I thought you might like to read an article that a gentleman by the name of Lee Abrams recently wrote.

http://nymieg.blogspot.com/2006/12/ipods-are-killing-radio.html

For those who think that radio is going to die, you might want to take to heart what Mr. Abrams has to say, and for those who don't know who he is, let's just say that he's had a hand in developing successful formats including stations like KGON and KZEL. During the last 37 years, Lee has brought high ratings and economic success to radio stations in over 200 markets, including 97 of the top 100. In 1993, Newsweek listed Lee as one of America's "100 Cultural Elite" for his contributions to creating modern radio and Radio Ink listed Lee as one of the 75 most important radio figures of all time.

Certain formats are going to take a hit because of all the new IPOD technology: CHR, RHY, and Rock. Younger people HATE commercials, and want their music on demand. Country, News/talk and OPB/NPR stations will continue to flourish, as listners tune in for a certain experience- NOT just the music.

Terrestrial radio is facing challenges from all sides.

Tim....I agree however it seems like all I hear is doom and gloom...I also believe that those of us who remain in the business need to continue to do what we can to make sure we don't give listeners a reason to dump terrestrial radio.

I also would like to comment that I have asked kids (middle school age and up) about their listening habits and it's interesting that they still say they like radio...sure, they don't listen as much because of the new technology, but I do believe that young people overall are still going to have to rely on radio because parents aren't going to be quick to subscribe to satellite radio for their children. Yes we will continue to see a hit to CHY, RHY, and Rock, but not to the degree that some are claiming.

As the article by Lee Abrams points out, we heard the same doom and gloom when FM rose to prominence, when TV began to flourish, when the internet became more mainstream...yada, yada, yada. I refuse to buy into the doom and gloom as I still believe in radio as a viable medium. I believed it when I began in 1980 and I believe it going into the future.

A sandwich tastes better if someone else makes it.

dot com.

This is true!

(wierd huh?)

Coupla data points from watching my kids, and their friends, grow up.

-Prior to age 10, quality did not matter --they checked out everything the radio offered AM and FM. Radio Disney was big for a coupla years with my younger daughter and a few of her friends. Got them a GE for listening and they used it.

-all four of them have said to me, and some still say to me, why do they [the people on the radio] lie?

Honesty in presentation is huge with this generation of kids. If you are gonna play 50 minutes of music, actually play 50 minutes of music! My younger daughter listened to the Z for an hour recently and announced to me, "this is crap!".

-real world tie ins are huge events to them. Concerts, remotes, etc... all events they wish they could attend more often.

-about age 15 or so, they start whining about the same songs being played too often. (go figure that one!)

-none of them have paid stations lacking strong personalities one lick of attention. No chuckie, no movin, etc... It's all Wolf, Jammin and the Z (in their terms).

Edit: This is probably the music set as much as it is station identity, energy and personalities.

-they have not chosen their new music on their own just yet. I did this as a kid, putting me in a minority for sure. Their picks come from:

-MTV
-Radio
-Internet
-Friends
-printed materials

The hype engine works well. American Idol is a big program for them. (me too actually, but I'm there for the freak show mostly)

Artists looking for their next up and coming audience really should continue to work the social networking sites. I've currently turned these off, for family reasons, but when I allow these in the house, new music will appear within a week. Often these tunes are not being aired much if at all!

The commercials bit is true! All four of my kids are total button mashers. They will flip as soon as they hear the backbeat ramp for whoever is gonna talk, hoping to catch the tail end of some other song they like. A truthful diary would be a short book, if it covered a month!

If the commercial has some other value, such as being funny, bizzare, etc... they will listen. This suggests to me, they are looking for experiences and that product placement in short bursts, would fly nicely. The CC "blink" is spot on, IMHO.

If it were me, I would do these with cartoon voices and other effects that grab attention and help blend between tunes, avoiding the brutal switch.


Local businesses, who thrive on kids, would do well to place a batch of half second to full second bits like this. "Gen-X", "Hollister", "Jim Dandy's", spoken quickly with an effect will impress them without triggering their need to avoid the sell.

They will say, "I heard it on the radio" far more often than I hear any adult do this.

Tim,

Interesting to note that "younger people HATE commercials" and I'm wondering if 'older people' have more patience toward spots even though some of them also listen to Hot AC or CHR? I would guess they do.

But why is it some PD's insist running 'quality' spots for free overnights? By 'quality' I mean a 60 second national coke, pepsi, jingle. Or a very well written funny spot that actually kept a teens attention and was entertaining. Once in a great while even a entertaining well produced PSA.

The only answer I ever received from Dave Shakes (consulting at the time) was to break up overly-long music blocks. He wanted consistency and didn't want overnights to sound like a non-stop juke box. As I remember it was one 60 second spot each hour.

I would guess from a 15 year-old wansta-wanna-be's perspective as long as the commercial relates to his world it isn't all that bad of a thing. Unfortunately a lot of spots run on a CHR are intended for adults.

It might seem like splitting hairs, but young people don't hate radio. They merely hate what we've done with it.

There are a few stations around the country that are being successful with lower spotloads and a committment to keeping things clean.

However, you have to have full support up and down and across the org chart. There's a couple of good groups, like Bonneville, out there committed to being listener-oriented.

Plus, you can't get hung up on the delivery method (on-air, online, on-pod, etc.). It's still the quality that matters. And any consultant that gets hung up on ruling that you have to put in a good commercial or two is going to get run over and crushed by focused competitors.

Greg_charles

I think that us older folk have alot more patience towards commercials, because we’ve really never known anything else until recently. The younger kids are more hip to the new technology; technology which doesn’t include commercials : tivo, ipods, XM, etc.. They are the “ me” generation. They want what they want, when they want it, and there’s a whole industry that is catering to this. I cringe every time I hear yet another article written with the *blinders* on, claiming everything’s just fine in The biz.

Podcasting and satellite radio are upending the broadcast radio business, says Business Week:

"... a trend is afoot that could transform the $21 billion radio industry. Consider the basics: With no licenses, no frequencies, and no towers, ordinary people are busy creating audio programming for thousands of others. They're bypassing an entire industry.

"The digital revolution took its time getting to radio. Now it's exploding -- and the big bang goes far beyond podcasting. As radio shows are turned into digital bits, they're being delivered many different ways, from Web to satellite to cell phones. Listeners no longer have to tune in at a certain time, and within range of a signal, to catch a show or a game. As the business goes digital, the barriers to entry -- including precious airwaves -- count for less and less."

It's too late for terrestrial broadcasting to correct course and catch up, not because of any other reason other than the consolidation of broadcast ownership. Bigger companies can not operate successfully in a model as described above, they just can't. It's too un-big business. Too much bureaucracy stifles creativity. A few exceptions here and there won't make a big enough impact. Once the advertisers begin diluting their terrestrial radio budgets, which they already have, it should be plain for all to see the writing on the wall even as well paid analysts try to explain it away in other terms.

"The radio industry’s advertising slump continued in April with revenue dipping 5 percent compared to a year ago, according to figures released Friday by the Radio Advertising Bureau. National ad sales fell 7 percent while local sales decreased 4 percent."

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/tvstations/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1 002612818

None of this pleases me, but it is the way it is.

Fortunately, we have some time to wake up as an industry.

What they don't tell you about podcasting is that there's a LOT more downloading than actual listening going on.

Satellite radio companies are still behind the proverbial eight-ball, business-plan-wise.

Most internet-only feeds aren't very good, and ... more importantly ... precisely 99.9943756% of them have no budget for any serious mass marketing to even get sampled.

Now all radio has to do is focus on listeners and clients instead of stock analysts.

We'll solve global warming first!

"What they don't tell you about podcasting is that there's a LOT more downloading than actual listening going on."

I hadn't considered that. Seems like a pretty valid point.

Radio is just not what it used to be as far as quality and content. Kids don't care about the dj's because they dj's are BORING, Voice Tracked and are not relating to the demo. I remember being back in Junior High When Nelson First started on Z100, early 90's. PEOPLE USED TO TALK ABOUT THE MORNING ZOO at school, And these are not radio people, they are young kids. Dj's got mentioned. Infact I rememeber having school dances at my local junior high and EVERYONE wanted to make sure that they could Get A Z100 dj like Rich E cunningham. Today when you turn on Z100 nobody cares about the dj's and why should they? They don't do much but announce songs than turn the mic off. Maybe if Radio stations made the dj just as important as the music, people would ACTUALLY CARE about the dj. Give your listeners a reason to Care about the dj.

I don't know about the older generation being more tolerant of commercials. I'm 51 and I hate commercials. Not so much just because they are interrupting my music, but more so because the majority of commercials insult a normal persons intelligence (although working in electronics, I'm not sure people would call me normal!)

Commercials and the fact that the station I liked the most went to lite jazz (which I can tolerate but not for all day) in November of 2005, I switched to Sirius.

As far as the satellite carriers not having a solid money making business plan, my comment on that is "How can they (Sirius anyway) make money when you hire a low life scum sucking pig, waste of skin for $500 million"......Sorry, I have a strong opinion about him!!!

I know about a declining business. I work for a paging company. While we are still profitable, we have had to branch out into other services than just paging and 2Way messaging. We have automated electric meter reading via our 2Way network and will soon have automated parking metering too.

I would expect the commercial broadcasters would also have to find other money making services they can offer too. The other thread titled "Can the FM Band be Used for Sending and Receiving Data" mentions some of the other things that broadcasters are already doing.

I would think that more of these services are coming soon or are in development stages.

Anyway that's my 2 cents worth!!

Lee Abrahams was a self appointed Messiah of Rock & Roll, ask him how he sunk radio to the bottom with his Rock Of The 80's format?

"Most internet-only feeds aren't very good, and ... more importantly ... precisely 99.9943756% of them have no budget for any serious mass marketing to even get sampled."

I think there is a point being missed here. The point is that marketing to a very narrow niche is cheap now thanks to MySpace and the like. New bands or podcasts or anything else can start a grass-roots marketing campaign for pretty much free. The difference is that there is no room for hype- there are too many messages- the hype gets ignored. It needs to sell itself the same way a DJs aircheck has always had to sell a prospective PD; "wow" the listener/viewer right away with something that accurately reflects the actual content of the media. Anything short of that will be voted out in the "digital democracy"

Know your audience and then give them what they want. Pretty simple really. But maybe that's the problem.

Yep.

What they want is something to connect with. This takes bodies somewhere in the chain, which takes dollars, which cuts profit, which kills the huge growth expectations inherent in the public market.

Sucks.

Radio isn't dying.

It's just changing.

Radio is not dying...it is being killed off. Sales and Marketing are giving advertisers what they want to hear with their spots but often times it is not what the listener wants to hear. But hey who are we....just listeners...we don't matter right???? I think someone forgot that the first rule of radio should be to secure an audience and stay loyal to them and a program that they will keep coming back for. This usually means live and local (for me anyway) with entertaing programs...not people reading cue cards......on the spot....spontanious....and fun!!!

What good is it to make the advertisers happy if you end up chasing away your audience???

It is the media itself that is changing, not just radio. I think that Abrams has some valid points, but I think that one should consider the source: Abrams is a senior manager at XM, and he was one of the first radio consultants whose focus was on bringing mainstream appeal to FM. I would expect him to paing an overly rosy picture of both of these outlets.

Yesterday, 20/20 ran an interesting piece about the video side of this media transformation: You Tube. Earlier that day, Ira Flatow's show Science Friday interviewed a Wired columnist who believed that television is dead because people are increasingly watching shorter videos on-demand from You Tube and if they do watch traditional broadcast materials, they are often time-shifted and commercials are skipped.

My somewhat premature conclusion after hearing all of these viewpoints is that the big media outlets are "dead" only if they commit suicide by trying to emulate what is on You Tube. The primary strength of these big outlets is that they have lots of money, which allows them to produce the types of programs that take a lot of money to do well. Investigative news reporting and dramas are two examples of such programs.

The 20/20 piece brought to mind a very important point, but for some reason it was not stated explicitly: The environment that we're seeing today is a result of the improved technologies that we have for delivering content. In the early 1990s, people were shooting home videos, and for much of the 20th century, they were shooting home movies. These productions are amateur, and for the most part, the lack of talent therein shows. Every once in a while, you get something that punches through the clutter and makes a social impact (like the amateur video of Rodney King's beating).

Radio!
Remember Radio?
We sat and closed our eyes
And used our imagination.
Comedy! Mystery! A fireside chat.
Together we sat
Listening nightly to our favorite shows.
Radio,
Why did you ever go?
Oh, won't you please come back
And entertain us?
I've always turned the dial a bit
to hear the best and smile a bit.
Radio,
I've missed you so!

10th Avenue Jazz Band
Dixieland Jazz For the 21st Century, Volume 1
Alpha Factors Records, 1995

Good post Alfredo.

Sadly, I find myself watching almost no local television any more, nor do I just tune in for the evening. I hear about things and schedule them for recording on the PVR. Internet and word of mouth are the primary guides these days.

And that's the big change for me. Being able to time-shift content and blow though annoying ADS is a one way trip, kind of like peer to peer is for music. Once a person has had a bite of the apple, it's very tough to go back and forget the experience.

I only worry about program schedules that juxtapose good material, forcing a choice. Then I decide which I will catch on the re-run cycle.

With radio, I've done this a bit with KNRK. They have enough of a schedule that I can record some bits and play them later. For a while, I did this and used a portable media player to play them back. Worked kind of like it does for television, but it's too much of a hassle for longer term use. Plus, the expectation of live and daily content on radio is still there --and worth it, IMHO because radio is largely an on-the-go medium for me.

If radio does "die" like TV has, I don't think the parallels will be the same. For some reason, audio is not compelling enough to justify the time shift technology that's driving the television changes.

This, more than anything, is why I think moving to a content carrier type of model, is a mistake for radio in general. That's not quite right. I guess, the ideal model would be content carrier, but with lots of content being produced locally that can be moved from place to place. The current KPOJ model is one example where content is carried from elsewhere most of the time, but also Thom Hartmann is produced here.

In the music world, we could see great shows produced locally, with each market carrying a lot of content from other markets, while contributing that which makes great sense for their market in particular. How much ends up being live and local depends a lot on how relevant that market ends up being culture and creativity wise.

Video remains too expensive for this, but for audio it's great! One guy in a home studio could easily produce solid stuff all day long. There is potential there that changes things quite a bit where radio is concerned.

I must say I would totally accept daily or at least regular programming chunks. If it were possible to grab the news of the day for listening on the go, I would be up for that. It's not real time live, but it would easily be locally relevant, if justified.

Tried this with talk programming and it works well! It's possible to grab shows from the day before and play them throughout the following day when it makes sense.

Imagine, stopping in for your coffee, paying an extra buck and getting a high speed burst of the days content for listening as you please later on! ADS within the stream would be somewhat tolerated, but only if they are decent and short. The idea of paying for the content AD free though, would be compelling enough for a lot of people to make the change.

Better still, make an electronic payment device that has some capacity for stored information, perhaps on a public shared memory area. Pay the additional fee and the content appears as part of the transaction!

This would murder radio as we know it, IMHO. ---although it's in the position to make this happen as well. Perhaps somebody really savvy would be able to blend the two, making money from both ventures. Not everyone would pay and not everyone would possess the portable media devices necessary...

Anyway, I think it's significant to note that live and local could work almost as well as local and queued. The energy is still there, as is the relevance on a daily basis. Creative presentation, would tie the two together. One could be listening to the queued stream, and hear a reference to the live show, for example.

...as of this recording, we know [x]. For the latest, tune us during the noon hour for the latest scoop, thanks for listening to [branded program] on [local station carrier and producer maybe].

There is a point in here somewhere! I guess it's that changes might not all be bad. The natural selection is gonna be toward a pull model where people just consume stuff, but that's not all that's on the table. People can continue to be relevant, but they are gonna have to work for it.

Might not end up being too bad, if a few folks really work the mediums and see success. Could be great, but will totally be interesting to watch happen!

Radio is dead.

Or at least it sounds like it.

Why listen when one doesn't have to is the new reality. I can get my news faster from the Internet. Radio doesn't care about personality and neither does the web.

Just plain don't care what commercials they do or don't play. Isn't relevant.

Thanks for the kind words, Missing_KSKD. One point where I disagree with the Wired guy, as far as television is concerned, is that a lot of people have been time shifting programs and skipping commercials since the 1980s (with VCRs). Perhaps a more legitimate concern about the "death" of broadcast TV is that advertisers will *perceive* that TV is on the way out and start shifting money away from TV advertising to other advertising venues, such as targetted ads from Google. I could see this happening, but it would be a gradual transition that would take years, possibly with the money shift being away from the over-the-air networks to more niche-programmed cable stations and then away from TV altogether. I think that I'm going to start holding onto some of the old VHS recordings that I have or run across of over-the-air TV so that in a few years, I can compare them against what is being broadcast at the time.

On the radio side, I think that these effects can be clearly heard when comparing airchecks from the popular radio stations of 30+ (KGW, KISN, etc.) to today. It seems that in those old time airchecks, there was a much larger variety of businesses that bought advertising time on the radio.

The lack, until the last few years, of a radio time shifting device used to puzzle me. Is it really that audio-only media aren't compelling enough simply because there are no pictures? Or, is it that the way that most stations were programmed immediately before talk radio became popular (that is, there was a consistent programming "formula" as opposed to individual programs) made time shifting unnecessary in most people's opinions? I think that it was more of the latter.

Perhaps peoples expectation is that TV mostly is not live, therefore they are not missing any live/new content by using delayed replay/skipping commercials.
On the other hand, isnt our expectation that radio is live and constantly is offering new content in real time? That degrades reasons to replay/timeshift/skip commercials.

"On the other hand, isnt our expectation that radio is live and constantly is offering new content in real time?"

Previously, that would have been the expectation but I don't think there are many people in the major demographics that have the vision of radio in real time except as a llve event broadcast.

I dunno. It's an interesting discussion really.

With a station like K-Hits, there is no need to timeshift, for the most part, unless you like a given radio person. (I've not listened for very long periods, so I could be missing something.)

However, KISN & KRNK have distinct programs running at distinct times. At first, I jumped on these with timeshifting and treated them like television.

Sometimes I still do, but overall it's just not the same as television is. A story would be though, (and why don't we do more of that and theatre?) and that's really the basis for my statement about compelling. Can't think of anything else...

Where compelling is concerned, it breaks down to elements also.

Sequential programming is more timeshift appropriate. Stories, plays, etc... Missing a chunk matters because the others are diminished.

Non-sequential, but deep as in non repeating for a long time, if ever might also be time shiftable, but only if one wants to archive. This ended up being true for me on the Cocktail Mix, but only the friday ones where locals put together their stuff. (Never know when you might get a really good one, better to timeshift and be able to play it back, then listen and wish you had. In this case, missing a chunk means missing out!

There are probably lots of other factors in play here, just no focus on the matter right now. Maybe there should be!

IMHO, KNRK is an example of a station where the programming formula includes distinct programs that follow a schedule. It's a start down this road that might go quite a ways actually!

Other stations might be doing this too, I just don't listen to that much FM, past the two stations I mentioned here.

Seems to me, if radio were to cultivate this aspect of things, the content forms that evolve could easily be re-purposed to other media delivery systems. If this does not happen, and the other systems arrive, then somebody else will end up doing it, thus radio loses any advantage it might have.

The multi-streams on FM are perfect for this too! Risk free in that listener pools are small. Lots of other options that can tie in with the main channel too.

Of course the Internet plays into this with the podcast. Radio has ended up doing a solid job on these. I can get lots of podcasts and they are often quite solid, compared to the amateur ones that started the whole thing.

Perhaps, all of that points to a path here that's good for radio people in general. Probably will kill traditional radio in the process, but if the new stuff is really great and people are driving it, I'm up for that.

After I wrote my previous post, I realized that I missed another really obvious factor to explain why radio timeshifting devices didn't come out earlier: In the 1980s, the only commonly available consumer recording medium was the compact cassette, and these are limited to 45 minutes of playing time per side. You could add autoreversing, but that would make the unit more complicated, thereby jacking up the price. You can also slow down the tape speed (as the C. Crane machines do), but then you have to deal with a compromise in frequency response. Some hifi cassette decks of the day were designed so that they could be powered up in RECORD with an external appliance timer.

That makes perfect sense!

In the very late 80's, maybe early 90's, I ended up using a really great hi-fi VHS for long recording sessions.

Shortly after though, we did end up with DAT and there always was reel-to-reel. That's a pretty solid explanation, but I still think there are some core differences between audio and video that change things.

Look at movies. We won't watch them over and over, by and large, anywhere near the number of times we will do that for music. We also seem to prefer shorter pieces of music, and somewhat longer video works.

Most cheap cassette decks found in boom boxes would easily capture the audio bandwidth of today's AM stations, even running at half speed.

There's one big advantage radio and TV have over new media, but it's being squandered, and that is the role of trusted editorial filter. There are already so many blogs and podcasts that few listeners have the time to find the ones they can trust. A major network news operation with a decades-long history has a potential advantage here.

Most people outside our industry want their news content edited by someone they trust. IMHO, not enough attention is being paid to preserving this competitive advantage. The CBS/Dan Rather debacle a couple years ago was a major lost battle in this war. Survival of the big media will require attention to defending their quality and branding against the attack of the bean-counters.

I think my generation owes Edward Salant gratitude for bringing greater accuracy and credibility to broadcast news (only to be squandered three decades later), as well as defending broadcast news' integrity and fighting its independence before Congress and the FCC. Perhaps the occasion of Frank Stanton's passing will occasion a review of Salant's work.

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/salantricha/salantricha.htm
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/powell200409170630.asp
http://www.allbusiness.com/information/internet-publishing-broadcasting/677045-1 .html

I remember the rapid-fire zooming close-ups of the crowd's reaction to the Challenger exploding in 1986 (on CBS! In the evening's lead!), and was appalled that something precious had already been lost. Cheez, 20 years ago already.

"but it's being squandered, and that is the role of trusted editorial filter."

IMHO, the big problem here is that new media must be accepted for it to blend in to these filters. Once the egos step away, aggragating content to add value should be a no brainer. Done well and with relevance, value perception would be high.

I agree. Some scoff at Wikipedia as a "million monkeys with keyboards" (Cecil Adams' words) but it is a font of at least "conventional wisdom" (i.e., a great starting/orientation point), and in some areas (biographies, geography, some medical) it appears genuinely authoritative. It does have a remarkably inherent way of "correcting itself"; except on some obscure and hot-button topics, it's apparently working as hoped for.

I don't trust it anywhere near 100% but it's sure a better place to start than wading through the top few pages of hits that come back from Google.

One only has to browse Snopes for a while to realize surprising amounts of what we remember appearing in the conventional press in the past turned out to be myths and canards.

(Don't get me started on the Reader's Digest...)

Gotta love Cecil Adams.

I like the Wiki. For me, it's just great because I can find relevant material very quickly. The wiki itself may or may not be the authority, but it almost always contains enough information for one to then seek that authority properly.

That has value right there, particularly when faced with the same task and an empty search engine box...

I'm contributing content to Wikipedia at times, in non-radio areas.