Actually, gang... I stated in a post in this very forum several years ago that I foresaw a time when transmitters would actually start turning off to save on the electric bill... Well, perhaps that's a bit dramatic. I must agree though, unless there's a mass returning of stations to local ownership, which is highly unlikely due to the high asking price for most stations these days, it's over for terrestrial radio. My prediction is for up to 50% of the signals in many markets will simply go dark. The rest will then be able to succeed simply because there will be more advertising dollars to go around. And even that may not be necessarilly true, since so many markets have a handful of group stations, each with close to their limit of stations in the market... so the advertising pie might not actually change much at all.
Just speculation here, but I give it another year or two, and the real attrition will set in.
To think, radio is a victim of itself. All this could have been avoided years ago had upper management not dictated a policy of bottom line budgets. The point I've been making for years now is that radio has killed itself with this nit-witted idea that listeners don't want to hear disc jockeys, just the music. Happy Horse Hockey! People listened for both the music and the personalities. Now that the latter is going the way of the dinosaurs, just what the hell do these group managers think is going to be the audience draw? When I see certain frequencies in Memphis... 94.1 and 98.9 instantly come to mind... keep flipping formats because after a year or so there's little or no interest from the listeners, I gotta wonder what the talking head running those places are thinking.
This could ramble on for several pages, but it suffices to say that radio's goose is cooked. Want to break into a new opportunity? Find something on the internet. I guarantee you it'll be more enjoyable and satisfying to you than the same liner-card, slogan saturated airshift you'll find on most stations in the market.
I said this today... somebody take note of it... 10 percent of the stations (AM and FM) in Memphis will be off the air in two years. Remember I said it.
Steve West
Airchexx.com
And yes, I'm still alive and kickin'! I miss our arguements haha. Somebody send me an email
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