RADIO, THEN AND NOW
- Bankruptcy. Why not?
President Obama has announced a save-Chrysler plan that includes a bankruptcy filing. Gasp. But wait. This bankruptcy is part of a plan in which virtually all of Chrysler’s stakeholders (love that word), the people, banks, and organizations who have a stake in the survival and success of Chrysler, are volunteering to take a huge hit, making huge sacrifices, to allow the company to survive. How about bankruptcy as the solution to the radio industry mess? Radio is a healthy, viable, operating business. It hasn’t been destroyed yet by the Internet and the IPod. It’s the debt-burden imposed by ten years of speculative trafficking in stations that’s done it in. Radio needs a massive swamp-draining. Like the equity speculators who’re going to take a bath in the Chrysler bankruptcy, the overinflated gamblers who have lived high on their fees and commissions while creating a frail, unmanageable financial balloon for American radio, should be forced to make their contribution to its revival. Bankruptcy is the answer. Let’s follow the Chrysler model, and surgically remove the speculators. We need to find a whole new generation of local businesspeople to take on their town’s radio stations. But, I assure you, the price will be right.
- Another purge day for radio, and a touch of hope.
Clear Channel Radio, the General Motors of the radio station business, axed more employees today. As Jerry Del Colliano, the Jeremiah of radio, pointed out this week, CC is beating the drum for what they say is their “local” campaign, while chopping local station staffs and increasing the delivery of networked radio shows from out of town. Radio was constructed to be a hometown electronic medium. Radio station people have been running as hard as they can from that model for decades — it isn’t all the fault of CC and the other consolidators — standardizing programming through imitation. Radio people love to talk about being local, but they really always preferred to simplify the lives of their sales departments. Ratings technology required standardization. One piece of news caught my eye today — the CEO of a medium-sized station owner, New Northwest Broadcasters, announced he was leaving his job today, taking the company’s Billings, Montana, stations with him. This could be a signal that the company has a plan to sell off all their stations. They named their CFO — that’s the company numbers freak — to lead the company. You don’t put the head accountant in charge if you’re planning to run your stations creatively. I take this as a hopeful sign, that the radio speculators are getting ready to cut their losses and liquidate. Can’t happen fast enough for me. Maybe there’s a new generation of people who actually love radio who’ll see the opportunity and step up. There’s time to do it; listeners still love and listen to radio, even though the corporate stockbrokers have debased and demoralized the business by treating it like a burger chain rather than a powerful local medium. But now I’m just ranting. Later.
- Preston Trombley. Best Classical Host
I haven’t heard them all, but for me, Preston Trombley is the gold standard of classical radio hosts. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, he’s only heard on SiriusXM satellite radio, on the Concert Hall channel. He’s a composer himself, and he speaks with the voice of a deep familiar. Not only of music, but as a familiar friend to the listener. You don’t have to sound haughty to be taken seriously on classical radio. SiriusXM has a couple of voices who do. Preston is casual, friendly, witty, fun to be around. He makes me glad to be paying to hear him.
- On the Road with SiriusXM, and Fear
Only a few years ago, the radio business quaked in fear of satellite radio. It wasn’t quaking, exactly, about Internet radio. It was too business shivering in the IPod cold. Of course, American radio had already frozen out the (new) music business, hurting itself much more than the ‘Pod ever could, but that’s another story. Radio should have seen that satellite was going to be a no-commercials version of its own flawed self, and would have its own problems getting even hardcore (Stern) radio fans to pay for the same-old. Now that accelerated Armageddon has arrived, Sirius-plus-XM has bigger problems than the two of them alone had, which was not the way the merger was supposed to work, and the media-blackbirds are starting to circle the satellite, which is a good trick. Read what Business Week says, here.
- My trip to San Diego
Mostly, I’ve been listening to Sirius XM as we drove down the coast from Seattle to San Diego. Not that satellite radio is so much better than broadcast. I just like to be able to count on having my classical, jazz, and BBC World Service and NPR channels everywhere. As you can see, I don’t follow pop music anymore, haven’t for years. I must say, when I’ve tuned FM radio — for a while in SF, LA, and SD — I’ve been impressed with the technical quality of the sound. I’ve heard nothing fresh in production or personality. Today, we took a drive around SD, and I switched to FM and surfed, looking for something listenable. I settled on a light jazz mix — not “smooth jazz”; this was actual songs played by artists who were actually improvising, not playing SJ’s basic licks on alto sax against electronic piano and synth. The music stopped, and I was hearing a laid-back jock speaking Spanish. A Tijuana jazz station. Which also played Arabic pop, later. And John Mayer. At least it was a fresh mix.
- THINKING AHEAD
This is what radio’s supposed to be good at. However, we must be realistic. American broadcast radio stations — the AM-FM steel tower kind — have been facing forward, but looking into a rear-view mirror, since the 1970s. Every programming decision has had to be “researched” — run through a focus group, or based only on what’s worked before. People can only report on what they’re familiar with, so when new formats can only be based on familiar elements, you’ll never adopt a “new” idea. Yes, you can be creative with existing elements. But renaming the same old stuff doesn’t produce anything fresh. So, now, in all businesses and many other pursuits, nothing is working anymore. Out of all this destruction, opportunities will arise. Broadcast AM-FM radio is not dead. Amazingly, in spite of IPods, Internet radio, and everything else, American radio is only bleeding badly. Most of the damage of the past ten years has been done by financiers and consolidators. They’ve had to destroy the stations to try to pay for what they bought. Now, maybe soon, they’ll have to sell stations. So far, they’re just trading them among themselves. Soon, maybe, when station prices fall far enough, I hope, real radio people will gather enough financing to buy stations and run them, rather than just cut them, hold them, and wait for a buyer with more money and desire to come along and give you your capital gain. Time’s running out for the arbitrageurs. Soon, maybe, radio will have a future again.
- STATE OF RADIO
I’m writing a novel about a radio guy, and radio guys are living in a novel. About now, they’re living the part where the whole world is falling apart. What should happen next is, the hero defeats the villain and the clouds start to roll away. Sorry, in this novel, no guarantee is offered that a happy ending will follow. However, this is the year of the Great Collapse. Maybe the new financial world will produce a great de-consolidation for America’s radio stations. It’s still a good business, ruined, for the moment, by the 12-year Hubris Era of Wall Street. I really expect radio to survive and thrive. More to come.
