How Long Does Radio Have Left?

[Rusty Muck]

Local news is the only way to fill the spots.

It is most certainly not. Wall-to-wall local news outside of Los Angeles (which is the only market that could justify it) is unsustainable, unless you want to pay talent and anchors dirt cheap wages, prerecord everything like a video jukebox, or have AI do it.

No one wants to be creative or consider anything that isn't a newscast or another infotainment show with sponsored segments. Or the chain owners are too cheap to consider the thought.

 

[davideduardo]

It is most certainly not. Wall-to-wall local news outside of Los Angeles (which is the only market that could justify it) is unsustainable, unless you want to pay talent and anchors dirt cheap wages, prerecord everything like a video jukebox, or have AI do it.

No one wants to be creative or consider anything that isn't a newscast or another infotainment show with sponsored segments. Or the chain owners are too cheap to consider the thought.

Here in a sub-#-100 market, Palm Springs, one of the stations has over 6 hours of news a day (including the network morning show block). They also have the ABC and Fox channels locally and put local casts on in hours when the CBS affiliate has network or "good" syndicated prime access stuff on.

 

[ted chittenden]

Just when I thought I was going to close my comments for the night, I check my email and find the below link which is very much on topic and comes from Edison Research.

https://news.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/headline_id=n46984

Yes, the change is coming but it is moving slower than most of us realize. There are many reasons for this but I will cite two.

1) Traditional radio is a habit. It's actually a good habit to have, because while it's true that you can manipulate it to a certain extent, you cannot all manipulate of it all of the time. The atmosphere and its effects on frequencies, especially AM and shortwave, help see to that.

2) The new media costs money, money that many people don't yet have. For example, while many writing on this Board have paid subscriptions to satellite and on-line services, I, living on a fixed income, really don't have that kind of money and I now don't expect that I ever will. Beyond my personal situation, the behavior of the current leader towards tariffs and other matters have made our lives almost overnight unstable. Not many people want to purchase satellite or Internet accessibility when the retirement income they are dependent upon has suddenly become much riskier.

So yes, it's coming. But it will be gaining traction more slowly than many of us realize.

 

[ted chittenden]

Just when I thought I was going to close my comments for the night, I check my email and find the below link which is very much on topic and comes from Edison Research.

https://news.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/headline_id=n46984

Yes, the change is coming but it is moving slower than most of us realize. There are many reasons for this but I will cite two.

1) Traditional radio is a habit. It's actually a good habit to have, because while it's true that you can manipulate it to a certain extent, you cannot all manipulate of it all of the time. The atmosphere and its effects on frequencies, especially AM and shortwave, help see to that.

2) The new media costs money, money that many people don't yet have. For example, while many writing on this Board have paid subscriptions to satellite and on-line services, I, living on a fixed income, really don't have that kind of money and I now don't expect that I ever will. Beyond my personal situation, the behavior of the current leader towards tariffs and other matters have made our lives almost overnight unstable. Not many people want to purchase satellite or Internet accessibility when the retirement income they are dependent upon has suddenly become much riskier.

So yes, it's coming. But it will be gaining traction more slowly than many of us realize.

And I see that the link didn't go through. If I wasn't supposed to send links from that site, I fully apologize and won't do it again--I literally was unaware of the policy.

 

[davideduardo]

Just when I thought I was going to close my comments for the night, I check my email and find the below link which is very much on topic and comes from Edison Research.

It's important to note that Edison and Larry Rosen are among the best in the industry. His research and his personal analysis of the results are very worth of attention.

Yes, the change is coming but it is moving slower than most of us realize. There are many reasons for this but I will cite two.

I will add a third: People age exactly one year with every calendar year that goes by. It's a slow process to begin with.

1) Traditional radio is a habit. It's actually a good habit to have, because while it's true that you can manipulate it to a certain extent, you cannot all manipulate of it all of the time.

"Habit" is also seen as "stability" and "predictability". It's the "Corn Flakes" of audio.

The atmosphere and its effects on frequencies, especially AM and shortwave, help see to that.

AM has nearly no listening under age 50. And shortwave has had really no listening for four or five decades. Why bring them up? One is aging out, the other is totally dead.

2) The new media costs money, money that many people don't yet have. For example, while many writing on this Board have paid subscriptions to satellite and on-line services, I, living on a fixed income, really don't have that kind of money and I now don't expect that I ever will. Beyond my personal situation, the behavior of the current leader towards tariffs and other matters have made our lives almost overnight unstable. Not many people want to purchase satellite or Internet accessibility when the retirement income they are dependent upon has suddenly become much riskier.

That is a political perspective of yours to the current situation. I see it totally differently, but this is not a political forum.

The fact is that new media has costs. Those costs rose more, as a percentage, between 2000 and 2004 than in any prior time. For example, my Netflix bill that covered my sister-in-law at a different location doubled. Cable was up over 25%, and my FiOS internet was up 18%.

Here is the real issue with music services... streams, satellite, over the air: I don't have enough time to do more important things, so I have no time to be "crafting" playlists. I am totally satisfied with asking Alexa to play specific songs or genres, or to use Sirius/XM in the car. No work, no distraction. I have over 1000 MP3's saved of my favorite songs from the last 65 years or so... cumbias, vallenato, salsa and merengue, rancheras, tangos, pasillos, CHR from Spain, Argentina and Mexico, Spanish rock from Argentina, 80's and 90's country and a few newer songs that "gotta have a fiddle in the band", some early rock 'n' roll from Buddy Holly and the like, a bunch of 70's disco from my Puerto Rico years and even a bunch of 80's Yacht Rock. Oh, and the San Remo songs from the 60's to the 80's, and Johnny Halliday and France Gall and the like from France in the same era. I can sit for an hour or two every few weeks and segue from Bogotá to Roma and then to Nashville. But not often.

 

[davideduardo]

And I see that the link didn't go through. If I wasn't supposed to send links from that site, I fully apologize and won't do it again--I literally was unaware of the policy.

Links are OK. In fact, if you quote, Lance prefers that you attach a link to the source to comply with fair usage standards.

 

[tall_guy1]

It is most certainly not. Wall-to-wall local news outside of Los Angeles (which is the only market that could justify it) is unsustainable, unless you want to pay talent and anchors dirt cheap wages, prerecord everything like a video jukebox, or have AI do it.

No one wants to be creative or consider anything that isn't a newscast or another infotainment show with sponsored segments. Or the chain owners are too cheap to consider the thought.

In Kansas City, each main station except Fox (which has 12) has 6-7 hours of news per day. But I'm not sure there's much syndicated programming left that people want to watch, but local news gets viewers. It's not me, but a lot of older audiences watch it.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

Links are OK. In fact, if you quote, Lance prefers that you attach a link to the source to comply with fair usage standards.

He did post a link but it was blocked because it went to a radio news site that competes with Lance's RadioInsight.

Here's a link to the original source at Edison Research, which the other site just paraphrased anyway:

AM/FM Radio Beyond the Receiver

Share of Ear from Edison Research shows how much of daily the time spent with AM/FM radio is spent with streamed AM/FM sources.

www.edisonresearch.com

 

[ted chittenden]

He did post a link but it was blocked because it went to a radio news site that competes with Lance's RadioInsight.

Here's a link to the original source at Edison Research, which the other site just paraphrased anyway:

AM/FM Radio Beyond the Receiver

Share of Ear from Edison Research shows how much of daily the time spent with AM/FM radio is spent with streamed AM/FM sources.

www.edisonresearch.com

Thank you for clarifying. The original email I received included the story inside of the email with a link at the bottom to what I assumed was the original source. Again, thank you for the correction.

 

[b-turner]

The reason there are so many hours of news on TV stations is no for a lack of programming options. It is because they can control the programming, have more commercial time to sell, save on buying market rights to a program they must clear, and generally get time covered by a few of your news crew versus paying more for something else. The fact is news can 'repeat' (the 6am hour might be okay to pretty much repeat at 8am as far as stories and features go).

 

[AM-FM-DXer]

Radio is not one thing, so there isn't one answer.

Obviously CHR stations are having a lot of trouble right now. That trouble is exacerbated by the music industry.

Because of changes in the music industry, the future of music radio as we knew it is pretty limited.

I was at a music industry conference last month, and a lot of people in the industry think of broadcast radio as obsolete.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

Is there a general consensus in the industry that radio is not one thing? Most of us - at least those of us who are not industry experts - see radio as a terrestrial and a broadcast medium. We don't see Spotify or streaming as radio.

In terms of over-the-air radio - not including streaming and digital - I am reading from your response that you think broadcast radio's future, if it has one, will be largely religious broadcasters and potentially other brokered formats. Is that right?

I knew a radio industry executive about 15 years ago who was pushing for radio companies to sign exclusivity deals with record companies. In other words, new music would have been released to radio long before other media. That way, radio would have stayed relevant. Obviously, it did not happen.

 

[Miss Tuned]

Thanks for taking the time to answer my question.

Is there a general consensus in the industry that radio is not one thing? Most of us - at least those of us who are not industry experts - see radio as a terrestrial and a broadcast medium. We don't see Spotify or streaming as radio.

In terms of over-the-air radio - not including streaming and digital - I am reading from your response that you think broadcast radio's future, if it has one, will be largely religious broadcasters and potentially other brokered formats. Is that right?

I knew a radio industry executive about 15 years ago who was pushing for radio companies to sign exclusivity deals with record companies. In other words, new music would have been released to radio long before other media. That way, radio would have stayed relevant. Obviously, it did not happen.

Radio isn't "one thing" in the same way as the web isn't "one thing". It's just a platform, basic infrastructure that people put their product on top of. Facebook, Amazon and a porn site are all on the web, but they're different things. In the same way, NPR, K-Love and Z-100 have very little in common in terms of how they do business and what they put out, they simply use the same basic infrastructure of audio over transmitters and receivers.

As technology moves on, the boundaries between these infrastructures blur in interesting ways. Is Spotify radio? I personally don't feel like it is - but not because of the platform it's on, but because it doesn't have the 'furniture' of radio, it doesn't work in the same way, it's music on-demand, it's not linear audio. Meanwhile, the local streaming-only college station is radio, even though it's not on RF, because it does what radio does.

Radio will never go away, but radio as a sole media activity it will become a niche, something people do because they want to make radio. The future (well, really, the present) of radio and audio companies is in these blurry multiplatform areas.

 

[TheBigA]

Is there a general consensus in the industry that radio is not one thing?

Who would you ask? There are hundreds of radio station owners, who each run their stations differently. You can't get one answer because radio is not one thing. For example, iHeart isn't running its stations as one thing. They see the content they create as applicable for multi-platform use. Lots of other stations do similar things. Some radio stations do video simulcasts of their shows, so they're not limited to audio only. You have commercial radio stations that operate differently from non-commercial stations. You have large ownership group stations that operate differently from small groups or individual stations. Get what I'm saying?

I knew a radio industry executive about 15 years ago who was pushing for radio companies to sign exclusivity deals with record companies. In other words, new music would have been released to radio long before other media. That way, radio would have stayed relevant. Obviously, it did not happen.

This may come as news to you, but at one time, NBC was owned by the same company that owned RCA Records. CBS owned Columbia Records. Even when radio companies owned record labels, they didn't have exclusivity deals with their own labels. Why? Because that would limit the exposure of their music to their radio stations.

However, some big radio companies and syndicators occasionally get some new music first to do "world premieres." Last year, iHeart did exclusive premieres of the new Beatles song and the new Rolling Stones album. They premiered them on all of their stations and received exclusive interviews with the bands. Did those premieres make radio "more relevant?" When people have choices, they use them. That's the situation with music. Radio stations and groups sign exclusivity deals to broadcast the Super Bowl. Does that mean people don't watch it on TV? No. Radio signs exclusivity deals with their own talent. Does that make radio more relevant? The only way to do it is to get everyone to throw away their phones and shut down the internet. Do you think people would agree to that?

 

[TheBigA]

Here's a view from a former big radio PD on what it takes to "save radio"

It Takes Culture - Not Just Content - To Save Radio, Says Steal - Radio Ink

Forget the playlist: programmer Jimmy Steal says talent, culture, and connection are what will keep radio relevant in 2025 and beyond.

radioink.com

The thing is, he's not at an actual station anymore. He's just offering advice.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Newspapers, except for the biggest metro dailies, are in their death spirals now.

Radio, however, is declining fare more precipitously - and by most metrics - than newspapers declined with the advent of radio.

Dailies? Mine delivers three days a week.

There is something called :"Edition" that is daily, for all papers owned by the same company, but I refuse to waste time on it. I'm trying to cut down on time spent online.

 

[vchimpanzee]

It is most certainly not. Wall-to-wall local news outside of Los Angeles (which is the only market that could justify it)

Why not New York City? Or Washington, DC? Or Chicago?

 

[vchimpanzee]

The reason there are so many hours of news on TV stations is no for a lack of programming options. It is because they can control the programming, have more commercial time to sell, save on buying market rights to a program they must clear, and generally get time covered by a few of your news crew versus paying more for something else. The fact is news can 'repeat' (the 6am hour might be okay to pretty much repeat at 8am as far as stories and features go).

I thought the reason was that people need the news at different times so, depending on what time they need it, they can get it whenever they happen to turn in.

I don't see how anyone needs news at 4:30, but I guess some people have to get up really early for work. Not everyone goes to work at the same time, so having the news live whenever you do is a good thing.

 

[vchimpanzee]

People want to make their own playlists. Curated radio, even at Apple Music, is losing money. Pandora isn't as attractive as it used to be.

I never did this. Cost was one reason, but I didn't like being limited.

In the area of adult standards, I have found one online station that almost never repeats a recording. Traditional formats would tend to play the same songs over and over, and there are only one or two versions of each song. Turns out every artist seems to have recorded every song.

 

[radio128]

Dailies? Mine delivers three days a week.

There is something called :"Edition" that is daily, for all papers owned by the same company, but I refuse to waste time on it. I'm trying to cut down on time spent online.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I'm trying to cut down on time spent online.

Including here?