“Re-set”, meaning that advertising will come back to radio, but not to the level it enjoyed even 12 months ago.

“Re-set”, meaning that station brokers and lenders believe radio stations will start trading again, and there will be owners who want to be in the business long-term. But not for the kinds of prices that stations fetched even 12 months ago.

“Re-set”, meaning that radio station staffing levels will stabilize, but not where they were 12 months ago.

You could keep naming more examples of “re-set” in the radio business, and they’re all a way to talk about what Cherry Creek Radio CEO Joe Schwartz calls “the new normal.” In other words, things are going to get better. But they’re never going to be the way they were.

The new normal will be a “re-set” of old organizational structures and old habits.

But more than anything else, the “re-set” is really “mind-set.” As the Borg say in sci-fi-speak, “resistance is futile”, and that’s what group heads like Joe Schwartz and Ed Christian at Saga are preaching. Get used to the new normal, and get used to being proficient at lots of jobs and being very, very flexible. Those guys and plenty of other operators aren’t stepping away from radio, even as they make the painful changes to keep their groups viable. And nobody’s saying they have the magic answers – they’re just trying things and seeing which ideas and techniques work.

Perhaps the hardest mental “re-set” trick of all will be to remember what makes radio special – connecting with the listener, one on one. If radio loses that while it’s trying to just keep the lights on, it will have lost something more important – its soul.