it possibly could, sometimes to the point where we forget that behind every number is an actual human being who made a choice.
Today, On The Dial gets to celebrate one of those numbers.
1,000 FOLLOWERS.
One thousand people have now made the decision to follow On The Dial and trust us to help keep them connected to the people, stations, companies, personalities, programmers, format changes, victories, losses and wonderfully unpredictable insanity that make up the American broadcast radio industry.
And to every single one of you:
THANK YOU.
Seriously.
Because this isn’t simply another number on a Facebook page.
For us, 1,000 means something.
On The Dial Was Built by Someone Who Absolutely Loves Radio
To understand why this milestone matters so much, you need to understand the person behind the publication.
Steven Mills, President and Publisher of On The Dial, is a radio guy.
Not somebody who discovered radio from a corporate spreadsheet.
Not somebody who wandered into broadcasting because it looked like an interesting content vertical.
Radio has been part of Steven’s life for decades.
He’s been the guy behind the microphone.
He’s been the programmer worrying about the next quarter-hour.
He’s selected music.
He’s coached personalities.
He’s worked inside major radio companies.
He’s worked in multiple markets and formats.
He’s watched this industry evolve through consolidation, digital disruption, streaming, social media, smartphones, podcasts and seemingly seventeen different declarations that radio was officially dead.
And yet the radio keeps playing.
More importantly, Steven never stopped loving it.
Because Once Radio Gets Into You, Good Luck Getting It Out
Radio people understand this.
There is something completely irrational about our relationship with this business.
We’ll complain about it for three hours…
Then spend another four hours talking about how much we love it.
We’ll argue about formats.
We’ll debate music rotations.
We’ll critique morning shows.
We’ll remember call letters from stations that haven’t existed since 1997 but forget where we put our car keys ten minutes ago.
Someone can mention an old station and immediately five radio people will start telling stories.
That’s radio.
And that’s the spirit behind On The Dial.
This publication exists because Steven believes the people still making great radio deserve to be talked about.
The programmer getting their first major opportunity deserves recognition.
The personality who spent 25 years waking up a city deserves more than three sentences when that run ends.
The small-market broadcaster doing incredible local work matters just as much as the person sitting behind a microphone in New York, Los Angeles or Chicago.
The format flip matters.
The comeback matters.
The retirement matters.
The promotion matters.
The heritage station matters.
The people matter.
We Wanted Radio News That Actually Felt Like Radio
That has been one of our biggest goals from the beginning.
There are plenty of places to get information.
We wanted On The Dial to have a voice.
We wanted stories with context.
History.
Personality.
Perspective.
Occasionally humor.
And when something deserves celebrating, we aren’t afraid to celebrate the hell out of it.
Because radio isn’t boring.
So why should radio journalism sound boring?
When somebody gets promoted after grinding for twenty years, that’s a story.
When a legendary personality signs off, that’s a story.
When an iconic station disappears, that’s history happening in real time.
When somebody loses a job after giving decades of their life to this business, that person deserves to be treated like a human being instead of a line item.
And when somebody does something brilliant?
WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.
1,000 Followers Means 1,000 Votes of Confidence
That’s how we’re choosing to look at this milestone.
Every follow is somebody saying:
Keep going.
Every share says:
Somebody else should read this.
Every comment says:
Let’s talk radio.
Every message from somebody inside the industry tells us we’re building the kind of community we hoped On The Dial could become.
And we’re incredibly grateful.
To the personalities.
Programmers.
Market managers.
Owners.
Consultants.
Syndicators.
Engineers.
Salespeople.
Producers.
Imaging people.
Promotions teams.
Independent operators.
Corporate broadcasters.
Retired broadcasters who absolutely swear they’re done with radio but somehow still know every format change before everybody else…
Thank you.
You are On The Dial.
And This Milestone Means Even More Right Now
Anyone following On The Dial closely knows that Steven has been building this publication while simultaneously navigating an extraordinarily difficult personal journey.
Behind the stories, posts and daily broadcast news is a publisher currently searching for a living kidney donor.
And yet the publication keeps moving.
The stories keep coming.
Because sometimes the thing you love gives you something to fight for.
For Steven, radio has been one of those things.
He has spent decades serving audiences from behind microphones and inside programming offices.
Now, through On The Dial, he gets to serve the people who make the medium itself.
And watching this community grow to 1,000 followers during this chapter makes today’s milestone extraordinarily meaningful.
But 1,000 Is Not the Finish Line
Oh no.
We are just getting warmed up.
There are more stories to tell.
More broadcasters to spotlight.
More history to preserve.
More careers to celebrate.
More ridiculous format changes to analyze.
More legendary radio people whose stories deserve to be told before somebody realizes we should have interviewed them twenty years ago.
More small-market stations doing big things.
More personalities taking chances.
More companies experimenting.
More young broadcasters entering this crazy business and discovering exactly why generations before them fell in love with it.
And yes…
There will undoubtedly be plenty of mornings when we wake up, look at what happened overnight and say:
THEY DID WHAT?!
We’ll be here for that too.
An On The Dial Perspective
One thousand followers isn’t enormous by internet standards.
But that’s exactly why we’re celebrating it.
Every great community starts somewhere.
On The Dial wasn’t created to collect meaningless numbers. It was created to build a place for people who genuinely care about broadcast radio.
Today there are 1,000 of you.
One thousand people who clicked follow.
One thousand people who decided our stories were worth putting into their feeds.
One thousand reasons to work harder tomorrow than we did yesterday.
And if you’ve trusted On The Dial to deliver your daily broadcast radio news, Steven Mills and everyone associated with this publication sincerely thank you.
We don’t take that trust lightly.
We never will.
From Steven Mills
Radio has given me some of the greatest experiences, friendships, opportunities and memories of my life. I’ve been fortunate enough to sit behind the microphone, program stations, work alongside some extraordinary broadcasters and experience this industry from perspectives I never imagined when I first fell in love with it.
Now I get to write about it.
And somehow, 1,000 of you decided to come along for the ride.
Thank you.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for commenting.
Thank you for correcting us when necessary.
Thank you for sending tips.
Thank you for celebrating radio people with us.
And most importantly, thank you for trusting On The Dial.
We’ve got enormous plans.
We’re going to keep getting better.
We’re going to keep growing.
We’re going to keep championing this business.
We’re going to keep remembering that behind every call sign, every format and every corporate announcement…
there are people.
Today we celebrate 1,000.
Tomorrow?
We get right back to work.
Because the best of On The Dial hasn’t happened yet.
The best is yet to come.
From the bottom of our hearts…
THANK YOU, RADIO FAMILY.
1,000 STRONG — AND WE’RE JUST GETTING STARTED.
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