Eleven years after the FCC opened the U.S. commercial radio business to corporate consolidation, the radio station trading business still dominates the attention of everybody in the business. First, it was about who could buy the most stations, and in short order, all the prime stations in the biggest markets were in a few hands. Today, whether you read the financial or the trade press, it’s about how fast the largest owners of stations can buy out Wall Street and take their companies private again. Of course, the stock marketeers see this as win-win — they won when the stocks of the radio consolidators went up, now they win when the radio consolidators sell out to private equity companies, which makes the stock price go…you guessed it…up.

The non-winners in all this: first, the listeners — consolidation did nothing for the quality of radio, and arguably lowered it. The other losers are the radio pros and owners who really care about the audience and the medium. They’re now ten more years behind the exploding rate of innovation in media. And now they have to go through another round of ownership changes. It’s enough to make you want to go into real estate.

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