For many years this publication was the “bible” of the industry. This was how radio folks found and filled jobs for many years.
Category Archives: Radio
I wanna be a DJ or a cowboy
You know how when you cut down the rain forest you destroy the natural habitat of some exotic wild animals and they become extinct? Say goodbye the Spotted American DJ. It’s all there in an excellent (and depressing) story by Clay Barbour in The Virginian-Pilot:
10 companies control two-thirds of the country’s listeners and ad revenue; two of them – Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting – own more than 40 percent of all stations.
Edison Research found that as many as 75 percent of 12- to 24-year-olds were listening to online radio, with nearly half of them using their phones to do so while in the car. Essentially, if you are younger than a certain age, you don’t listen to terrestrial radio anymore.
Many of you have ready my nostalgic ramblings about my dozen years as a small town radio DJ in the 70s. (sigh) Really glad I got to ride the range before all the media sod busters arrived.
Changing listening habits
“A new Edison research study warns that among the six most common places where listeners consume audio media, broadcast radio dominates in just two of them (in car, at home); is tied with Internet radio for two (at work, on public transportation); and is defeated by Internet radio in two (while working out, while walking around). Another red flag in the study for broadcasters is that 50 percent of at-work listeners who listen to Internet-radio-only stations/services (that is, stations/services that don’t broadcast on FM/AM) have replaced their FM/AM listening time with Internet-radio-only stations/services.”
“According to Triton Digital, at any given moment among online listeners (M-F 6am-8pm), Pandora has more than twice the audience of all of the radio stations owned by Clear Channel, CBS, Cumulus, Entercom and the next seven broadcasting companies combined.”
— All Things Digital
A quest to save AM radio
Most of my on-air time for the dozen years (1972-82) I worked at my hometown radio station was on the AM station. In the 60s (?) the station sold (at cost?) “FM converters” because so few cars had FM receivers. This NY Times story tells the tale:
“In 1978 half of all radio listening was on the AM dial. By 2011 AM listenership had fallen to 15 percent, or an average of 3.1 million people, according to a survey by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, a private investment firm. While the number of FM listeners has declined, too, they still averaged 18 million in 2011. (The figures are averages based on measuring listeners every 15 minutes.)”
“In 1970 AM accounted for 63 percent of broadcast radio stations, but now it accounts for 21 percent, or 4,900 outlets, according to Arbitron. FM accounts for 44 percent, or 10,200 stations. About 35 percent of stations stream content online.”
“Nearly all English-language AM stations have given up playing music, and even a third of the 30 Major League Baseball teams now broadcast on FM. AM, however, remains the realm of conservative talk radio, including roughly 80 percent of the 600 radio stations that carry Rush Limbaugh.”
Asking the right questions
“…the implicit assumption is that radio’s past must be sustained into the future, and with a few tweaks here and there we can dial up our relevance […] and dial down our risk. This is equivalent to the consumer products company that asks “how can we make a new product that we can successfully sell?” – as long as that product is envisioned, made, and sold to fit with all the previous products the company has sold in the past.” — Mark Ramsey
Heavy snow knocked out power to our house yesterday so as darkness fell, I built a fire, turned on some solar LED lamps and dug out a transistor radio. I didn’t sample a lot of stations but the ones I listened too sounded… quaint?
I probably haven’t listened to a full hour of “terrestrial radio” in the last 5 years so what I heard felt strange in my ears. The phony DJ voices; snatches of Alice Cooper’s syndicated show (shudder)… but the most jarring was the lack of control over my experience. Don’t like a song? Well, tough shit, just gotta wait till it’s over and hope you like the next one better.
I’m going to take it on faith there are radio stations (somewhere) breaking new ground and reinventing themselves for the new media world in which they find themselves. If you know of one, drop a link (or just the call letters) in the comments.