[BC] Who's on the throne of Radio?

[Rich Wood]

------ At 10:30 PM 3/15/2009, WBRadiolists at aol.com wrote: -------

>OK, there it is, in a sentence! Why radio is dying its horrible death...
>because the listener has been removed from the "throne" and replaced by the
>stockholder.

I have to disagree. Radio isn't dying a horrible death. It's still a 
primary source of entertainment. Yes, listening is down. I think it 
was Jon Coleman's research that showed a small yearly loss. It also 
showed that Internet listening is down. People aren't leaving radio 
in droves, though, with current programming, I don't know why.

The sky isn't falling as fast as we're led to believe. Billing isn't 
doing too well. Neither is TV. That's a function of the economy. Gen 
X and Boomers are still here. Whatever letter the next generation 
gets is where the guano hits the rotating blades. I was at a very 
large party this weekend where there were many 18-24 people. I asked 
nearly every one if they listen to radio. Unanimously, the answer was 
"no." Pandora came up a lot but no radio or Internet-only streaming did.

Jerry Lee of WBEB, Philadelphia,, one of the most brilliant station 
operators there is, recently shut down his streaming. He did it for a 
few reasons. One, the royalty fees give stations no input and they'll 
climb dramatically after 2015. There isn't enough income available to 
hire people only to have 50% of your income confiscated. The second 
is that streaming isn't included in Arbitron unless the simulcast is 
100%. It can't be because of the commercial restrictions. That's a 
double whammy. The small audience it might bring in isn't credited 
and can't be sold.

The most important, I believe, is the cannibalizing of our main 
product. We're sending them somewhere else. We lose them where we 
make money and gain them where it costs us money. That's not to say 
the used of the Internet isn't important. It's just important for other things.

Beyond the technical deficiencies of IBUZ, I believe we're doing 
nearly the same thing. We bitched and moaned about so many stations 
added with Docket 80-90. We complained loudly about LPFM, even though 
it's not commercial. It can take part of our audience away. Now we're 
adding even more dreadful formats with IBUZ secondaries. Assuming 
there were radios in listeners' hands that's another place we'd be 
sending our primary analog audience. Since I don't believe it'll 
succeed because of a lack of consumer need or interest, that's not a 
serious concern to me. It's just that we're doing to ourselves what 
we complained these other developments would do to us. We clearly 
discovered that Docket 80-90 flooded markets with too many stations 
than the markets could support. Small markets cut the advertising pie 
even thinner and stations relatively close to major markets became 
rimshots or wangled their way into those markets.

We're eating our young.

Rich