Radio: Where is it now, and where is it going?

[RadioMetalMan]

This is more of a general topic than geared towards any one market in our State, but I'm finding myself at a crossroads.

I love radio as I grew up with one always on. Be it the sounds of Alabama, Ronnie Milsap, Ugly Kid Joe, or Anthrax, I heard them on radio. Moreso on college radio for my favorite genres, but radio has served me well in my late teens and early 20s with talk radio while I was an overnight intrastate driver. However, more and more, radio has stopped being relevant to what I want out of it.

I spent ten great years working in sports, talk, and rock. Ups and downs, trials and tribulations, victories and defeats, but all in all it was fun. But that's the viewpoint of someone who worked intimately in the media. My friends and peers who don't work in radio don't hold my romanticized notions of it. So, I'm looking as to what is radio to people who aren't in radio.

I'll start it off by saying that most of my friends who make up a wide variety of people are in the age range from 19 - 35. Over 70% of them take no interest in local radio as it doesn't serve them. I find that to be alarming. Many of them have either satellite radio subscriptions or they have phone applications that scour for like artists and keep them satisfied on a continuous stream of related artists or not so depending on their likes/dislikes. Many of them also don't tune into local radio stations for news or weather, but may tune in to catch a traffic report if they are stuck in a snarled westbound lane on one Interstate or another.

I frequently ask what would a station need to do grab their attention and actually ENJOY listening. As imagined, this come out to a few competing answers. Some people want jocks/hosts with personality while others want no talking whatsoever, but more often than not they want a jock that has a personality that shines through the signal.

Another common complaint is playlists. My peers have the distinct impression that the same 300 songs are played again and again with new songs that sound exactly like what is already played over and over. Or as insult to injury, ONE song from a purist band or artist might make it through, but who wants to spend their time listening for one song on a radio station? Is this how we are perceived to be thinking? They don't like hearing the same songs every day.

Which leads into another major beef with radio from my peers about playing songs into the ground. "Here's the hot new song from so-and-so that we've already burned into your minds 8 times per daypart, for the next six months! Even though the album has been out for almost a year!" A lot of my peers acquire more music in a month than most stations add in a year. So, they aren't learning about new artists from traditional media.

When I ask most of my friends what they are doing for media throughout the day, the bulk of them are listening to mp3s, podcasts, streams from internet music sites, or satellite. What is the thought process of local radio PDs and Station Managers? Are they looking to expand their audience or just try to minimize losses?

 

[Gatekeeper007]

Radio is still the backbone of the music industry in most respects. Yes people will have all different ideas about this but just like many things in our lives that just couldn't happen but yet they did, gas at 4.00 dollars a gallon,ask people ten years ago and they said they would quit driving before they would pay that, the US economy go into a depression, no that could never happen the world economy was setup to prevent that after the great depression yet whatever you call it here we are. I bring all this up because without broadcast radio the music industry would not survive as the newer types of music outlets ie: satellite, ipod, internet, mp3, ect... could not handle the nessary music load so to speak to keep everything going. A few years without broadcast radio and one persons favorite sings who they think everyone knows and is the best they have ever heard might be totally unkown by a large portion of listeners in the world altogether. Radio is still the standard for alot of things without it there would be no standard to judge by. Young people simply take broadcast radio for granted today but wait till songs become 4.00 dollars per song like a gallon of gas without broadcast radio to hold things together, can't happen you say? Well gas couldn't go to 4.00 dollars a gallon either according to people 10 years ago but here we are today, with young people taking broadcast radio for granted where will music be tomorrow, I will give you one guess.

 

[TheBigA]

When I ask most of my friends what they are doing for media throughout the day, the bulk of them are listening to mp3s, podcasts, streams from internet music sites, or satellite. What is the thought process of local radio PDs and Station Managers? Are they looking to expand their audience or just try to minimize losses?

I think your observations reflect a lot of what we see among hard core music lovers. They make up a small percentage of the population, and as you note, they have moved on to other devices for their music. Radio is not in the music business, in that it doesn't share directly in any of the wealth that music can attract. So as music becomes more narrowly defined, as taste becomes more individual, radio is realizing that it can't depend on playing music to attract the audiences it needs to satisfy advertisers. Radio isn't the only business that has realized this. The retail business has already basically given up on selling music in stores because the profit margin is too small, and the space requirements in a store is too great. The concert business is finding only a small percentage of artists attract enough fans to fill the major sheds and concert venues. But there are still a handful of formats that attract mass audiences. Country, pop, urban, and AC do well. Rock has splintered into too many sub-genres, and fans just want to hear their favorites. Those people will never be satisfied with mass media radio. But a radio station can do a lot with a broadly defined format and a tolerant audience that is willing to sit through songs it doesn't like to get to the ones it does. I think some stations recognize that some of the on-air audience is looking for more stuff, and they can do more with audiences online. But I don't expect major on-air stations to Balkinize the way music has gone. That micro-casting doesn't fit the on-air model.

 

[Scooter Lesley]

Bizzzz-ness-wise, Where is Radio now? Answer: Struggling! At present, the owners know that they can't sell it for even close to what they paid for it. Since that purchase, listenership has been going to hell on a sled! This is the end result of following the advise of Corporate PD's, and/or "Boob" Consultants that don't have a clue as to what will place or win a ratings book.
Where is Radio going? Answer: On the sale block, and cheap. However, WMYI woke up! They have made some bold moves, and others stations should follow their lead. I say...keep your format, but overhaul the music, and if the current air staff can't deliver, fire them! Here's the Math: When listenership goes down, the ads fall on fewer ears. With poor reach & freq, the client has a slow, little or no return on their ad dollar. That derails the selling cycle, and leads to poor billing. I plead with stations to not compromise past the point of recovery. Hire staffers that know the business, and let them swing the bat!

 

[RadioMetalMan]

I truly love radio for what it HAS done in the past and what it CAN do, but when I surf the dial from format to format I am disappointed day after day. I'm not by any means some great radio grand poobah, but I remember stations being different when I was a teenager, some 20 years ago.

I'm hearing the SAME songs I grew up listening to on the radio. I'm not that attached to the 90s but it seems programmers think I am. There was a show with Crossfade, a Columbia based band. They had one "hit" song and it still gets played on rock radio, maybe pop radio, but I gave up on stations like WSSX years ago. They played a show here locally and the crowd was pretty much mute until they played the "hit", then everyone went nuts. I find that disturbing.

I hate to think that I've outgrown radio as being useful to me, but as an individual I find it something terrible I might have to admit to myself.

 

[Al Timiter]

At present, the owners know that they can't sell it for even close to what they paid for it. Since that purchase, listenership has been going to hell on a sled!

Actually, that's not true even though sometimes it seems that way. Listenership has stayed about even. There are many measurement surveys that uphold this.

Where is Radio going? Answer: On the sale block, and cheap.

No, not really. Sales of radio properties are way, way down in terms of sheer numbers. The large majority of owner/operators are holding on to their properties, hunkering down and trying to hold on until tough times are over.

On another note: RadioMetalMan, I can totally identify with what you're saying. As a music lover who spent nearly 40 years in Radio, at times, it was very frustrating. By the end of my run, the station I was working for ran about 300 titles and about 100 to 150 of those were "Powers." It was like being musically water-boarded.

 

[Gatekeeper007]

I still believe without broadcast radio things will start to fall apart, yes it will take a few years but it would happen. Twenty years ago I talked about things like gas prices going up and the possible depression that would result but was quickly told it could never happen that government would stop it. I am still going out on a limb and saying that without broadcast radio the music industry will start to sink and that the newer delivery formats will not be able to hold it up, of course I will probability be told just like twenty years ago that I am wrong and that can't happen.