RADIO, THEN AND NOW
- Radio Follies.
HD Radio got a lot of attention at the Computer Electronics Show. Uh huh. Now there’s considerable buzz about the new “song tagging” feature they’re talking about adding to car radios. Radio stations encode digital info about songs they’re playing. The listener can push a button on his radio and save the information, so he can, uh, buy the song later from ITunes. Great, no? Ahem, doesn’t this apply to, like, new songs? Can you imagine somebody in 2008, suddenly getting the urge to buy Hotel California by the Eagles? These are the developments radio station people grasp with their cold, sweaty hands, between trying to float refi deals or sell off stations to try to get their stock prices above $1.49. Every day I surf the trade news and listen to my AM-FM for some sign of a fresh commitment to a, uh, fresh idea. There’ll be no massive collapse here. But I see nothing ahead but a long glide.
- RADIO IN 2008; WHO KNOWS?
I really don’t see the point of writing a hopeful post about American commercial radio. If you follow the radio trades (see a list in my right column), you’ll find the recent buzz was all about Clear Channel’s seeming company-wide, country-wide firings of seasoned, successful employees — local radio stars in some of the major U.S. radio stations. The reason has nothing to do with their, or the stations’ performance. And everything to do with corporate-consolidated radio’s falling out with Wall Street. Clear Channel, and other major station collectors, are trying to make a strategic withdrawal from the public markets, with heavily leveraged private equity companies setting up huge buyout deals. This has not gone well, and the stock of these consolidators have fallen embarrassingly. The lending crisis has done nothing to make this process easier. The American commercial radio business has been pillaged; dragged through this deregulated buying and selling binge. At a time when US radio should have been trying to get its innovation mojo back in the face of the historic breakdown of its audio distribution monopoly, everything froze for a land rush. So, who knows, indeed, if, as the disengagement of radio licenses from the public markets takes hold, radio will be turned back over to good radio people to run. Are there enough good ones left in the business to crank up the energy to do it? I don’t want to end on a negative note, so here are a couple of hopeful signs. 1. The San Diego Union-Tribune, a newspaper, has started up two online radio stations, here on its Website, one a talk station and one a local music station. They tapped some retired San Diego radio guys to help run them, along with people from their newsroom. Why not? I’ll have to listen more before reviewing it. 2. The BBC World Service has just cleaned up their Website, as they celebrate this worldwide program service’s 75th anniversary. I’ve been listening to them a lot this year on my Sirius radio. Our NPR and PRI are no slouches, but the BBC is the greatest broadcast news operation in the world. If you haven’t heard them in a while, you may be surprised to hear more than just Ox-bridge accents on the Beeb these days. There are all flavors of English, and you’ll hear a variety that’d make ‘enry ‘iggins’ head spin. Radio’s still great. May American radio at least aspire to new, or great old, ideas, in this new year.
- Another voice. A little more positive.
Sean Ross is a former radio trade publication editor and reporter who now works for a radio research company. He has a blog called The Infinite Dial, in which he tiptoes along the frayed tightwire of comment on a fractured industry and its many issues. In his latest post he does a pretty skillful balancing job, trying to be constructive while covering the over-modulated war of words raging in a radio business in extremis. Go see. I just added Sean’s blog to my “trades” list in the right column, too. If you’re looking for a warm towel after a Jerry Del Colliano cold-water drenching, Sean’s your man.
- RADIO NEEDS THIS GADFLY
Jerry Del Colliano makes me want to get tougher on radio on this site. Jerry, the founder of Inside Radio, which he sold a few years ago to Clear Channel, the biggest radio station consolidator, went on to become a USC professor. Now he writes this blog called Inside Music Media. I just made sure I placed a link to it in my Radio Trades list, over there in the right column. Today, Jerry is fomenting a coup at Citadel Radio, the company that bought the ABC radio stations from Disney this year. What makes me love Jerry is, he’s so right about everything, and he writes the stuff everybody in the U.S. radio business is saying to each other, behind their hands. The radio business has never been given to self-examination. It stamped out creativity back in the 70s and so has no experience stimulating it now, when it needs new risky ideas the most. And, because radio has allowed itself to be so overshadowed by TV, and now the Internet, nobody much cares to talk about it. I thought I’d have a very lively little Website here, and I may yet, but it’s hard to write about the business I loved for so long, when nothing fresh is going on. When Jerry Del Colliano, technically a radio business outcast — broadcasters mostly loved to hate him when Inside Radio was in its heyday as a take-no-prisoners trade publication — when Jerry is the liveliest voice with the best qualifications for the job, I’d say the business is in trouble. But, what he’s saying needs to be heard and attended to. So I’ll join in. Give ‘em hell, Jerry.
- RADIO WITH PICTURES?
Here’s an article from BBC, about a radio station’s new digital ability to send stuff to little screens. Like song-and-artist readouts on my Sirius satellite radio. Some of the stuff they’re talking about and even experimenting with — in Britain, where digital radio is already big — is pretty close to, well, TV. With digital radio (you know, HD?) already sputtering for lack of technological or programming interest, what U.S. radio doesn’t need is another gadget distraction. Radio is a great experience, without pictures, when it’s great radio. We need an explosion of great new programming ideas.
- MEET JERRY DEL COLLIANO
I did my post for today on his blog. This is the guy who started Inside Radio, which was the first and last new-media innovation in the radio business: a fax, back in the 80s. He was the trade pub guy the radio business loved to hate. He spoke truth to power. He sold out Inside Radio to the Enemy — Clear Channel. Nobody else wanted it, I’m guessing. Nobody else in the trade pub biz would have done it Jerry’s way. And, while good journalists still do a good job there, it’ll never have the tang of a Jerry-built sheet. Like the industry it covered and tweaked, it got consolidated, too. Put Jerry’s blog in your favorites. I will. Radio needs to hear this stuff.
- MY NEW TAGLINE
I just updated the description of this Website’s purpose. I started out thinking this would be just a site about U.S. broadcast radio, which is where I started my so-called career. I’ve decided it ought to be a little broader, since, for one thing, “radio” isn’t a closed system anymore. Used to be you had to get a license from the U.S. FCC to be a radio broadcaster. Now you can just buy a computer and get connected to the Internet and, poof, you’re on the radio. In a time of disruptive digital media technologies, licensed steel-tower radio is looking like a shrinking world. In only a few years, the media world has opened wide and radio, already marginalized by television, now seems even narrower. The U.S. industry’s short-sightedness and its preoccupation with consolidating ownership and taking “real estate” profits has set its already stunted creativity even further back in the pack. HD Radio? Don’t make me laugh. Anyway, I’m broadening the world of this site, because not much new is happening in U.S. radio. Now I’ve got more to write about besides my disappointment and disgust with the state of radio in America.
- ARBITRON’S PEOPLE METER IN THE DITCH
Enough radio biggies have raised enough Cain now, so Arbitron, the radio ratings monopoly, has delayed the rollout of its new electronic listening-spy gadget. In its initial outings, some stations that appeal to young adults digitally lost their audiences. Arbitron’s been trying desperately to juggle their samples to try to keep the customers simply peeved instead of livid–stations pay Arbitron big bucks for the numbers. Arbitron pushed their rollout in New York in spite of industry doubts about their methods. Way back when, Clear Channel and other radio owners held a competition for new ratings methodologies. There were some worthy competitors. Whatever happened to those guys? I’ll sniff around. (How often do I get to link to the New York Times?)
Afterthought:Â Three things steel-tower radio doesn’t need right now: an explosion of new music and programming-distribution technologies, a too-little-too-late digital conversion of its own technology, and a ratings mess. It has ‘em all right now. A stable ratings situation, as backwards as Arbitron’s system is, would at least keep the advertising status quo quiet for a little longer. But now, the wheels are flying off the new PeopleMeter, at a time when the bigtime media buyers are already fed up with the old diary method. This could quicken the erosion of radio ad business from traditional radio to the Internet, which targets particular buyers even better. In fact, radio’s always been more interested in appealing to “mass niches” like country music fans and spleenish talk listeners than real niches, like, say, news junkies or local activists in smaller towns. How about “smart people” as a niche? As long as ratings are the only reason offered to buy ads on a station, radio’s stuck with programming to the ratings rather than the potential listeners. About now, radio people are saying, “What’s he talking about?” I’m saying, there are opportunities for radio out there that radio people don’t even see, because ratings reports don’t report on why a growing number of folks don’t listen at all. In my town, if you’re not a country, hard rock, hip-hop, oldies, Mexican music, Christian preaching or hip hymns, or conservative ire-talk fan, all you’ve got is National Public Radio, and there are quite a few folks who don’t find much there to love. Sirius and XM are fine, but not comprehensive, no matter what you might think about services with over 100 channels. There’s still a place for a good hometown radio station, and local radio staffs are so repressed and stressed, we’re not getting much local stuff out of them these days. I wonder how much the radio business infrastructure will have to collapse before somebody in the business takes a risk and starts deserting the outmoded standard industry song and dance.
