The following is from the NYT’s review of the new book Cheap, which examines the true costs — economic and otherwise, of the relentless drive to discount everything from shrimp to tube socks:

“An American dream once fuled by ideas and entrepreneurship has been reduced to laying off people and reducing risk. ‘When prices are kept too low, innovation is nearly impossible,’ the Harvard economist Robert Lawrence told ['Cheap' author] Ruppell Shell. Apparently we’re not even building better mousetraps anymore — just cheaper ones.”

While Cheap focuses on retailing, the above passage aptly describes a challenge facing talk radio as it struggles with today and looks to its future.  What was the last serious programming innovation in the format?  When was the last time someone took a significant chance on something really new?  Sports talk, maybe?  What was that – 25 years ago?   The clock is ticking for talk radio: the audience is aging, while competing media are growing and developing new concepts, content and channels.  Like Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now, broadcast talk sits in the hotel room of its past, growing weaker every day, while new media squats in the competitive jungle, growing stronger every day.

If talk radio doesn’t recapture some of it’s entrepreneurial spirit, the inevitable economic recovery will herald not a new golden age, but a last hurrah.