RADIO, THEN AND NOW
- The Radio Guy Mind
The other day a friend of mine asked me, on behalf of a radio station manager he knows, if I could suggest a “radio news writing consultant.” Now, if you wanted to choose a specialty whose name simply shouts failure, you couldn’t do better than “radio news writing consultant.” I could go on with other examples, but I’m trying to avoid extreme sarcasm. I suppose I could show my eternal optimism and grasp this straw as a glimmer of interest in product development on the part of a radio manager. I suppose I should. But, it is also an example of the dominant radio management mindset — only a consultant could have the needed skills or knowledge. AFTERTHOUGHT: On the other hand, are there any “news people” or “writers” left in the known radio talent pool? I think not. I’ll consult this poor fellow: seek out fired newspaper people. Plenty of those around.
- The History of Radio in One Post
A couple of weeks ago I had the quaint idea to write the history of radio in MarconiDreams blog posts. Watching the business side of American radio huff and puff toward implosion, I’ve decided there really isn’t that much to it. I think I can do it in one post. Here goes:
Heinrich Hertz and others discovered that electricity radiates. Tesla picked up on it, too, only he wanted to do away with power lines and power the world wirelessly. Marconi immediately saw a worldwide wireless telegraph. Marconi and others developed vacuum tubes that turned sound into radio waves, and we soon went way beyond dots and dashes, talking and singing through the air, too. To avoid a new Babel of stations on the same wave, governments took control of this new natural resource. Britain invented the BBC. Most countries followed suit and kept radio for their own official uses. The free-enterprise U.S. handed out licenses to private station operators.
So, for the next eighty years, America had thousands of broadcast monopolists. Radio was a closed system — the only radio there could ever be, they thought, and the radio guys satisfied their caveman urges by beating up on each other, rather than other media. They dumbed radio down to formulaic, controllable monotones.
Then came digital technology, the Internet and cellular radio-phones. AM-FM was no longer the only show in town. Now, cell phones, mainly, are the new pocket radios — only they deliver everything — audio, video, and data, which is to say, every form of information. Marconi-style radio stations are no longer the monopoly deliverer of sound through the air.
The radio guys now, finally, see what’s coming, after a decade of denial. They conducted their big investment luau and wasted their time selling and buying an obsolescent technical infrastructure. Now the station collectors are stuck with a declining audience and many new, more attractive sources of sound. And the bean counters at the tops of these companies have no innovation skills, and no clue. End of history.
I believe a new history of radio could start now. But it’ll be written by new radio people, not now in the business, who may or may not step up and buy the devalued towers and studios, at the right bargain basement prices, and invent something exciting and new on the good part of what’s left — the only locally-originated electronic medium.
- Targeting your programming — to the ratings.
I don’t like to get involved in talking about which corporate radio company just bought which existing station, but there’s a message in this one. Bonneville just bought a Los Angeles FM station. The buzz about this purchase surrounds what format the radio company might choose to program on their new station. You can read all about it in Tom Taylor’s Radio-Info newsletter. Go here to register — they don’t put the thing on their Website; go figure. It’s free, though. Tom’s speculation on which format Bonneville will choose includes this:
The world seems to buy the FM news/talk hypothesis and I’ll just continue to be a contrarian and suggest that’s a smokescreen. But the yawning possibilities have the L.A. board at Radio-Info.com going ga-ga suggesting subsequent chess moves like Clear Channel moving KFI (640) to FM, and then Emmis picking up the discarded Clear Channel format (Hot 92.3?) for its troubled 93.9, or maybe Emmis rocking out on 93.9 because of the People Meter’s supposed preference for male-leaning formats.
Translation: When Bonneville does something, whatever, with its new station, another owner, Emmis, might change its station’s format to something for men, because the new Arbitron ratings system seems to rate such stations higher. There you go. You choose a format based on what the ratings system wants, not what listeners at large might want…and certainly nothing fresh and new. I know, I’m a daft dreamer. Just humor me.
- White Space
Both Google and Microsoft are pressuring the FCC to allow a new class of wi-fi communications in the space to be vacated by U.S. TV stations when they go digital in 2009. I can tell you the TV people, much less the radio guys, never dreamed their spectrum space would ever be coveted for anything else, besides maybe taxicabs. Radio people, I’m sure, thought, right up to last year, that they’d never face serious competition for audio listening from anybody. I mean, there’s only one way to hear “radio,” right? Wrong. Now we have satellite radio, Internet radio, and soon we’ll have people listening to those stations, thousands of them, on their phones — or whatever all-purpose entertainment gadget sucks the cellular system, wi-fi and wi-max into its sleek frame. What should radio do, as more young people, who will replace all old people, you know, stop listening to radio on “radios.” First, radio should stop pumping money down the “HD Radio” sinkhole. Not gonna happen. Why should anybody buy another box that only delivers a couple more channels of the same old thing? Name one new HD sub-channel format worth buying a new radio for, when you can get 100-plus from XM or Sirius for pennies a month. I don’t need to explain this fact-to-be to anybody but radio people. Hello. It’s the cell phone, guys. That’s the personal, pocket-size electronic instrument of the future, not to mention the present. So far, cell phones don’t pick up AM or FM. Why should they? So, what would be so terrible if radio “stations” of today fed their signals to phones and computers (of all sizes) via the Internet. Then, of course, radio people would have to compete with all the other stations available to the phone-computer-satradio owners. Oh, what’s that? They do already? Uh huh. But the sets they do it on are going obsolete, showing up at Goodwill with the film cameras. Could “radio guys” with their tight playlists, callout research and ARBITRON books compete with a world of digital radio on favored devices that don’t carry AM-FM? Do they now? The other things to do, besides dumping “HD”: join the new aforementioned distribution networks. And take your programming totally local, the sound of your hometown. Focus on the people within ten miles of your studio. Do it now, before somebody in your town beats you to it, with nothing but a Mac and a mic.
- The History of Radio - Preface
Here’s my idea: I’m writing a novel, Marconi Dreams (I’ll print the title in italics if it’s ever published), whose hero is a disc jockey. I started this Website as a home base for the novel. The book isn’t a history, but it draws on the modern history of the medium in America, from about 1960 on. This morning it seems like a pretty good idea to write a history of radio in blog posts. I’ll start at the beginning with this one. So, when I’m done, a reader can start from the present and work back to the birth of radio, only about a hundred years ago. Who knows, maybe I’ll have another book when I’m done. Somewhere in here, I’ll finish Marconi Dreams, too. There’ll still be posts on today’s upheaval in the medium. It’s just, now I’ll be providing some context. Stay tuned.
- I get it now.
Sirius 72, the “Pure Jazz” channel, is an oldies station. Sometimes it takes a while to break the radio code, even if you’re an old radio guy. Matt Abramowitz, the Sirius jazz programmer, told me they’re merely playing the “best” cuts so casual Sirius channel surfers will get a truly great experience if they try out Pure Jazz. Which is to say, We play the hits. I was the old jazz fan, hoping a dedicated jazz station would bring me up to date on the new artists and their output, since I haven’t spent much time with jazz, or had access to a jazz station, for years. What I’ve realized is that Pure Jazz sounds just like the jazz station I worked for in 1959. I feel like I’m in a time warp when I listen. They’re playing the great contemporary jazz of the late 50s because that’s what jazz sounded like before rock-n-roll took over the creative function in popular music. Can it be the music hasn’t moved on since then? Yes it has. But you won’t hear that stuff on Pure Jazz. When radio wants to play it safe, it plays the oldies, only. Just the hits. Satellite radio is just commercial radio without the commercials.
- Laughing on the outside.
That’s what you’ll hear on your favorite radio station these days. Behind the scenes, the American radio business is all fire and explosions. All the big deals that brought all the major radio stations in the country, and a lot of minor ones, under a few corporate tents are unravelling, as the numbers-jugglers try to make the numbers add up the only way they know how — by firing people. Which, in radio, is like closing plants in the car business. The difference: the listeners are still there. The advertisers are still willing to advertise. Sure, the slowing economy doesn’t help. But, overpaying for radio stations and overpromising Wall Street is what’s killing the radio business much faster than its multiple new cyber-competitors could ever hope to do. Want details? Surf the radio trade publications — they’re over there in the right column. Your radio station won’t sound too different, unless you’re in a major market where even successful talent is being booted out. Those stations will sound different, and I don’t mean better. The light at the end of radio’s tunnel has turned out to be an incinerator.
- What they’re writing about radio.
Just in case you think I’m just a grumpy old ex-radio guy, read what Jon Fine wrote about radio in Business Week.
