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Talk of Radio’s Demise

K

Kevin

Guest
The talk of radio’s death has been around for over 70 years now, and guess what? radio is still here and doing well. Television was supposed to be the end of radio. FM radio was going to be the end of AM, here we are in 2020 and radio is still surviving streaming and all other platforms. On the other hand internet radio is actually not doing that great there has been numerous internet stations calling it quits, the reason is one internet station is lucky to average 30 listeners and there are thousands of internet stations out there and are barely making any money. Personally, I believe radio AM and FM will have a great future, I love streaming but it’s not going to replace AM and FM radio not now or ever.
 
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You bring up a good point on internet radio. There are likely tens of thousands if not more internet stations. There is no way to know for sure because there is no central location for all of them. This plays well for over the air radio because the number of choices is finite. It is possible to know all the over the air stations at your geographic location. Over the air radio programs for the masses where internet only stations typically do not. The negative is, say, the student heading off to college in another state. They may listen on their 'device', not the radio, so they are not bound by the geographical limitations of over the air radio.

Internet only stations have astronomical fixed costs that tend to discourage the hobby broadcaster. In addition, the ability to build awareness is costly. The result is there are way more internet only stations that are lucky to maintain single digit listeners at any point. When a college internet only station that has built good awareness among the 10,000+ students can't seem to exceed 870 listening hours a week, that is telling. That's a total of all listeners time number of minutes they listen weekly. The fact is even when locally known, the numbers are pretty miserable with hyper-local programming. I blame this on the listening device. There is so much one can do with the same device, one questions where on that list is listening to internet radio and what interrupts that stream, such as a phone call. In short, the numbers are too small to expect much, if any, listener support and commercially, little chance of being advertising based.

As we move forward, that will likely change. Nevertheless, radio is still in a strong position to maintain over the air listening or at a bare minimum, listening on a 'device'. Over the air radio is still readily accessible, free and reaches the masses.

I doubt over the air radio will become a 'has been' for quite some time. Still, to expect over the air radio to have 'heyday' results is unrealistic. Based on current listening habits, radio easily leads the pack on shear numbers and time spent listening whether that listening is over the air or online.
 
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All this talk about "stations" is blase. The real future of music consumption (and arguably spoken word programming, too) is on-demand services such as YouTube Music and Spotify. Those services are far more likely to pose a threat to radio than some 400 pound Shoutcast streamer sitting on his bed and entertaining 4 average listeners.

My preferred FM station flipped to all-Christmas this year, and I hate it. So I bought a Spotify membership. It's been great so far to not have any ads, jocks, and especially no jingle bells.
 
PTBoardOp94, The only threat that YouTube and Spotify and any other on-demand service has on radio is the same threat that LP’s, Cassette and 8-Tracks had in the 70’s, CD’s in the 80’s and 90’s, MP3 Players in the 2000’s. Over-the-air radio survived all of the above and will continue to survive for many decades to come.
 
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Kevin said:
PTBoardOp94, The only threat that YouTube and Spotify and any other on-demand service has on radio is the same threat that LP’s, Cassette and 8-Tracks had in the 70’s, CD’s in the 80’s and 90’s, MP3’s in the 2000’s.
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No. With these services, I don't need to carry a stack of cassette tapes or CDs, and they don't become stale if I don't visit the record store to get the latest releases.

The bigger obstacle is that these services are paid. I'm willing to pay $10 a month during COVID, when I'm not spending money on lots of other things like sports tickets. Maybe that will change as we roll into 2021.
 
YouTube has been around since 2005 and has very little impact on AM and FM Radio and the same with the other services. Radio still has a 93% listening audience that’s 272 million people in the U.S.A. that listen to radio, and radio remains the top platform.
 
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I like traditional OTA radio because of its connection to its marketing area. I know you can get that with Spotify and other things, but to me, it's not quite the same (though I do love Spotify, too).
 
The biggest obstacle to local radio's growth and competitiveness online is that the rules of the royalty organizations rig it to be inherently unprofitable. iHeart and such can absorb the loss, but a local smaller station cannot grow their streaming without being penalized by an archaic system.

The recording industry has set it up under a false and ridiculous assumption - the idea that people will "stream rip" instead of buying downloads. The problem is, very few download music anymore. And the streaming services are an economic issue for most artists. So the recording industry wants to ask radio for more money, while making it difficult for us to profit off new platforms.

This creates a dynamic that's difficult for smaller broadcasters - we have to move towards digital, but it's made more costly and complex by people we have little leverage with, because ironically, they think they don't need us. But they're more than happy to take our money.

Radio is worried about a performance royalty. I'd almost be glad to pay it in exchange for a flat rate, annual and simple form to file for streaming my stations. But no one's asking me.
 
Andy Travis said:
Radio is worried about a performance royalty. I'd almost be glad to pay it in exchange for a flat rate, annual and simple form to file for streaming my stations. But no one's asking me.
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Ten or so years ago, the NAB made an offer to the RIAA that its member stations would pay a label royalty in exchange for a discount on streaming royalties. The RIAA said no. But in the process, a large number of small stations quit the NAB over the idea. The longer part of this story is any additional royalties, above what radio pays, will require legislation from Congress. Congress doesn't appear motivated to require new royalties to be paid by US radio stations to foreign record labels. So that's a dead end. But the major radio companies don't have a problem with the concept as long as they get a discount on streaming (as they currently do from BMI and ASCAP). They also want the royalty rate to be a flat rate equal to what they pay songwriters. The RIAA wants it it be based on what the Copyright Royalty Board decides, and that would be very expensive.
 
Kevin said:
YouTube has been around since 2005 and has very little impact on AM and FM Radio and the same with the other services. Radio still has a 93% listening audience that’s 272 million people in the U.S.A. that listen to radio, and radio remains the top platform.
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Let's put that in perspective:

Radio is used, as of the last pre-virus months, by about 89% of persons 6+ (PPM) or 12+ (diary). That is down from 94% about 20 years ago.

The real change is that average listening time in the PPM markets is around 7 to 8 hours a week. That's down from 18 to 21 hours a week in 2000, depending on the market.

Radio does have greater reach than any other medium... still. But the amount of usage is off by nearly two thirds!
 
DavidEduardo said:
But the amount of usage is off by nearly two thirds!
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A lot of it depends on the format. Certainly talk-based stations (news/talk, sports/talk, and NPR) have much higher TSLs than music based stations. It's not unusual for a talk station to still have 18-21 hours a week in usage. Conversely some music stations might get 1-2 hours a week. Real time usage of ALL media is being hurt by on-demand. It even has an effect on talk listening, where fans of certain talk shows prefer listening on-demand than in real time.
 
TheBigA said:
A lot of it depends on the format. Certainly talk-based stations (news/talk, sports/talk, and NPR) have much higher TSLs than music based stations. It's not unusual for a talk station to still have 18-21 hours a week in usage. Conversely some music stations might get 1-2 hours a week. Real time usage of ALL media is being hurt by on-demand. It even has an effect on talk listening, where fans of certain talk shows prefer listening on-demand than in real time.
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Examples (all in 12+):

San Francisco
KQED (NPR) Average of about 4 hours weekly TSL
KCBS (News) Average just a few minutes a week less
KNBR (Sports) Highly variable but around 2 1/2 hours weekly.
KBRG (Adult Hits) 2:45 weekly (my alma mater).

New York
WNYC (Public Radio) Average of around 4 1/2 hours a week; higest at 5:45
WFAN (Sports) Average 2:45, high 3:15.

LA:
KFI (Talk) Quite variable, average about 4:00 to 4:15 hours weekly. This is one of the best performing PPM market talkers there is.
 
Kevin said:
YouTube has been around since 2005 and has very little impact on AM and FM Radio and the same with the other services. Radio still has a 93% listening audience that’s 272 million people in the U.S.A. that listen to radio, and radio remains the top platform.
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You sound like a newspaper publisher 20 years ago. Annual declines of 1% here and 2% there add up to a calamity over the course of a few decades.
 
Kevin said:
YouTube has been around since 2005 and has very little impact on AM and FM Radio and the same with the other services. Radio still has a 93% listening audience that’s 272 million people in the U.S.A. that listen to radio, and radio remains the top platform.
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Radio revenues in many major US metros have also dropped by roughly half since 2005. Although you can't actually blame YouTube for that, I would think that the fact you can listen to any album you want on YouTube, for free, with the same (or less) number of commercial interruptions, just might be at least one of the numerous factors in that drop in radio revenue.
 
You all realize the big, bad corporate broadcasters are already in the online space and that will only increase. That's why iHeart is shedding DJs and consolodating operations in Nashville, hiring there while firing everywhere else. It's not going to be either/or. If all the towers come crashing down, the online services will still be the ones with massive promotional budgets. No, "everyone" won't be listening to guys in their basement playing obscure indie bands.

We shouldn't be so much wishing for our free OTA system to go away. When AT&TVerizonGoogleCast makes the rules instead of the FCC, it may not be Utopia.
 
gr8oldies said:
You all realize the big, bad corporate broadcasters are already in the online space and that will only increase. That's why iHeart is shedding DJs and consolodating operations in Nashville, hiring there while firing everywhere else. It's not going to be either/or. If all the towers come crashing down, the online services will still be the ones with massive promotional budgets. No, "everyone" won't be listening to guys in their basement playing obscure indie bands.

We shouldn't be so much wishing for our free OTA system to go away. When AT&TVerizonGoogleCast makes the rules instead of the FCC, it may not be Utopia.
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I totally agree, especially with the way Google / YouTube uses our information.
 
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