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Traditional Radio Faces a Grim Future, New Study Says (variety.com)
In a 30-page report, Larry Miller, the head of New York University's Steinhart Music Business Program, argues that traditional radio has failed to engage with Generation Z -- people born after 1995 -- and that its influence and relevance will continue to be subsumed by digital services unless it upgrades. Key points made in the study include: Generation Z, which is projected to account for 40% of all consumers in the U.S. by 2020, shows little interest in traditional media, including radio, having grown up in an on-demand digital environment. AM/FM radio is in the midst of a massive drop-off as a music-discovery tool by younger generations, with self-reported listening to AM/FM radio among teens aged 13 and up declining by almost 50 percentage points between 2005 and 2016. Music discovery as a whole is moving away from AM/FM radio and toward YouTube, Spotify and Pandora, especially among younger listeners, with 19% of a 2017 study of surveyed listeners citing it as a source for keeping up-to-date with music -- down from 28% the previous year. Among 12-24 year olds who find music discovery important, AM/FM radio (50%) becomes even less influential, trailing YouTube (80%), Spotify (59%), and Pandora (53%). By 2020, 75% of new cars are expected to be "connected" to digital services, breaking radio's monopoly on the car dashboard and relegating AM/FM to just one of a series of audio options behind the wheel. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the typical car in the U.S. was 11.6 years old in 2016, which explains why radio has not yet faced its disruption event. However, drivers are buying new cars at a faster rate than ever, and new vehicles come with more installed options for digital music services.
Maybe they should go back to original programming like back in the day where radio dramas were all over the place as well as live music.
Last time I listened to the radio in a car or at home that wasn't by accident was 1997, even then it was only because I was in someone else car or at someones house. Before that I'd only really listen to talk radio like Art Bell or shows like Brave New Waves on CBC Canada or Chris Sheppard Pirate Radio since it was hard to access electronic music where I was.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Turns out letting one company own all the radio stations in the country and letting all music be chosen by an algorithm that compares music to existing hits is not a great idea.
Radio will come back when different stations are run differently.
I like to listen to live streams of music, even if it is just a playlist. And maybe with some announcements along the way about what I'm listening to, some little tidbits of trivia about the artist and song.
As an listener I do not care that it comes over analog FM, or a digital system like HD radio, or over the Internet. Whatever is convenient and reliable in my car. (FM)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Yes, radio is an older technology - one option among many. But it's also the only one where you sometimes have to sit through massive amounts of advertisements to get to the actual entertainment. The ads in the free versions of apps like Pandora are nowhere near as often or as annoying.
Just like Vinyl, Millennials will eventually get a clue about FM radio as soon as they realize it's exponentially cheaper to produce, doesn't count against their bandwidth cap, and has no conceivable way to build in copy protection.
Part of the reason for decline in younger radio listeners that major stations rarely plays music outside of three genres: country, classic rock, and pop and even then a short list of popular songs are recycled endlessly. Nobody my age discovers new music on the radio because the radio never plays new music.
I'm in my 40's and have listened to radio for most of my life. I find the radio stations in the past 10 years to have become rather generic. The hosts all seem the same, they play all the same songs... Until the ad for the radio station pops on with it's call sign and name, I've usually no idea which station it is, to be honest. This is probably because the radio stations in my area are all owned by a few, large communications companies.
What does radio offer that the other options don't? Annoying commercials, distortion, and lack of playlist control aren't exactly compelling.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
AM/FM radio is in the midst of a massive drop-off as a music-discovery tool
Radio in the US hasn't been a "Music-Discovery Tool" for the last 10-20 years since ClearChannel acquired nearly every FM station and made DJ's irrelevant.
Every station own by iHeartRadio sounds the same. Radio hasn't been a source for new music discovery for years because they're always pushing the same 20 "artists". And I'm damn tire of Ryan Seacrest and Mario Lopez. Taylor Swift had a new song and about an hour later I've heard it 4 times on three different stations.
Music discovery on AM/FM radio is largely a joke, and has been for a long time.
If you can hear the same song at every hour at the exact same time, there is no discovery, only what is popular.
Radio did this shit to themselves. How many of us have experienced that really annoying "every time I get into the car the same song is playing". When you can set your watch by the latest hit song, discovery isn't possible.
I gave up on commercial radio over a decade ago. Because the format is too damned repetitive.
Radio has never been a great way to discover music. It's just that until relatively recently, there hasn't really been any better alternative. Once radio programming started to get centralized, it became even worse.
At least in the old days there was some sort of connection to the local community. Most radio doesn't even have that much going for it anymore.
frees up the spectrum for my cell phone. I don't care for their music and talk radio seem to be dominated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh & Co. Besides, they're all owned by one company. It's not like there's any real benefit outside of emergency services.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
In the US, Clearchannel owns all the radio stations.
No competition. Just the same 5 bland songs, over and over...
Isn't that the point MTV was trying to make 36 years ago?
Live music is cool when you're actually there.
That depends. Classical ...symphony...yeah - no obscene amplification. Pop/rock/really loud - obscene amplification shit - NO!
I have to wear earplugs at rock/pop/country shows because they are too goddamn loud. When your ears ring, you have experienced permanent hearing damage. So, I either wear ear plugs and miss out on quite a bit of the music, or listen to the concert without ear plugs and go deaf.
Fuck it. I've been to two live rock shows in my life and that was enough.
All of the rock/pop stars have like 90% hearing loss. And when your profession is based on your sense of hearing, destroying it is idiot to say the least.
And the reason it's so loud? Because folks go to rock/pop shows and scream all the way through the songs - unlike classical shows where folks keep quiet.
some 15-20 years ago when they overpaid for all their stations, had to run too many commercials to pay for them, then heavily restricted their play lists to avoid the chance someone might not like the song currently playing. Forget about discovering new music on the radio, unless you switch from your country station to a hip-hop station or somesuch. Which ain't gonna happen.
I've got a 30G USB stick in my car with a dozen or so playlists. Only time I turn the radio on is when I'm stuck in traffic for a report to figure out if I should stick it out or go another route.
Maybe if there wasn't a Clear Channel(TM) monopoly and new interesting music got played I would be inclined to listen to it more often.
GSU used to boast the most powerful student run radio station (Album 88). in the US and would play all sorts of independent and unique stuff... got sold to NPR though to pay for a new "arts"/law building. I am sure the football time enjoyed the extra cash too
Making tapes was one thing, but being able to make my own CDs? Then moving to MP3s? Man, local garbage deejays laughing at their own jokes can just get fucked. Once I could avoid radio I never went back.
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
I was driving to work about a 35 minutes trip. As usual I jumped in the car, and turned on the radio to my local classic rock station. I then proceeded to hear the sports report, news report, at least 10 commercials for products I do not want, or need, the DJ yammering on about his golf game, and going out in his boat.
I then arrived at work, having not heard any actual music.
I know what you are thinking. Change to another station.
That might work in another market, but where I live most/all the stations are owned by the same company, so there is really very little difference between them.
I went out after work and bought an iPod, and an iPod interface for my stereo. Loaded my music, set it to shuffle play, and have been shuffling along ever since. (Over 10 years)(Several cars/stereos/media players.)
I do listen to a local news only station in the morning while I am getting ready for work, but that is about the only time I ever listen to the radio.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
"which is projected to account for 40% of all consumers in the U.S. by 2020" People born after 1995 would be 21 and under today. By 2020 they will be everyone 24 and under. There's no way that the 0-24 age group represents 40% of all consumers in the US. I stopped reading after the first sentence.
Netkids don't "get" commericals. That's because they suck and contrary to popular believe, the kids on your lawn aren't as dumb as the media likes to act. Nothing can save their business model, but it's likely that if we moved the tech beyond HD radio and streaming titles, new opportunities would open up to a mixed-mode digital & analog radio that had more interactivity between listener and DJ, fan ratings, show movie previews, etc.. Even if you don't use the FM band to transmit, there is an awful lot of bandwidth there to receive. There are soo many possibilities there.
I took my family and friends to Yellowstone prior to the eclipse. One of the families in my car happened to have two young children (ages 3 and 5). As we approached Yellowstone and cellular data service dropped to near-nonexistent, the two had a meltdown. They were screaming "I want YouTube" over and over for a good half hour, and their parents couldn't get through to them that YouTube was inaccessible here. They had never been without Internet connectivity all their lives. Meanwhile, AM/FM radio worked just fine.
I'm not sad to see music radio die. The entire thing has been a scam for nearly a century with ClearChannel owning most of the music stations across the country, and thus selecting which artists and songs become successful, instead of it happening organically via popularity among actual listeners. But the technology of radio broadcasts is far from dead.
Used to be the best or second best rock station until they went from music to religious programming. Way to ruin it dicktards.
Traditional radio sucks thanks to years of consolidation. Traditional radio doesn't face a grim future; it has a grim present. Death would be sweet release.
I've been a supporter of KRCL for a long time.
It is a great "Community" radio station based in SLC, UT.
They play an interesting variety of music and DJ's that cover most bases...
Radio? as in tune in to the FM frequency?
Sure...
Or you can stream it from anywhere.
So what really constitutes "Radio" as a platform?
I would imagine that all the "regular", annoying as hell, Sinclair Media owned radio stations can also be streamed.
I never understand all these types of articles talking about music. Literally Jack/BOB FM are the only ones playing music during rush hour. Other than that it's all dumb ass talk radio with idiots. Their jokes are dumb, no cursing, and of course they're all basically the same. And nowadays they're syndicated from who knows where.
Just wait until they're stuck in a hurricane with no internet access. That little battery/wind-up radio would be a godsend.
load "linux",8,1
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Gen Z pretty much thinks cars are for grandpas.
No car, no car radio, no radio habit.
Besides, all my best radio stations do free podcasts.
Oh, and by the way, vinyl rocks!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I might not listen to music on the radio at all, but I listen to NPR on the radio on a daily basis. Younger me would never have done so, but I find a lot of their content interesting and/or informative.
Palaces, barricades, threats, meet promises
Is going nowhere.
KFI and WLS will be bigger than ever.
It's not radio that faces a grim future, it's the old fashioned model of commercial radio. You get, maybe, ten minutes of music followed by tons of commercials that repeat the phone number 20 times. But the spectrum will still be useful for new types of over-the-air services. Old radio needs to die. It's nothing but commercials and right-wing hate spew.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I'll echo the sentiment about Clearchannel killing the diversity that used to be available on FM radio. I moved to my current location 20 years ago. At that time there were locally owned stations that played many rock genres (hard/metal, alternative, contemporary, classic), some rap/R&B, top 40, country, talk, sports and two NPR stations - one that did news, the other was the classical/jazz station. Today, the NPR station still exists, and one of the independents, but quite literally everything else is programmed by Clearchannel. It's not only the radio programming that sucks now, but the stations used to be a big part of the live music scene, sponsoring festivals and promoting local bands, and otherwise contributing to the scene in some way. The DJs were local and knew the scene, did appearances at bars and many of were music geeks who really liked the genre they were in.
Fast forward to now, we have one NPR station that does news, the classical/jazz station is gone. The rock stations have been consolidated and homogenized, or converted to play "modern country", aka "country pop". The pop station has less diversity. There are now two sports talk stations that seem to be staffed by the world's most hateful idiot trolls that exist solely to fill the airwaves with useless drek. Local DJs only exist on some streaming stations, no longer on the air. I got a car with satellite radio and got hooked on that -- I like that the stations can be very genre specific and that there's a wide variety of styles to choose from. The DJs know their music and seem to like it. I also have a Spotify subscription and pile of podcasts to choose from. When I can choose between music that I like or talk I want to listen to, FM doesn't stand a chance, but on the other hand the vast number of streaming stations and services like Spotify make music discovery so much better now than when I was growing up -- even the best college stations from 20 years just don't hold a candle to what I have available to me now.
Have you read NAB's response to this?
http://variety.com/2017/music/...
It is so delusional that I almost feel sad for them.
...you're too old. Take a nap, gramps.
That makes it 40K!
My classic pre-WW2 radio is golden again!
67 million millennials listen to radio each week, That's about 90% market penetration. Just because millennials will use other outlets to discover new music doesn't mean that existing outlets aren't used for consuming music. The Internet has become the new "local club/bar" where you'd go each week to hear new bands and genres; but consumption still is in radio.
SONOS, the largest consumer speaker company on the face of the Earth, sees a massive use of streaming FM stations over Internet - meaning if anything, FM radio's reach is increasing into the modern world. It's staying with broadcast but also streaming onto the Internet, so that a given station is no longer limited to a small geographic region but worldwide.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Almost every FM station near me has HD radio with 2 side stations, so you get up to 3 stations of content per station.
There is AM HD put doesn't appear to have been implemented, I couldn't find any hardware or AM HD radio stations.
But, some car manufacturers are still playing the "HD radio is extra" upgrade for their premium levels.
And then HD radio consortium killed off portable HD radios because they don't want people to pirate the clear signal.
I would Love an AM/FM (with HD) on my cell, but If you can't buy it, that's effectively killing it off.
It's easier for me to stream radio onto my cell phone, just so I can hear talk radio in the my car.
Corporations are ruining radio, mostly due to clear channel stranglehold.
But then, not everyone has high speed internet or mobile data across the US too.
The whole situation pisses me off.
My local Alt Rock station (95.5 WBRU), the only one left in the area, is going off air tonight at midnight.
I listen to the local talk station, 6-9am...then the rest of the day, we have a low power 24/7 no commercial blues/jazz station. If I can't pick it up on the FM dial, I just stream it. When I'm out of town, I stream everything from pandora, spotify or MP3's. Commercial FM plays the same songs over and over and over with little to no variety, not to mention the LOUD commercials.
The death of radio has been predicted every decade over the last century. It was supposed to have died when the first talking pictures appeared in the 1920s, then it was the rise of television in the 1950s.. MTV and cable tv was supposed to have killed radio in the 1980s. Than it was the CDs and music sharing sites like napster in the 1990s that was to be radio's demise.
None of these new technologies have managed to disrupt radio, which has proven incredibly resilient to change. I wouldn't bet against the death of radio, given its resilience over the last century. If anything, I think radio as a medium has more to teach other mediums of communication how to survive technological disruption than the other way around.
College radio is still a great way to discover music. Scan the lower end of the FM dial and there's a good chance you'll find a music lover queuing up obscure tracks from eras gone by. If you don't live within range, check out the College/University section of iTunes' built-in Internet Radio menu. KALX (Berkeley), KXLU (Los Angeles), KRPF (Moscow, ID), KEXP (Seattle) are good places to start. Plus, NO COMMERCIALS.
Over the last couple of years, it seems like we've ditched a growing handful of perfectly reliable technologies in favor of a host of closed systems that rely completely on an internet connection. I see a massive vulnerability bubbling to the surface here.
We have people who simply cannot function without some kind of internet access. Without it, most of our industry leading experts become empty headed morons, unwilling or unable to perform whatever they are supposed to be the experts at. Most of our tools and toys are the same way, no network=no workie.
When the power goes out, these people and technologies just shut-down and stare at the ISP hardware until the power comes back on. Most don't even seem to own/include an AM/FM receiver.
This makes me sad, and a little worried. I completely understand how inferior OTA radio is when compared to things like streaming services and fancy internet connected gimmicks and such, but at the end of the day, radio will still be there when the rest of this shit is "searching for network"
When the rest of your options die because they all rely on a single point of failure (network connectivity) talking shows, commercials, and the same 20 artists over and over again will still be there, free of charge.... unless we let it die.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
It's been just less than 100 years since the very first commercial broadcast radio station was licensed - and that one was for news.
There are people alive today who didn't experience broadcast radio in the early years of their lives. It was initially only for those with money.
How can anything that didn't even exist in the early lives of some alive today be even close to being "traditional"? Virtually nothing in the realm of tech is "traditional" yet. It will all change and most of it will change within the lives of even middle-aged folks alive today. The tech revolution, especially electronics tech, is still in its childhood if not infancy. It is growing and changing like a preteen in puberty and is just as unpredictable.
In the beginning we had free, over the air, TV... then cable came along... and now we pay Netflix/Amazon/Disney for their programming...
Radio used to be free, over the air... then XM came along and soon we'll be paying youtube/Pandora/Spotify/Some-music-label to listen to their catalog.
Most people used to drink tap water too, now we pay $2/bottle because it has a picture of a mountain on it or it says it comes from a Tiny island 3000 miles away (Fiji).
I don't know if such stations exists in the U.S. (besides NPR). At least I didn't find any of them when I was in the U.S. the last time.
FM radio is free music of the most commonly popular types of music at very high audio quality. Sure there are commercials, some more than others, but free music. No hassle sourcing downloading, creating playlists...
But, you're telling me that people would rather pay Spotify, XM... Why? Where does all the money for '$5/month for every little thing' come from?
On rare occasions, I'll listen to a podcast in the car. But 98% of the time, if I'm in the car, the radio is on.
"Generation Z, which is projected to account for 40% of all consumers in the U.S. by 2020"
So in 3 years, a generation that's about 10% of the population will somehow be 40%? Are they expecting a mass genocide of Millennials, GenXers and boomers?
Talk about a ridiculous statistic!
The only station near me that doesn't play the same songs over and over is run out of a college. Even they have large time-chunks dedicated to the same music every day. I used to live on the coast and moved to the midwest. It took three years for a song the played every few hours on the coast stations to make it to the midwest stations. So no, overall the market for AM/FM is not, nor should it be "music-discovery".
Other music services can be tailored per-person. They don't rely entirely on pandering to large groups. That inherently gives them a huge advantage to market to anyone that cares about more than the top 40 in a single genre.
Listening to the radio to hear new music is like going to a chain pizza place when you want tacos. Yes, very rarely you may find a place that sells both...but more often that not you'll just get pizza, and even when you do find tacos there's a decent chance that they aren't that good anyway.
Ah yes, all kinds of stuff comes to my mind.
I haven’t listened to traditional radio for some time, usually listen to the 2-ways from CHP, media helos and ENG vans, and the hamsters. In another forum they talked about fewer media aircraft, I remember KCBS SF bay area had a number of aircraft flying around the bay area, I could either tune to their AM station or simply listen to their 450 MHz 2-ways (get more gossip). KCBS did away with all their aircraft, and many other media stations have reduced their staff.
I see a number of comments how ClearChannel monopolized the market, I can easily perceive how their programming is a complete disconnect from the young people. For older people they lose that sense of “connection” with the community of interests. I remember back in the days of a independent country radio station KFAT where the people find all kinds of obscure country songs including vinyl records from way way back at garage sales and flea markets. They also had bumper stickers, “I found it! and it’s hard to find too.” as they didn’t have a lot of RF power. I see many references about NPR, maybe I will tune in (all these 23103s dispatches on CHP I never see). And I usually at work by the time N6NFI TalkNet gets started at 9 am.
So the traditional AM/FM radio will go away? May not make much difference as all cars have the screens for multiple systems so I don’t expect people to find a blank panel or a hole to fill with something else. What gets me is ***every vehicle*** has this big thing between driver and passenger seat. No room to conveniently put a 2-way radio except for some creativity with remote headsets. The last thing I need is another cup holder.
Some years ago an amateur radio operator purchasing a new car requested no AM/FM radio installed. His intention is to have a spot to insert his ham radio gear, people at dealership were baffled. They just didn’t understand how someone can have a car but no AM/FM radio installed. As if they felt the radio is like tires, car cannot run without it.
the Doonsberry cartoon, “radio in car?”
Urban dweller: “no, someone stole it already. Have you thought of getting a life?”
Suburban dweller: “yes, big sucker too. 300 watt Blaupunkt!”
Country dweller: “maybe I do, maybe I don’t. It ain’t none of your business.”
mfwright@batnet.com
Not every cellphone company offers unlimited streaming of music services. Everyone isn't going to sign up for T-Mobile. As an old person, I do hope that generation Z forces Verzion to offer said unlimited streaming at no extra cost. I wouldn't mind listening to radio stations from other countries with Audials Radio app.
Community and college radio continues to introduce people to new music, old music they do not know, and all sorts of cool stuff. Listen to KALX, WWOZ, KFJC, and others. Online, mostly, given how few are left physically available. But as younger people grow older, they'll find less time to futz with their playlists and appreciate the DJs who guide them well.
With all the God(tm) damn commercials I'm surprised it hasn't nearly died out already. Especially AM radio. holy shit it's nearly 50% commercials.
Radio certainly still has its place.
- College Radio is a great way to find out new music. Depending on the college radio program, most of the shows showcase music that's far more creative than your typical radio station
- Multicultural radio. Connects the local ethnic communities and you find out about various things happening to the community
- News radio: If you're stuck in traffic, you'd catch up on the daily news in the car. You'd also get live traffic report on accidents on the road. No need to use your cell phone or launch any app while driving.
- Sports Radio - catch up on the game broadcasts for those who prefer things live but can't get home early enough because you'd need to work late that day.
I grew up with the AOR top-down radio system (the 80's). I went to school in a college town. The station owners broke a song there...if it took off, it went to NYC. I was stuck with the same playlist for months at a time....it sucked. Once it was played out in Boston, it was "a NEW SONG" in the NYC market....you never heard anything truly new in NYC. We once tried to get a band to play our school. We were told by the band manager that even though we could afford them, and they wanted to play our school, the stadium owner and the radio station would then blackball them in the market for playing our school, as school concerts didn't make money for the machine. My 20 year old just got a car. Her concerns were a) does it have Aux In, and b) is it a manual ? So much for millennialls all hating cars... AD2P is now in just about every car sold in the US, so.... My kids don't radio at all. Period. Spotify and other things downloaded to the phone, yes. I'm pretty sure my tech savvy 17 year old doesn't know how to use the car's radio part. I still listen to NPR cause I'm an old guy and liberal, but beyond that and one classical station, I use occasional satellite radio (and their playlists have been taken over by the same leisure suit c-suckers that killed FM radio) and Spotify...the family plan gets me my old stuff AND a stream of new stuff...and zero commercials. Hey Kids ! ... do you know why some 80's music is called "New Music"...it is because in this era of AOR music embargo, a few small stations, not in the usual lineup, dared to play "New Music". Some of us even put up antennas to get that tiny station, usually not a full power major market transmitter (WLIR). This truly was a parallel universe, and the AOR sh!the@ds fought it off as long as they could, kinda like Cable is fighting streaming now.
Yes, it was that bad....and no, I have no sympathy for radio at this point. We won't even get into how horribly compressed and augmented FM radio was back in the day, when it CAN sound about as good as a CD...but never did due to station greed. I once bought an FM tuner...and could never listen to a few stations ever again, once I heard how bad the full quieting signal truly was.
Radio is still shooting its own feet. Digital is a great idea, but the sidebands detract from the main signal. The solution is to go fully digital, but that won't happen. A digital signal only works near the transmitters, and many dual mode radios "skip" when going from the digital source back to the analog source. Corporate greed then says "hey, we need 40 streams on this signal" so, like a teen who wanted every single song on one CD, they all sound like crap.....
When, the basic FM analog signal can be almost full CD quality....
Nope, when it dies, it will be suicide, and we won't mourn.
were some of the radio programs that were broadcast when I was a kid. I loved the Green Hornet and The Shadow Knows. That was in the last 40's and early 50's. Then came BW TV and all the movies and cliff hangers that were shown on the silver screen in the 1930's started appearing on the Tube. I loved Buck Rogers and his battles against Ming the Merciless as he flew through space with his spaceship making weird sounds while sparks fell from his exhaust as smoke was rising from it. In the late 50's through the 60's it was all Top 40 and Wolfman Jack, from of XERF-AM at Ciudad Acuña in Mexico.
I'm 76. Sometime about 20-25 years ago I stopped listening to radio. About 15-20 years ago I stopped listening to TV. It's all digital now.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
Music radio (as opposed to talk/news radio) gave up on innovating altogether back in the 20th century. I blame ClearChannel (now known as iHeartMedia) and its ilk for that.
Back in the day - which is to say "the 1960's and 70's" - radio programming was mostly done by people who actually cared about music. Program Directors, as they were called, actively searched for new and interesting artists to whom they could expose their audiences. Formats became increasingly fluid, mixing genres and styles, and playlists often included thousands of songs. And albums - because progressive radio stations would sometimes play entire album sides. The three-minute rule was largely abandoned, as artists tackled longer-form compositions. It really was a golden age for music.
Then the MBAs took over, and radio went straight into the toilet.
Instead of trying to broaden their appeal, radio stations narrowed the audiences they catered to. No more mixing rock and country and jazz on a single playlist. You wanted rock, you had to listen to a rock station. You wanted country, you had to switch to a country station. And, if you wanted jazz - well jazz didn't attract sponsors, so, outside of urban markets, you were pretty much s.o.l. You could find R&B, though, in the form of soul stations, until disco took over and soul pretty much vanished overnight. Radio became, in a word, "balkanized": hopelessly divided into ever-smaller audience segments, each being fed a fast-dwindling playlist of hits.
Which takes us to "market research", the new payola, where record labels pay for the privilege of having tracks they select "tested" for audiences - by being played at the top of the hour, every hour, for however long the label chooses to keep paying for "research".
Is it any wonder that audiences - especially milennial audiences - have chosen to abandon in droves this profoundly corrupt, accounting-driven music distribution model in favor of personally-customizable streaming services, where they get to pick their own playlists, instead of having MBAs drive bought-and-paid-for playlists down their throats?
Oh, and did I mention the endless commercials ... ?
Check out my novel.
Way way way back even before Jerry (6400), there was this article from the magazine Radio Age, July 1924, which I always find an interesting read:
CONGRESS has adjourned without acting either way on pending radio legislation, according to the news dispatches from Washington.
Unless a special session is called, which does not seem likely at this time, radio will be untouched by legal attachments until next year, at least.
The two most important measures which were shelved by the adjournment of the well-meaning but unusually deliberative governmental bodies are the White Bill and the Dill Bill. The first proposes to establish governmental control over radio broadcasting, reception and perhaps the industry eventually. This bill, while not viciously attacked, did not go through because some representatives of the people wanted to know just why such a young and untried industry as radio should suffer the bonds of law so soon. Accordingly, it is unlikely that the White Bill will ever become a law -- so the fans may rest assured they will not be hindered for some time to come in that respect.
The Dill Bill is more far reaching in its scope. It is liberal and fair-minded. It asks that the copyright laws be amended so that copyrighted music can be broadcast without the payment of levies to the music publishers. Although this bill has been opposed at every step by huge organizations and moneyed interests, as well as several prominent music publishers, it was about to be passed with a fair majority when Congress adjourned.
There is still hope for the Dill Bill, then, and we hope that when it finally reaches the President's desk it will represent the result of a fair compromise between the broadcasters and the music publishers, in the interests of the fan who listens to broadcast music and helps the sale of the published article by buying the pieces he likes best.
Government legislation, we believe, appears to be the only means yet suggested which offers any kind of a solution to the bitter enmity between the broadcasters and the so-called music "trust."
Radio's recent jump to prominence in official circles such as Congress is only one indication of its growing importance. Big capital interests, legislators and public spirited citizens are realizing more and more that radio will some day control the destinies of our nation; and accordingly they are setting out to prevent its too sudden growth to an unwieldy influence. Quick government control, the legislators aver, will prevent radio from becoming a menace instead of the help and pleasure it should be.
In a measure these radio-legislators are right. Something must be done to prevent the air from becoming a bedlam of tangled wave lengths. Something must be done to prevent the ether from being clogged with propaganda and useless stuff that will discourage interest in the world's latest miracle.
If legislation works along those lines, it will be beneficial. But if it takes a political trend, this country will see a united uprising of righteously aroused fans -- lovers and promoters of the good in radio.
mfwright@batnet.com
Interesting comment, I looked up that station, found this http://www.modestoradiomuseum....
mfwright@batnet.com
we'd get all kinds of stars to read creimer ebooks all day long
A LOT of disgusted people are dropping cable and getting TV via airwaves. The same thing for radio. Not everyone has money for a smart phone either. They enjoy radio. Neither one of them are going anywhere soon.
AM radio is either sports or politics or religious bullshit when it is not lame advertising
shortwave radio is either foreign broadcasts in spanish, french or arabic and what is in english is either the tinfoil asshat alex jones peddling his snakeoil products or religious nuts panhandling money, shortwave is basically a circus of carpetbaggers either conspiracy nuts, religious nuts or a mixture of both religious & conspiracy lunacy,
FM radio is more of the same, music of various types with annoying commercials, or religious nuts
people are tired of being pandered to with bullshit,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I think radio is fine, my issue is many stations try and re invent themselves too often. Changing formats, personnel and selling way to much in ads that turn people off. My advice is shrink your staff lower costs and reduce advertising. Maybe even consider a no DJ format because let's be honest who cares anymore a DJ talking as well as advertisements.
I listened to a lot of Sports talk radio like ESPN. As time has gone on, the level of advertisement is now just about 50 percent. Coupled with boring hosts who all talk abtout the same thing, with the exception of goofball Dan LeBetard, there is about ten minutes of content per day.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Options may suck, but still the only thing that reaches many rural and mountain areas other than satellite. Talk of re-purposing AM/FM spectrum in US is horseshit.
This is coming out of the country of "we're so big, we have to drive everything", and of "we're so big, we have cell phone coverage nearly nowhere"?
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Only liberals are concerned, not conservatives. Libs lost the war over talk radio. The garbage that passes for music us a joke.
Look him up. You will love it