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On Radio

Art Who?

"Art form"? Radio is an "art form"?

The last time I heard anyone in management refer to radio as an art form was in the '80s, when my first consultant informed me that radio was a business, not an art form. Music is "product". Commercials are "units". That has been reinforced innumerable times over the years by sales-trained-management. "Art" does not fit into a spreadsheet.

Formats are designed to emphasize music rotations, and the input of "talent" has been constantly reduced and devalued. If an air personality manages to form any kind of relationship with listeners, it's purely incidental, and doesn't mean that they deserve a higher salary. Any listener craving human companionship is better off served by blogs, Facebook, MySpace, or any of the billions of chat rooms. Yeah, you need a computer, and you can't do that while you're driving, so talk radio can fill those brief moments.

Remember when radio was "cool"? Now, the lack of local content and heavily-structured formats have left it ice cold.

And you wonder why radio is in trouble.
 
Radio is also the most incredibly resilient medium ever devised. It has survived, thrived and evolved through the introduction of competing methods of modulation, exponential increases in the size and influence of the movie industry, a little thing called "television," the internet, and a 15-fold increase in station population since WW2. Radio is truly the electronic cockroach. And Detroit whines about how imports have captured less than 50% of the domestic market!

It's becoming pretty clear that the corporate-management model does not fit well with the personal, local character of traditional radio - the approach that made format radio ubiquitous (hate using that word in the shaky-HD era) over the past 50 years. Everyone knows how radio completely reinvented itself then, evolving from network-show relay stations with some local night and weekend programming, to the familiar music, news and information formats that made the genre successful. Corporate-mindset, focus-group obsessed centralized management has completely trashed the "local and unique" innovation historically central to radio's success.

Making public predictions is always risky. But I would forsee a day when corporate either divests of radio, returning it to a future generation of innovators who will return to radio's roots - or else break corporate holdings down to far smaller and more responsive units, with freedom to do the local thing that radio has always done best. After all, the one sector of the industry which is still doing well are what used to be derisively dismissed by corp-radio as "mom-and-pops."

If things keep going the way they are, corporate radio won't have much choice. Clearly they're driving right over the cliff with their current approach.
 
Back from visiting family in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to find the board brimming with interesting topics. The following item from Inside Radio relates indirectly to the column in the Washington Post and more directly to the comments of Mr. Savage:

Brokers see a "death spiral" lurking. For groups that bought stations before prices started falling, it could be a long, hot Summer. A large brokerage head tells Inside Radio his firm is getting lots of calls from banks saying some groups are in "moderate-to-severe trouble." He says the situation has been harder on owners who bought stations where the housing market imploded and advertising revenues have sunk.

Buffalo catches a partial break because, unlike Las Vegas and other growth cities, housing prices have been relatively stable. Woo-hoo! Way to go Buffalo!

Unfortunately, market revenue reportedly is down.

So if, on a national scale, revenue is down and the values of radio stations have declined, what becomes of all those "mortgages" that are held by the banks? The very same US banks which are having problems of their own as the value of the US dollar wilts under pressure from rising debt, higher energy costs, foreign economies and stronger foreign currencies such as the rising Euro and Canadian dollar.

It isn't as if CBS and Clear Channel have a glut of buyers lining up to pay premium or even faux-market-value prices for below market value properties (the Clear Channel Utica properties come to mind) in their portfolios.

So what becomes of those properties?

One thing's for sure, Clear Channel, Entercom, Citadel, Emmis, Cumulus and CBS aren't in the charity business. They won't be giving those stations away. In all likelihood, they'll hold onto the properties and run them as cheaply as possible until the economy improves. Wait for it...

In Buffalo, Entercom and Citadel appear to be in better shape than Regent, which is holding a heavy bag of debt, having purchased CBS' Buffalo cluster on the cusp of the economic downturn.

As they say in the sales business, timing and location (and a good list) are everything.
 
Radknowski said:
In Buffalo, Entercom and Citadel appear to be in better shape than Regent, which is holding a heavy bag of debt, having purchased CBS' Buffalo cluster on the cusp of the economic downturn.
Click to expand...

How can Citadel be in "better shape" than Regent after buying ABC? Seems they're both up against it. Have you looked at their stock price recently?
 
People often bristle at calling radio an "art form" okay why not call it "show business"?

It seems like owners used to realize that it was what came between the records that set them apart from the competition.

One disc of mp3's can play for about 10 hours without repeating but it can't tell you about the hot new song by (insert artist here). I still remember the excitement the jocks created as they talked about the Beatles. Joey Reynolds talking about his Beatle Haircut long before they appeared on the Ed Sullivan show.

We used to listen to the radio to hear music and stay informed at the same time. You knew if something was going on KB Pulse Beat News would have the story, or the jocks would be talking about it. Now it's just liners and jingles.

Do radio programmers think we need to hear how great the radio station is over and over? You got the sale, I'm listening, so now give me something I care about as a listener.
 
Re: Art Who?

SirRoxalot said:
"Art form"? Radio is an "art form"?

The last time I heard anyone in management refer to radio as an art form was in the '80s, when my first consultant informed me that radio was a business, not an art form. Music is "product". Commercials are "units".
Click to expand...

Yes, radio IS an art form and consultants are a dime a dozen! Maybe 2 dozen for a dime!

'Well, it worked in Seattle!' Been there, done that ... a hundred times over, it seems. But what big time consultant listens to the local guys?

Sir Rox ... that consultant wouldn't have been Bob H., would it? (It all sounds soooo familiar! LOL)

Kal
 
Everyone knows how radio completely reinvented itself then, evolving from network-show relay stations with some local night and weekend programming...

...to Star System hub-relay stations with some network night and weekend programming!

Sorry, couldn't resist.

It won't take a total corporate meltdown to bring back mom-&-pops. Just a couple stations here and there will get it started. If "local wins" is really true, we'll find out soon enough.
 
Re: Art Who?

Kal said:
Sir Rox ... that consultant wouldn't have been Bob H., would it? (It all sounds soooo familiar! LOL)

Kal
Click to expand...

Kal, there have been so many over the years, and so many years, that it's hard to remember which knucklehead was first. All I know is that consultants were first, followed by GMs, SMs, and finally PDs who bought into that line of thinking.

BTW, I never meant to imply that they're right. Music is art, and the art of putting music together tastefully has been lost to the silicon fist of the computer. One day, I expect a "brilliant" programmer to come up with an idea for giving the jock a choice of songs available to play next, and the jock will be able to select the one with the right tempo, instrumentation, subject matter, genre, and sound. If a selection isn't made, a "default" song will play. Yes, it will be the computerized version of the old 3x5 card / hot clock system that worked so well BC (Before Computers).
 
Re: Art Who?

Sir Rox,

I know you didn't imply that ... I was actually agreeing with you!

BTW, I never meant to imply that they're right. Music is art, and the art of putting music together tastefully has been lost to the silicon fist of the computer.
Click to expand...

And you are right on another point ... so many years, so many consultants and so few made any sense or knew the market!
Kal
 
Mark_Giardina said:
What has happened to radio is like watching old newsreels of the Hindenburg seconds after landing at Lakehurst New Jersey.
Click to expand...
And what has happened to radio since then is like the reshuffling of the deck chairs on the Titanic.
 
The Hindenberg and Titanic references were interesting analogies. A bit strong, but they made the point. But let's remember, nobody gets killed in radio. Our egos get bruised and abused and we sometimes get tossed about like pocket lint, but it's not as if we're dodging IED's in Iraq or taking incoming fire from RPG's.

No question, radio is a very different business and this is a very different time than when Danny McBride allowed me to stumbled on the air when Buffalo was market #27. But what hasn't changed in America?

Today (Tuesday, 6/3/08), GM closed four SUV-Truck production lines. Gas is 4.12 a gallon. Hell, I could fill the tank of my VW Beetle for 4.12! I'm not wearing rose colored glasses, just trying to put things in context.
 
Pop Art?

Kal, the BTW above was actually an oblique reference to an earlier quote from Mike Sheridan:

People often bristle at calling radio an "art form" okay why not call it "show business"?
Click to expand...

Show biz, art form - heck, I'm OK with calling show biz an art form.

I also agree with Mr. Savage, Esq. that radio is a most resilient medium. I've long held the belief that the sooner radio becomes unattractive to Big Corporate, the sooner radio will get back to serving it's primary customers - the listeners. And yes, I know that such heresy flies in the face of the theory that advertisers are our primary customers. Bah! Without listeners, we'll have no advertisers.

And, lest JPB thinks that I've neglected his post, I agree that we all take the medium far more seriously than an (not the) average listener. I'm not sure that I agree that radio hasn't killed anybody. I think that it could be argued that it's slower, but at least as deadly for some people. The stress may be self-inflicted, or artificial, but it's palpable at most of the places that I've worked over the years.

I'm at the point where I'm headed back toward the great radio barn, and hoping there's enough feed there when I get there. When the last needle is dropped -er the last file is autoplayed at the omega of my "career", I'll still be interested in seeing what happens to the medium as it evolves.
 
There was a thread on a music related group that may be applicable. A person my age was stating that getting the idea of the popularity of a particular musician was about the number of "hits" he had. A younger guy on the thread was arguing that Johnny Winter wasn't popular because he had no hits at the time they were talking about. The gist of the argument got down to "you had to be there" or at least take the word of someone who was. Then I saw the quote below from the NY Times:

"Over the last decade, college graduates ages 25-54, who make up an increasingly large portion of the population, have abandoned radio eight times faster than non-graduates."

The story also states that listening is down in the aggregate by 14%.

Maybe it's time that radio does think of itself a little more in the artistic sense than in the formulaic sense and try to get a new sound rather than what's happening now. I don't think these are mutually exclusive ideas.
 
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