Several companies, including the largest, hit bankruptcy for the first time before 2005.
Clear Channel did not go into bankruptcy in that period. The founders, the Mays family and McCombs sold in the now-famous private equity transaction that moved ownership to a bunch of investment banks. While the deal was held up due to the building recession and buyer remorse, it went through.
Overpayment and overleveraging were a major issue before the iPhone showed up. Even then, the iPhone primarily replaced CDs, cassettes, and then-dead vinyl. Radio really began to falter when the big corporations started ever-going talent drain.
The iPad replaced CDs and cassettes, and that was around the start of the New Millenium. As iPhones and competitive "smart phones" increased their share of the market, we saw more and more audio streams taking radio audience.
At the same time, radio did not recover well from the recession, with billing off by a never-recovered one third. And that "third" was even greater, as we have to include the burst of inflation at that time which further reduced the real dollars of radio. Oh, and in the top "50" markets, the PPM showed about 1/3 less AQH listening compared to the diary, so stations had lower ratings (not shares) and agencies buy on CPP... Cost Per rating Point.
The countries where on entity owns the entire national coverage are generally far smaller and less diverse than the United States. C'mon, David, you've traveled across this country more than once.
Everywhere from Chile (3000 miles from end to end) to Germany and Italy and many others have commercial national radio stations. Not networks, but a single station on a bunch of frequencies. It works, and definitely works in the US... just look at K-Love! The problem is that owners here wanted big city clusters, not a national service.
There are significant regional differences. BBC1, BBC2, and BBC3 just aren't the answer, even with digital subchannels.
The internet has reduced regional differences significantly. And the big station groups are saving money by doing national music research rather than costly market by market music testing.
And I am talking about national commercial stations, and just a look at Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, France, Chile, Colombia and many other nations have such operations. While all those nations are smaller, the concept of having the top talent in the key city or cities where they have everything from artists to new releases to celebrities available is universal.
National networks have their place, but even TV news nets are shrinking in influence as more and more alternative "news" sites become available that are more regionally focused in many cases. If anything, social media proves that local interest generally outweighs national interest.
But in this case we are talking about traditional ad supported radio. In the nations where national stations operate, the percentage of ad money going to radio is higher than in the US because advertisers, through their agencies, prefer the simplicity, security and content guarantee of those full-country stations.
One of the biggest issues with radio is that it is hard and very complex to buy. National streams and podcasts and the like are simple to buy. We often forget that this complexity of radio is a big part of why budgets don't go to radio the way they used to.
As radio content has lost local flavor and personalities the medium has declined.
Except for mornings, most listeners under 40 or so don't want jocks "hitting the post" and chattering over the songs. That worked when we had little or no other contact with the outside world, but now people text and post on social media all day long and don't want a jock talking at them.
And we see with Seacreast, Bones, Charlemagne and others that national or "almost national" shows work as well as or better than most local show.
How many of the big corps have tried to cut their way to prosperity while seeing overall revenue, cume, and TSL decline? You can cite the availability of other listening options, but what drove people there in the first place?
Revenue has declined because of a bunch of other factors, starting with more options for advertisers. Budgets are split into more pieces.
Radio cume is pretty close to what it was 20 years ago. The biggest loss is in teens and 18-24... because those listeners want one-to-one music services with no ads and no talking between the songs.
The first big TSL loss came when video games became very popular. People shared time with gaming, and gave less to radio. This was not a radio content issues; it was an issue of more alternative things to spend time on.
Perhaps it's too late to restructure, perhaps not. One thing is for sure, continuing along the same generic path is simply going the route of a bunch of people in big offices padding their retirement for a few more years before the next corporate collapse, further damaging the media itself in the process.
Radio is not one-to-one and has ads. Those are the two issues that make those in the younger generation prefer new media.
But if you look in most US markets, those outside the very top don't have compelling stations, talent or not. Where I live, a market of a half-million, I can't listen to any station with pleasure. And even at my age, I don't want local DJs making things worse by talking between songs... usually about stuff I already saw on the web hours or days before.
