Maybe the issue is semantic. I suppose it's possible to partially reverse the attrition---but you'll never undo it. At best, maybe you get the people back who abandoned ship but didn't embrace a replacement for audio---haven't bonded with a new technology. And if you got them all back tomorrow, that number goes down every day, because they're all of a certain age, and they're gonna eventually die. Meantime, there's no steady stream of younger people taking their place because...why would they?
Fundamentally, the shift has been about technology. You're not going to abandon your DVR and go back to setting a VCR, and you're certainly not going to go back to "We have to be home and in front of the TV by 8 or we'll miss it." You're not going to throw away your cellphone, re-install a landline and keep a bunch of quarters in the cupholder of your car for payphones.
And that's not what I'm arguing. No, the genie is not going to go back in the bottle. I know that. At the same time, the speed and severity with which the shift has happened can't, in my opinion, be chalked up solely to advancements in technology. People abandon goods and services when those goods and services aren't meeting their needs or desires. I think it's entirely possible that decisions broadcasters made 30 or even 40 years ago made the current situation worse than it could have been. The rate of listener attrition could have been reduced. Instead, it seems to have been accelerated.
This isn't unique to broadcasters. Newspapers had the same problem. They also made some bad decisions. I'm very much in favor of quality journalism, but journalists can be dogmatic about certain things, too, causing them to lose touch with their readers and their readers' interests. The flow of money from classified advertising helped cover things up until Craig Newmark came along.
Let's take a Bay Area radio example: KGO. I've written here before of my reaction to KGO upon moving to the Bay Area. I wondered why anyone would listen to it.
That was in...check this...
1999. When I was in my early 40s, still prime for advertising targeting. KGO seemed old-fashioned to me.
KGO actually did try to do something: a sort-of-all-news format. It wasn't as well resourced as KCBS, but there were some good ideas there. The old KGO crowd hated it. Didn't matter, it was too late. So they went back to what they knew, constrained by Cumulus' financial condition. And now it's gone altogether.
Yes, it's hard to abandon something that appears to be successful in favor of something new. I know this from personal experience with a couple of companies. When they finally listened and acted on new ideas, it was too late to do anything other than hold the line (in the best case) or manage decline (in the other).
Nor do I think that eliminating or reducing regulation is going to make things better. Regulation is already much lighter than it was before Mark Fowler came along. Has that helped matters? No. So saying that regulation is holding broadcasting back is a cop-out. All it will do is permit consolidation that will reinforce existing programming and other business habits that clearly aren't working.
What will help? I don't know. At least I
admit that I don't know. I'm trying not to be smug here. I left the business almost 40 years ago. But it still has a place in my heart and it hurts to see it go so badly. I really have nothing to contribute here. But I don't think the existing lineup of broadcasters knows, either. So they should stop pretending that they do. They should engage in critical self-reflection and learn from their mistakes instead of repeating those mistakes and hanging on to dogma.
Radio's best chance at fighting off streaming would have been to be able to say---"we give you value that streaming will never be able to match (probably hyper-local stuff)."
But honestly, the vast majority of the audience didn't care. Ask every really good hyper-local midday talk show host who ended up Limbaugh's roadkill.
That was then. Who knows what can be done now? The fallacy of assuming the future will be like the past becomes a trap.
Look at the declining asset values for stations. One can argue that those values had been inflated in recent years. Now that they're coming back to earth, it might be possible for new owners to take more risks...with programming, with services, with business models. Maybe that hyper-local talk show can buy a station and be more local, at least in critical parts of the day.
Radio needs new blood...not more iHeart "guaranteed human" (which would be more accurate if that slogan were "guaranteed layoffs") or other consolidators who are growing only their bureaucracy.
Music? Beloved personalities with 40 shares back in the day weren't getting the other 60 percent (who probably thought the beloved personality was a blowhard who should shut up and play the damn music).
The blowhard has reinvented himself (or herself) as a talk-show host who does nothing but rant and who doesn't take phone calls. It worked for a little while. Now...not so much.
It's not an appealing landscape.
