Is Radio Over?

[JohnGault]

Mad Money's Jim Cramer says "There's nothing there", and calls radio a "wasting asset". Radio, predictably lays there and puts up no fight.

http://www.thestreet.com/video/10402694/cramer-its-over-for-radio-stocks.html#10402694

Is Radio Over? I hardly think so. Are Radio Stocks dead? Duh. How brave of Jim Cramer to watch them decline by 80% and then go out on a limb and notice! Thanks for the heads up, Bozo! Good thing you let us all know in plenty of time! With tips like these, maybe you could also recommend avoiding ENRON!

I have an Ipod with a jack in the car, Sirius Satellite, and a POR (plain old radio). Note they are all coming out of my "Radio".

IPOD: Got the jack because I just had to have it, thought I would use it a lot. Power to the people! I am the program director!!!

RESULT: I have used it maybe 3 times in a year. I just don't have time to program my Ipod. When I look at it, I see "no surprises, and no connection to anything going on now". It's just the 2000's version of a mix tape on steroids. Yes it's cool, but my TSL is down lately. How about you? Great on a walk in the park, an airplane, or exercising, but morning drive? Boring.

SATELLITE: Got Sirius lifetime subscription for commercial free music channels, and occasionally like to hear Stern. Thought it might make my Radio obsolete.

RESULT: I hear Stern now and then, but way less interesting now that he is just a very rich guy with no enemies. Much of his show is garbage, he mostly shines when doing big star interviews, and now that he is on Satellite those are very rare. I listen maybe once every 2 weeks. The commercial free music is awful. The sound quality is poor compared to Broadcast, and it cuts out all the time when under trees and bridges, Very annoying. If I hadn't paid 500 bucks for lifetime deal, I would cancel. Oh yeah, and I'll bet those sleezbags still report me as a monthly subscriber, even though they will never get another nickel from me.

PLAIN OLD RADIO: I thought it was dead.

RESULT: I still listen to music on The Fox or CMF over the 4 or 5 Classic rock channels on Sirius, because they know how to pick music. On Satellite I end up doing the equivalent of channel surfing... I can not hear more than 2 songs without changing the channel.

CONCLUSION: Although many pronounce the industry dead, I think that would be like pronouncing HOUSES over because of the Subprime Lending crisis. Radio will ultimately be delivered in more ways than ever before with more people enjoying it in more places!

Let's just say that this industry can no longer service its debt to the investors who took it over after 1996. Too bad for them. To WALL STREET, Radio is Dead. What's dead is fat cat companies lying to their shareholders while sucking huge cash flow out of an asset they starved to death. The sooner they break apart into little pieces, the better.

LONG LIVE RADIO, in its present and future forms.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

My take:

Radio is dead, at least where I live. The news talk station has way too many commercials. The music stations are pretty lifeless kinda like listening to someone else's iPod with commercials and slogan lines.

iPod, I can carry my entire CD collection with me wherever I go! This is great, if a song pops into my head I can play it instantly. There are interesting podcasts and playlists for every mood. If I want to be surprised there is always shuffle mode. I'd sooner give up the radio than give up my iPod or Mac.

XM in the car is great. The '60's and '70's guys do some personality but never too much. They play a lot of music and not just the tired old songs over and over again. XM never fades on me, I don't know how they do it. Maybe they have a better network of terrestrial transmitters? I enjoy the talk channels, CNN and Smooth Jazz Channel they call "Watercolors". I never thought that I would become an XM subscriber but so far I like. Yes the audio quality could be better.

Radio as I knew it is missing. The fact that people are willing to pay for satellite says something, after all free is always better! What's missing is the personal touch. The jokes and the funny stuff of course but there was also a time when someone like Shane or Joey would make a profound comment that made you stop and think for a minute. There were jocks who really got into the music they were playing. They were excited about it and told you about the music giving it depth. These people took time to learn about the music and showcased it. I wish radio would do that today.

Radio has often been called a combination of "art and "science". Today the art seems to be missing.

 

[Kal]

Mad Money's Jim Cramer says "There's nothing there", and calls radio a "wasting asset".

Consider the source! LOL

"There's nothing there" ... are you certain he wasn't speaking of his own cable 'financial shout fest'?

Kal

 

[Ed Trefzger]

IPOD: Got the jack because I just had to have it, thought I would use it a lot. Power to the people! I am the program director!!!

RESULT: I have used it maybe 3 times in a year. I just don't have time to program my Ipod. When I look at it, I see "no surprises, and no connection to anything going on now". It's just the 2000's version of a mix tape on steroids. Yes it's cool, but my TSL is down lately. How about you? Great on a walk in the park, an airplane, or exercising, but morning drive? Boring.

I agree with you about the iPod and music ... but for podcasts, the iPod is great. Probably half my around town listening and all of it on long trips is podcasts.

 

[JohnGault]

So, how and where do you get most of these podcasts? How much time does it take to download them?

 

[SirRoxalot]

Let's Hope that SOME Radio is Over

There's been an extensive discussion of this topic on the Business of Radio board. Since this is a topic that goes far beyond our region, you might want to direct your attention there, and add to that discussion.

For my part, I hope that some of the corporate raiders get out of broadcasting, and that station prices get back to realistic levels so more money can go towards programming because less is going for debt service. I'll end that particular rant here since I've expressed it extensively on the other thread.

PS- Cramer's an idiot when it comes to radio, but he does reflect Wall Street's attitude toward broadcasting at the moment. It might be worth noting his views on the "cash flow" myth, and the fact that many on Wall Street feel that they've been hoodwinked by some big corporate operators.

 

[Ed Trefzger]

So, how and where do you get most of these podcasts? How much time does it take to download them?

Usually I subscribe to them either from a website link or via the iTunes store and allow iTunes to automatically download them. Then in iTunes, I choose which ones I want to sync to the iPod and when I connect the iPod, it automatically updates. There are a number of broadcast programs that also podcast -- including programs locally from WXXI, WYSL and WHAM -- so it's time shifting radio content.

Once you subscribe, the rest is automatic. Plug in the iPod, let it sync, and then take it with you when you go.

 

[Bob1370]

Radio is only "over" when it stops fighting to retain and gain listeners.

Unfortunately, some of the major station groups have, indeed, given up the fight, and taken to programming on the cheap, taking the money and running.

Those stations who continue to try to program quality--and there are still many of them--are prospering even in tough times, and gaining a growing share of what admittedly a static overall revenue pie.

But the reason WHY it's static, is the refusal of many station operators to run their stations as more than just jukeboxes peppered with ads. People tune out and resort to programming their iPods and CD decks because there's just not enough value-added in the programming these stations offer. The result for the business is that many stations now are experiencing hard times of their own making as people tune away from them--even as the ones that didn't cheapen their product are continuing to do well--pulling down the cumulative results of the radio business as a whole.

But if they just go back to what they used to do so well--presenting their programming with entertaining personalities and useful information elements--that value-added will return, and with it, the listenership, and before long, the revenue and profit.

You see, radio is inherently a much more user-friendly medium than an iPod or even a cassette or CD changer, because it requires no programming effort--in fact, no effort at all beyond pushing one button to turn it on and one to select the station or set it to scan until you hit something you like. Radio SHOULD still be people's first choice for audio entertainment and information, and it would be if it simply put the same effort into programming that it did when we all got into the business. People who turn to other methods of getting audio entertainment are actually going out of their way to use more effort to program their devices...and that runs contrary to human nature, which normally seeks out the easiest and most direct route to anything. That tells me they don't like what they're hearing now from us--but we could save them the hassle, and get them back in our corner, by bringing back consistently entertaining content. It's not brain surgery, we knew how to do it before and used to do it instinctively just a relatively few years ago. It's just a matter of dusting off the principles of quality, entertaining programming we once used, and applying those principles once again.

 

[umtrr-author]

I think that my iPod probably turned out to be a less valuable investment than I first thought. My wife wanted me to have one for business trips, particularly for the plane trip portion, but I don't make nearly as many as I used to. (For which I am very grateful.) I did load up a few podcasts for a long business related car trip but I have been frustrated by the number of batteries chewed up by my cheapo iPod car adapter. (The next one will plug into the lighter socket!)

However, once the CDs are loaded in, my iTunes requires only one click as well. I'm up to (pause for checking) almost 6900 songs now, and every one is a hit with me with absolutely no regard for format. I hit the shuffle button in the morning and off I go. If I decide I'm not in the mood to listen to a particular track I just hit the ">>" button, usually telling myself, "Play something else." (Note: iTunes is not all that random. It gets into grooves with artists and has been known to try to play the same song an hour after it just did. Remind you of any formats of the past?) It's a lesser known attribute of iTunes that an entire library can be moved from one computer to another under the same license, rather than ripping CDs twice. I put our entire Glass Tiger song collection (four CDs, not just the big hit one) on my wife's PC in about 30 seconds.

But, as a lover of radio, this is what just kills me: I still love music and I manage to pick favorite songs of the year even though it's harder as my demographic is being increasingly ignored. (I guess I'm too old cause it's too loud now.) I heard what became my favorite song of 2006 on... drum roll, please... the video channel piped into a furniture store. ("Stay" by Sarah Bettens if you're curious: a wonderfully well crafted pop song. I am a sixties child after all...) The fact that I could hear more interesting songs in a furniture store is not only funny; it's sad, very sad.

 

[ROCKTHEMIC]

Radio is not dead! Bad radio is alive and that's simply because of lackluster programmers and clusters putting on lame radio! Is it their fault, nope! Big monster companies will be a thing of the past. CC is the clearest example that Focus on the Bottom line leads radio blind down the path to rags not riches! It's clearly time for a radio re-invention! If you have to answer to stock holders and money bags in big houses on warm coasts that will never happen!

Is radio over? NO! It's in a slump. The industry is dominated by bigs dogs with dirty matted flea infested hair! Time to take a bath! And start out clean and fresh! Some one has to pay the price...that's bad, the industry will recover better than ever and that's good! Be smart, learn, get involved, be great and Rock on!

Do I really believe all that dribble? Hell yeah! I need to believe...it's my future!

 

[aaronread]

Radio as a stock investment is certainly over...at least for the time being. That's where Cramer is coming from and he's not really wrong in that assessment; there's nothing that radio - as a business - is doing (or really capable of doing) to push those stock values back up. They were a bubble to be sure, and a bubble that came about through deregulation. It's already been deregulated, it can't really be deregulated much more (despite many moguls best efforts, there's not much blood left in that stone when it comes to effect on stock prices).

So while I think Cramer is a questionable human being, I don't think his judgment is entirely wrong here...even if it's a rather johnny-come-lately announcement.

However, is radio as a medium dead? Hardly...just look at the numbers in surveys of iPod users, satradio listeners, and radio. Radio beats them all by an order of magnitude. And talk radio (in which I include NPR) is still doing fairly well in many markets. Is radio losing ground? I'd say probably yes? Are big radio companies losing money? Not as much as you'd think. Remember - the stock market demands GROWTH and radio is most definitely not growing. So their stocks are getting hammered, and this is causing many publicly-traded companies to take actions that make things look more drastic than they really are. Many newspapers are in similar boats...they're losing money, but not as much money as you'd think from looking at their stock prices.

What was that famous quote about some rich guy's newspaper losing a million dollars a year? And his retort was that they had so much money made already that, at that rate, they'd have to close the paper in 25 years?

 

[Mike Sheridan]

Is radio over? NO! It's in a slump. The industry is dominated by bigs dogs with dirty matted flea infested hair! Time to take a bath! And start out clean and fresh! Some one has to pay the price...that's bad, the industry will recover better than ever and that's good! Be smart, learn, get involved, be great and Rock on!

Do I really believe all that dribble? Hell yeah! I need to believe...it's my future!

I admire you optimism and I do not want to be like the old guys at stations that tried to discourage me from getting into radio. I did it anyway and I can't say that I'm sorry, it was a great ride for awhile....

Then reality sets in, if you're not independently wealthy or have a wife with a really good job pretty soon you get tired of making the paycheck strech while working 6 days a week, office politics and lack of respect for what you do. I have worked for some great PD"S who really knew how to motivate and get the best out of everyone. Unfortunatly I have also worked for PD's with negitive attitudes and poor communication skills.

My advice if you want a future in radio...Find a forward thinking owner who cares about the people working there. It doesn't have to be the most powerful or flashiest studios in town. It doesn't even have to have the best or newest equipment but it needs to be functional and in good repair. I best station I worked for was a hole in the wall, small cramped and yet very professional with people who treated me like family.

Have fun, be real, and talk about what the listeners are talking about.