Your assessment about the future bright spots coming from non-com radio is a fair and honest one. What does the data show about when people really started leaving radio? Content-wise, in my opinion there has been a significant decline since the pandemic, but it was already trending this way before then. This is probably a question for David, but look at Shawn Ross's latest list of most interesting contests he just put out last week. Notice nothing from the U.S. is on that list, and hasn't been for eight years. Is this a product of declining revenue?
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FCC & Radio Ownership Limits
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
TSL started to drop in the late 80s when people were making personal cassettes to play in the car. That became such a problem that the music industry went to congress to get a "blank tape tax" with the proceeds going to the music industry.
Audio Home Recording Act - Wikipedia
It was also at this time that the FCC began to loosen ownership rules, due to falling listenership.
Deregulation: Freeing the Air Waves
Ever since Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934, the broadcasting industry has chafed under increasingly heavy regulation. The reason: the air waves were considered to be a limited...
time.com
People were finding other ways to get free music, which hurt radio listenership, and led to loosening of ownership rules. That continues to happen now. The assumption is loosening ownership rules led to people leaving radio, but the data shows it was the other way around. There are no ownership rules in streaming radio, and that is where people are going.
TSL started to drop in the late 80s when people were making personal cassettes to play in the car. That became such a problem that the music industry went to congress to get a "blank tape tax" with the proceeds going to the music industry.
Audio Home Recording Act - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
It was also at this time that the FCC began to loosen ownership rules, due to falling listenership.
Deregulation: Freeing the Air Waves
Ever since Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934, the broadcasting industry has chafed under increasingly heavy regulation. The reason: the air waves were considered to be a limited...
People were finding other ways to get free music, which hurt radio listenership, and led to loosening of ownership rules. That continues to happen now. The assumption is loosening ownership rules led to people leaving radio, but the data shows it was the other way around. There are no ownership rules in streaming radio, and that is where people are going.
Maybe this should be put another way. It was assumed that loosening the ownership rules would save radio from falling ratings and revenues but that didn't happen. Allowing radio to become more corporatized didn't stop the bleeding though it may have perhaps slowed it down for a brief period.
Nothing is forever. New technology continued to eat away at radio's audience. Personal computers, cell phones, and smart speakers all replaced the home radio systems, so now it's rare to see a stand-alone radio in a home.
You say radio became more "corporatized," but Spotify as a company is far more centralized and corporatized than any of the broadcast radio companies. The people don't care, because on-demand radio allows them to make their own playlists rather than listening to songs chosen by radio programmers. But the companies themselves are very corporate.
The fact of the matter is the audience for radio became diluted with the rise of FM in the 1970s. AM powerhouses like WABC in NY saw their audiences cut in half because of competition from FM. Every time some new technology came along, the audience became more diluted, and radio became less attractive to advertisers who were paying the bills. That's where we are now. The only way to achieve the audience numbers that advertisers want is to own more stations and combine the audiences. That's how Spotify works. If you combine all of the listening on Spotify, it's a big number. That's what broadcast radio needs to achieve in order to compete.
My uncle made recordings of the music on what is now called America's Best Music. The station changed in 1995, so that meant he had the music he wanted when the station was gone.
His daughter didn't like listening to his music when she was in the car with him.
I made a bunch too, although I think most of them are now lost, unfortunately (my mother purged a bunch of her tapes about 15 years ago, and I'm worried that many of mine were caught up in that purge accidentally).
However, I got lucky and recently (past few years) rediscovered a couple of them, including about 20 minutes of a local AM that was airing Music Of Your Life about 20 years ago.
c
However, I got lucky and recently (past few years) rediscovered a couple of them, including about 20 minutes of a local AM that was airing Music Of Your Life about 20 years ago.
c
My question to you is this: Did you make those tapes for the music or everything else? What was your main reason for making those tapes?
Because the music industry said the reason was to get free music. That's why they wanted congress to impose the blank tape tax.
It was also the reason why they got the digital royalty in 1998. They said people wanted to get music without paying for it.
Since we haven't heard from CC333 yet, I'll give my answer. I aircheck for the content. If I just wanted the music, I'd buy it on iTunes. Your next question is probably this, if there are two CHRs in a market, do you have a preference for one over the other? My answer is yes, and what's between the songs drives that.
That led to hosts saying if I'm the reason you listen, then I'll give you just me with no music. Rush Limbaugh used to be a music DJ. But he realized he could make more money if he focused on his part of the show without the music. It also meant that he was harder to fire. Same with Howard Stern and Don Imus. These guys built an audience around themselves and what they did. Rush built his own membership plan, where his fans paid him a membership fee, and got unlimited access to him and his stuff. So what happened in the 90s was that each part of what radio provided wanted to get paid for just their part of it.
It's also where podcasts come in. That's something that didn't really exist 20 years ago. Most podcasts are just the host and no music, because if you play any music in the podcast, you have to pay huge royalties on that music.
BTW When you aircheck radio signals, neither the host nor the music get any money. So you're basically ripping them both off. What makes it worse is when people collect syndicated shows, and then sell them on eBay. The only person who gets paid is the person selling the album or CD. The people connected with the show and all of the musicians get ripped off. This is what led to aircheck websites getting sued by the music industry. They were playing music without paying for it.
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Once those heritage people die, they're impossible to replicate. Both of their shows are still being done, but they're not as unique as they once were. Today anyone can host a countdown show. It doesn't require any knowledge or even any talent. The people who have the talent want to be paid more and want to reach bigger audiences. They don't want to be restricted to just one city. They want to be global. So they either VT for lots of stations or become syndicated hosts. That's what Kasem & Kingsley did. They were each local LA DJs who wanted to be global.
You couple that with the fact that the artists are now hosting their own radio shows and stations. That makes the host who doesn't sing less important. The content that hosts used to provide is now all available on the internet. Access to the artists is now controlled by those artists. You can pay to become a super-fan, and meet your favorite artists without the intermediary of radio.
So what you really want is for all of us to go back to the way things used to be.
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That's true that those shows, while still being done, aren't as unique as they used to be. As much as I dislike how general entertainment-focused AT40 has become, I must give credit where credit is due to Seacrest. He keeps that show focused on current events and relevant to the music around it when possible. Contrast that with the iHeart Radio Countdown, which is on the same station in my market the previous day. That show is basically one long interview with a single artist who either has one hit in the countdown or is featured in an extra slot. I much prefer AT40 over that, but the iHeart model is where radio in general seems to be heading.
Keep in mind that both shows are done by iHeart, and they're just covering all the bases.
Well, I made them for listening in the car, mainly (I taped records and CDs, too (we didn't have cars with CD players back then)), plus I was just discovering the concept of recording, and I enjoyed making the tapes for the sake of it).
c
Tell that to the people who sold their stations between 1996 and 2000 or to the Mays family. They made lots of money off of loosening the ownership rules.
I'm sure you’ve heard me say that each of the big four radio companies having a bankruptcy isn’t a success. That’s true, but the law was designed to solve a problem as it was in the mid-1990’s. A big reason consolidation didn’t work as intended over the long term was because nobody saw streaming services taking over or even knew it was going to be a serious competitor. The smartphone was 10 years away, and Spotify's arrival in the US was as far away from 1996 as Docket 80-90. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was designed to give radio a better way to compete against print and television in addition to itself. Radio was starting from the same point, if not a slightly better one than, the streaming services were at the time. Sears was in a better position to maximize internet fulfillment than Amazon was at the time, too, and we saw what happened there.
"What we have now is defacto revision:"
www.insideradio.com
Buyers Push Ahead With Deals While Radio Awaits New FCC Ownership Rules.
Radio station dealmaking slowed in April but continued to show signs of momentum beneath the surface, as more buyers move ahead with acquisitions that require FCC ownership waivers. BIA reports