I have been reading with interest the whole debate about radio being dead or dying vs. radio being a vibrant thriving business.
Radio is not dead by any measure, however it is declining for a number of obvious reasons. There are more competing entertainment and information options, that is true. Ipods, netcasters, satellite radio have taken some of radio’s listeners away. However, the main culprit in radio’s decline are the investment bankers that are squeezing every drop of blood nickle out of the industry before moving on to their next victim investment opportunity.
The net result of this has made much, not all, of radio predicable and boring. No longer is radio the source for new music, news, information and entertainment as it used to be. I don’t think that anyone will argue that point. The money men have fired most of the creative and talented individuals who used to bring in the listeners and replaced them with computers. They have also cut news staffs, support staffs and anything else that lives and breaths except sales people. More sales people are always required.
HD RadioTM radio is a joke at best. Setting aside all of the technical problems with coverage and building penetration, the programming sucks too. The same purveyors of crap on the main analog channels are now branching out on the HD2 and HD3 channels. I can’t believe that the secondary channels will somehow be better than the main analog channels, or even marginally good enough to buy an HD Radio radio. Some groups are putting their AM programming on an FM HD2 channel, which is great if one cares to hear drug addled corpulent talk show hosts wheezing into the microphone in full fidelity. At least on the AM analog broadcasts, everything above 4.5 KHz is cut off, wheezing included.
The good news is, there are still some radio stations that are programmed well. Radio sets are almost universal, every car has one, every house has at least one or two, most offices, stores, etc. Radio reception is still free. Radio is still popular among many people. Radio owner’s could very easily become involved with their communities of license, make better programing decisions, hire staffs, and add valuable informative local programs again. This decline would soon be forgotten.
The bad news is that is unlikely to happen. Less than a snowball’s chance in hell unless someone wakes up and smells the coffee.
I am half an optimist.
I purchased a cheap brand of coffee last weekend that had absolutely no smell while it was brewing…moral of the story, “Even when if you’re wide awake, if the coffee doesn’t smell like coffee, it’s not coffee.”
One person’s treasure is another person’s pile of garbage, guess it all depends on the perspective.
Radio is slowly going dead, but then the USA is slowly going dead also, or at least “out of business”. The reason is the elitists and spineless copy-cats running the show. The old model is outdated. A new interactive programming model with VARIETY, once said “to be the spice of life” will revive the Radio heart attack. Playing the same songs from a play-list of 300 tunes, and all the sickening political yak-yak is the virus taking over the domestic broadcast spectrum. AM could be easily revived with a little ingenuity on the part of owners or managers. People will come back if the programming is interesting and refreshing. We used to have it with competition, but Bubba Clinton killed that with TA’96. By the way, it was authored by a Republican! So, both parties STINK and the FCC policy that is prevalent today is the result. Newt Gingrich at one time called for the elimination of the FCC. I’m not a fan of his, but once in a while he throws out some good ideas.