Saving Radio

[Steven21]

Easy, unless you're a confused, greedy, corporate beancounter:

INVEST in creative PEOPLE.

THAT has always been the backbone of this medium, and it has been GUTTED in recent years.

Not only have many creative minds been systematically silenced or ousted, but the formerly fertile grounds from which they were harvested have been effectively salted.

This business has been raped and plundered by those on Wall Street.

Thank you, Bill Clinton, for making this business attractive to the business world's version of the mafia. In those terms, what has happenned to radio is called a "bust out". See "Sopranos" season 2.

 

[Mark Giardina]

Easy, unless you're a confused, greedy, corporate beancounter:

INVEST in creative PEOPLE.

THAT has always been the backbone of this medium, and it has been GUTTED in recent years.

Not only have many creative minds been systematically silenced or ousted, but the formerly fertile grounds from which they were harvested have been effectively salted.

This business has been raped and plundered by those on Wall Street.

Thank you, Bill Clinton, for making this business attractive to the business world's version of the mafia. In those terms, what has happenned to radio is called a "bust out". See "Sopranos" season 2.

Congress would have to overturn the Telecommunications Act of 96 and re-instate regulations limiting the number of radio stations one company could own in a single market in order to repair the damage that has already been inflicted upon radio.

To accomplish this there would have to be an outcry from the general public to their elected representatives to make such changes. Considering statistics showing that younger people don’t listen to radio anymore, plus the overall decline of radio’s audience, that isn’t about to change.

People who have talent are either leaving the business on their own to seek out more stable careers or being fired because of the amount of money they make.

There is no “talent pool” to rely on anymore because a number of smaller market stations have taken the similar path of their larger cousins by either depending on syndicated and voice-track formats, or having several stations owned by one person or a group of people. Just ask communication majors in college how many of them want to work in radio versus television or even the print media.

Thus ends the story.

 

[cee]

Thank you, Bill Clinton, for making this business attractive to the business world's version of the mafia. In those terms, what has happenned to radio is called a "bust out". See "Sopranos" season 2.

Time again for a reality check. And here's the reality - The Telecom Act of '96 had broad bi-partisan support. Yes, Clinton signed it into law. Here are some other corporate cozy fellas who would have signed it into law if they were President in 1996: Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon and of course, Junior Bush. The thought that if someone else were president back then that none of this would have happened is ridiculous. America has turned evolved into a plutocracy, where money and power determines almost everything. The results have been horrific. The ruining of our beloved industry is just one of so many examples.

Fact: According to Inside Radio(at the time of the bill being signed into law), Clinton wasn't really all that hot on the TelCom Act, but didn't feel that strongly against it to face a near certain overiding of his veto. BTW, Congress was controlled by the Republicans at the time. He should have vetoed it anyway, even though it would have become law. Harry Truman stuck to principle and vetoed the Taft-Hartley Bill -- which he called a "slave-labor bill" -- even though he knew it would overidden(it was). He had some guts.

These "blame it on Clinton" posts come up time and time again here and on allacess.com. Wayyyy off base.

 

[Ed Trefzger]

BTW, Congress was controlled by the Republicans at the time. He should have vetoed it anyway, even though it would have become law.

It would have become law because all but 8 senators and 20 representatives voted yes -- a veto-proof majority. The vast majority of democrats also voted for the bill. It's as disingenuous to blame the republicans as it is to blame Clinton. If the democrats had wanted to stop the bill, they could have done so with a senate filibuster.

Clinton appointee and long-time Al Gore friend FCC chairman Reed Hundt said this of the act: "We are fostering innovation and competition in radio. … The Commission's goal in this proceeding is to further competition, just as we seek to promote competition in other communications industries we regulate. But in our broadcast ownership rules we also seek to promote diversity in programming and diversity in the viewpoints expressed on this powerful medium that so shapes our culture."

Clinton's later protestations about signing the act, often cited here, are meaningless (you can decide yourself as to their veracity.) When virtually all of congress votes for something and a minority party with enough members to filibuster does not, the bill is going to pass. Both sides of the aisle are culpable.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Caught In "The Act"

Radio may be central to the lives of many on this board, but it was just one of many technologies affected by the Telecom Act of 1996. Certainly a new omnibus telecommunications bill was due, considering that nothing had been written to codify the changes that had taken place since the Telecommunications Act of 1934. There had been numerous decisions, rules, regulations, and even a few laws written since then, but all of that needed to be combined into a more structured format, and was in 1996.

I'm not sure that anyone could have predicted all of the effects of the 1996 Act. Advances in technology allowed a lot of things to happen that weren't possible then. Remember, in 1996, we were dealing with the new Pentium processor that ran at a blazing 233 MHz and handled 32-bits of information at a time - but only if you installed one of those new-fangled operating systems like Windows 95 or Windows NT. Radio has seen the conversion from analog to digital systems internally, with remote access and control that wasn't even dreamed of in 1995.

On the business side, corporate raiders looked at radio as the next target of merger mania, and salivated over the idea of creating de facto monopolies within specific demographics. You know the business model. Unfortunately, the model assumed that listeners were sheep, and would swallow what was shoved down their throats when it came to programming. Revenues would grow, stockholders would reap increasing rewards, and values would continue to increase.

Ooops. Pesky listeners.

I agree that refocusing on compelling content is the key to the restoring the health of radio. I also believe that there are forces at work who would like nothing better than to kill radio as we know it, and reclaim that bandwidth for auction to the highest bidder. Frankly, the bandwidth could be used more efficiently in a digital world. The downside is that millions of simple, inexpensive receivers would become instantly obsolete, and the explosion in the number of channels would lead to even more fragmentation of the audience. The only people who would prosper would be the ISPs who offer high-speed connections to those thousands of content channels.

 

[Bob1370]

Bill Clinton recently admitted that next to Monica, signing the Telecommunications Act was the single biggest mistake he made during his Presidency.

He's right. But while that law helped bring about consolidation, the big broadcast owners who took advantage of it also have themselves to blame for the bad results they're getting now as a result of cheapening the product and driving listeners away. No one made them take a silly, short-sighted "take the money and run" approach to their business. But they did, and now they're paying the price.

Radio can be fixed. A lot of the lost listenership can be brought back, because radio is inherently a more user friendly, less labor-intensive and less costly medium than satellite, iPod programming or purchasing your own CDs and programming them yourself. All we have to do is return to the principle of offering consistently entertaining and informative programming, along with keeping the commercial load reasonable (making up for it with spot rates that aren't fire-sale low). Then, most of the lost listenership will return to a medium that offers added value at less cost and less user effort than any other vehicle of audio entertainment.

 

[Mark Giardina]

Come on people you actually believe it when someone says consolidation will make things better?

Remember how NAFTA was going to improve our economy? Ross Perot was right about the "sucking sound" being heard across America; that is when most of our manufacturing jobs when to China, India and other countries.

Competition built this country, yet the Telecommunications Act of 96 gave big media companies even more power to control what we hear, see and read.

Ironic that 100 plus years ago Theodore Roosevelt helped break up the trusts, or “robber barons" as he called them. Now here we are a century later and the trusts have reared their ugly heads once again.

Our ancestors got TR; we got BS. Lucky us.

 

[Savage]

Wouldn't it be interesting if one of the mega-big groups - with all of their limitless resources - tried this as an experiment? Let's start with a major-market, unassailably superior facility with blowtorch signal:

a. Program a truly mass-appeal format - not a research-cobbled niche.
b. Hire a full slate of interesting, talented on-air professionals and mandate at least 6a-7p LIVE on-air.
c. Assemble a quality local news department and add excellent informational elements with LOCAL focus.
d. Find a real program director with real creative abilities to paint a great product on his RF canvas and
turn him/her loose.
e. Forge good promotional contacts within the community and give the station high visibility.

Then: F: LEAVE IT ALONE and give it a chance to work!

I'm not talking here about putting something together here that "sounds like" a full-service quality radio station, a la KB 1520's late experiment with "resurrecting" WKBW - no disrespect intended towards my Entercom friends, who did a great job as far as it went - I'm talking about doing the real thing.

Just a thought....

 

[ThePickleReport]

But while that law helped bring about consolidation, the big broadcast owners who took advantage of it also have themselves to blame for the bad results they're getting now as a result of cheapening the product and driving listeners away. No one made them take a silly, short-sighted "take the money and run" approach to their business. But they did, and now they're paying the price.

This is going to sound pretty liberal, but as soon as you put a local medium in control of a publicly traded company, all you have to do is sit back and wait for the disasters to begin. Unless each cluster can fend for themselves and be able to right their own ship it's bound not work.

I predict if radio can get some smaller investors with smaller, realistic goals and perhaps a regional focus, that radio can return to be a vibrant local medium.

 

[Call Me Sherlock]

Wouldn't it be interesting if one of the mega-big groups - with all of their limitless resources - tried this as an experiment? Let's start with a major-market, unassailably superior facility with blowtorch signal:

a. Program a truly mass-appeal format - not a research-cobbled niche.
b. Hire a full slate of interesting, talented on-air professionals and mandate at least 6a-7p LIVE on-air.
c. Assemble a quality local news department and add excellent informational elements with LOCAL focus.
d. Find a real program director with real creative abilities to paint a great product on his RF canvas and
turn him/her loose.
e. Forge good promotional contacts within the community and give the station high visibility.

Then: F: LEAVE IT ALONE and give it a chance to work!

Bob, let's not waste time re-inventing the wheel. We already tried this...AND IT WORKED! To paraphrase Mr. Shakespeare, first thing we need to do is kill all the beancounters! Just kidding, but it's a thought!

 

[aaronread]

Well personally I *love* the TelComm Act of 1996. It made commercial radio suck SO much, that people started noticing that left of 92.1, there were actually some really good stations there.

Granted, being the GM of an NPR affiliate, I'm a little biased here. But I won't deny that if commercial radio got better, it'd make my job harder. ;D

 

[Mike Sheridan]

Lots of good ideas here. The problem is radio has always been a copy cat medium and someone has got to start it! Someone with guts that can stick it out for the long haul, and know how to promote so that EVERYONE is aware of what's going on. Somebody like Ted Turner could probably do it, willing to risk everything to make it work. Let me add that FULL SERVICE radio is my favorite format, some music, some talk, and some news...all in one place.

Oh and I'm very thankfull for the stations below 92.1. Especially the ones here in Charlotte.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Maybe Mason's the Man

Lots of good ideas here. The problem is radio has always been a copy cat medium and someone has got to start it!

Dan Mason may have already started it at WCBS-FM. A LOT of people are noticing what a personality-oriented radio station with a fairly wide playlist is capable of doing in a short time. If the station continues to grow and prosper, expect more stations to move in that direction.

Of course, knowing corporate radio, they'll try to syndicate it, voice-track it, podcast it, and generally screw up the fact that it's working because it's live, local, and tailored to the market.

 

[slickkicker]

There's a guy who's posting on this thread who never got a private, corporate check while being on air. This fellow ranks on the "liberal" media while spending some time calling hockey games at his alma mater. This said place of higher learning was largely funded by Rockefeller Republicans and LBJ's "Great Society" and it gave many a standout education.

The Rochester Institute of Technology is a great place to get an Engineering degree. They have a pretty cool radio station too.

 

[Radknowski]

I don't know if radio's dead or alive. I only know that I still listen to good ol' AM & FM. The older I get the more I realize there are more things that I don't know than I do know, so I could be wrong about radio too. NPR gets a considerable portion of my time spent listening along with Q-107 and a few other Buffalo stations.

By contrast, commercial news-talk offers a uniform pedantic flavor, whether it's left or right. As tiresome as it's become, I listen to hear what the rant of the day might be and go on my way unimpressed with much of what the gasbags of the right or left have to say.

Commercial music radio isn't much different than it was ten years ago. The best testing 300 songs and always ten in a row or something like that. 97 Rock is doing something adventurous these days with A to Z. Credit them for stepping outside the lines for however long that feature might go.

Is it just me or does radio these days seem to run on the theory of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Seems these days there's a lot of fear. Understandably. People who are in charge don't take chances or change things when they're afraid. They go with what they know and what's always worked for them. It's human nature. Can't blame them.
Here's where some poster wiser than I injects, "that's just it, what's always worked isn't working that well these days."

I'll leave it to the wise men of the board to flesh that out. I've got a church ceiling to repair and I'm not fond of 30 foot scaffolds.

Western New Yorkers are fortunate to get a somewhat international view thanks to the presence of Canadian radio and perhaps that's another reason I hear radio as being more alive than dead.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Gallantry and Gunslingers

First, let me welcome the "guy who's posting on this thread who never got a private, corporate check while being on air". I figured that the last time I welcomed somebody, alw called me "gallant", so I thought I'd try to continue with the gallantry. BTW, coms, non-coms, conservatives, liberals, railers, derailers, rankers, unrankers - all are welcome here. After all, entertainment requires both antagonists and protagonists.

Let me coin a phrase:

"Conventional wisdom yields conventional results."

I don't know if anybody has used that statement before, but we sure have seen the results of it. Progress is not made using conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is WCMF. One thing that you have to say about 97-Rock in Buffalo is that the powers that be - John Hager or whomever - have stepped outside the box repeatedly with "A-Z", "Barrel of Monkeys", "Guest DJs", "Beatles A-Z" and a host of other promotions that have allowed them to step away from the 300-song rotation frequently enough to help prevent burn-out. Their numbers are exceptional for their format, and that's because they have followed unconventional wisdom. Kudos to them.

The mention of Q-107, which I tune in frequently, brings to mind their policy of short (2-min), more frequent commercial sets. This too is unconventional wisdom. I'm curious to see how that idea plays out in the long run. The last ratings I saw for them look strong, despite a challenge from a Jack who now has live voices, including Q-107's formerly successful afternoon drive team of Jeff Brown and Carly Klassen. Their music mix is unconventional in that it's considerably broader that a typical Classic Rocker, with more than a few pop oldies in the mix.

There is good radio out there. I'm no fan of country, but WYRK is a powerhouse, partially because they have little competition, and largely because they are live, local, involved, and tailored to the market. WBLK is another powerhouse, although they have far more syndication, because they target and serve their audience well. Yes, good syndication can work, especially if there's no competition. Janet & Nick on Kiss are as close as Tom Joyner has to competition in the morning on WBLK, and they hardly approach the same audience, or come from the same angle.

"Conventional wisdom" is probably most noticeably at work in the (Hot)AC battle being waged in Buffalo. WHTT transitioned into an AC station over a long period of time, and seems to have dragged a portion of its old audience with them. That has to be a tribute to the skills of the on-air people who established a relationship between jock and listener. In the course of the transition, I'm hearing a lot less of the jocks, and a lot more pre-produced promo & breaker material. It seems like the "WJYE-ification" of WHTT - playing down what was a huge strength for them - great jocks - in favor of the "conventional wisdom" that "talking interrupts the music". Yet the emerging winner in the format, Star, has more talk, including newscasts, than either WJYE or WHTT. So much for "conventional wisdom".

Radknowski is right about the idea that people are opting for the "safe" choice. In a tight market, most people are trying to stay out of the line of fire. If the radar detects you, you'd better be identified as a "friendly", or a whole barrage is coming your way from people who are in serious CYA mode. Some people see anybody who stands out as a threat. If they do too well, they might be after a job higher up the food chain. If they do too poorly, they reflect badly on management. That attitude begets mediocrity - which has become radio's stock in trade.

What we've gained is the bean-counter mentality. What we've lost is the gunslinger mentality - which is what refreshed radio and made it exciting. As the economics deteriorate, and values fall, stations are going to fall into the hands of gunslingers who have nothing to lose. If we're lucky, their aim will be true, and radio will rise again.

 

[Ed Trefzger]

There's a guy who's posting on this thread who never got a private, corporate check while being on air. This fellow ranks on the "liberal" media while spending some time calling hockey games at his alma mater.

If you're speaking about me, the first sentence quoted above is not true.

 

[Steven21]

These "blame it on Clinton" posts come up time and time again here and on allacess.com. Wayyyy off base.

Oh gee, sorry.

My comment wasn't one of partisan opportunism, rather disdain for WHOMEVER was Prez at the time.

Wayyyyy off point.

 

[Debaser]

Well, I tried to post an amazing piece by Jerry Del Colliano on this very subject, but even though he encourages reprinting his daily missives on web sites and boards just like this one, the powers that be from Radio-Info have seen fit to remove it.

So...if you want to see what del Colliano has to say (and I would highly encourage you to make the effort), surf on over to http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com and read his Feb 21 posting, "Saving Radio."

Better yet, get a (free) subscription to his weekday news letter. It's always a good read.

 

[board_manager]

For clarification purposes....

While Mr. Del Colliano may encourage others to share his columns via email and the posting of links, that is hardly the same thing as giving carte blanche permission to reprint it verbatim on a site like Radio-Info. Even though we have reprinted his columns from time to time, it has always been with his expressed consent. Prior use does not constitute blanket permission and it would the height of presumption for us to assume otherwise. We respect the intellectual property rights of others and ask that our users do too.

Please feel free to PM or email me if you have any further questions on this matter.

[email protected]