Will Radio Get Worse Before it Gets Better?

[chevdev]

Will Radio get worse before it gets better? It depends on who you ask! For the conglomerates looking to make as much money as they can off Radio, it is going to get worse. But for those of us who truly enjoy the art of Radio, and reaching the community, it will "flourish" because we are not going to play what is going to be most popular to keep listeners. We are going to utilize effective personalities to keep the audience engaged, informed, and entertained. That's why I'm glad that after 13+ years in Radio that the local community Radio act was passed! It gives us the opportunity to own and program meaningful content and communities will have a voice for good radio, and not just mega companies playing whats popular to make a buck.

[countryboy]

An on air talent in a city gets alot of listeners,

I travel a lot. I listen to radio in a lot of cities. Every place I go, the stations have local air talent. Name a Top 100 market where there are no local DJs at all. Even places like Lincoln Nebraska and Bakersfield CA have local talent. I'm here to tell you there are a whole lot more local DJs than there is demand from the public. Why do you think the people are using platforms with NO talent at all. Maybe they're trying to tell you something. It's not always about saving money. Sometimes it's about giving the people what they want. They don't always want some DJ talking.

[danno]

An on air talent in a city gets alot of listeners,

I travel a lot. I listen to radio in a lot of cities. Every place I go, the stations have local air talent. Name a Top 100 market where there are no local DJs at all. Even places like Lincoln Nebraska and Bakersfield CA have local talent. I'm here to tell you there are a whole lot more local DJs than there is demand from the public. Why do you think the people are using platforms with NO talent at all. Maybe they're trying to tell you something. It's not always about saving money. Sometimes it's about giving the people what they want. They don't always want some DJ talking.

Hey Pal its ALWAYS ABOUT THE MONEY, You and THEY are using that as an Excuse to Go-Cheap. WHY doesn't TV and Movies go without People and just show video's of Animals and Nature and Eliminate People? Put an empty desk on The Tonight Show and run that for an hour? Where's your "So-Called" Evidence/Research that states that people want Radio without Air Personalities, and thats giving the people what they want? i think its what YOU want. You have trashed Air-Talent over the past few weeks, you sound like a Frustrated DJ wannabe, Go Away Moron.

[countryboy]

Where's your "So-Called" Evidence/Research that states that people want Radio without Air Personalities, and thats giving the people what they want?

As I said earlier in my post, name one Top 100 market where there are no on-air personalities. Name one. Go ahead. Lots of on-air people. Every day, I read about new people getting hired at stations big and small. How are all those on-air people helping radio against the all the new media? Answer me that.

Meanwhile, Sirius just fired all on-air talent from 50s and 90s channel. That's a service where users pay for the programming. You're not going to get personalities on satellite any more.

[steveleigh]

Online streams and wifi aren't the enemy of radio. Deregulation and cheap automation systems have been. Everything that was unique about radio has been eliminated. Owners overpaid and discarded air staffs. All the while thinking they just needed to play music and sell more commercials to pay the debt load with which they had become overburdened. Now the same product is available in a myriad of media platforms with even deeper playlists, lower overhead and less staff. What is radio to do? I'm not sure it can currently overcome. The primary reason being that, in most cases, there's no farm league for up-and-coming talent. There are no overnight gigs in Market 400 for one to groom one's skills. The mystique of someone like Wolfman Jack that many of us in radio grew up listening to is gone. Where are the mentors? The big guys need to strip away their desire to consolidate ad nauseam. They need ditch the centralized voice-tracking idea and embrace the idea that localization is the only way the industry will succeed. Without legit localization, I fear newspaper may outlast radio. (now, good luck getting any of the major players to adopt anything like that. to actually make a great local product).

[danno]

Where's your "So-Called" Evidence/Research that states that people want Radio without Air Personalities, and thats giving the people what they want?

As I said earlier in my post, name one Top 100 market where there are no on-air personalities. Name one. Go ahead. Lots of on-air people. Every day, I read about new people getting hired at stations big and small. How are all those on-air people helping radio against the all the new media? Answer me that.

OK, if a station in a Top-100 market is running the "Jack" format for instance, there are no Air-Personalities, and there are several "Jack Stations" in the Top 100 Markets, those stations do not seem to become Big Players in the markets they are in.. i Will say this, i would rather listen to No One on the air than listen to a Card Reading Robot on the air, No, Radio has found several OTHER ways to committ Suicide besides No Talent Liner Card Jocks, and there isn't enough time to chronicle them all here. LOCALISM,RELATABILITY,ENTERTAINING THE AUDIENCE would be a Good Place to start.

Meanwhile, Sirius just fired all on-air talent from 50s and 90s channel. That's a service where users pay for the programming. You're not going to get personalities on satellite any more.

i doubt if they're going to fire Howard Stern, OK... i subscribe to sirius/xm and i love being able to hear Cousin Brucie on the 60's channel.. i don't listen to All the channels(who can?) but Brucie is an Exception,My Understanding is the cuts will be on the 50's channel (they only had 1 guy as a jock on that channel 24/7! anyway) and they will eliminate one other one from another channel, out of over 100 channels i wouldn't call that making a Huge Cut.

[countryboy]

There are a grand total of 50 Jack stations in the entire country. Out of 14,000 stations, 50 are Jack. This is not a significant issue. My point is the vast majority of stations have live local personalities. Once again name one Top 100 market where ALL the stations are jock-less. If the audience wants a radio station with live and local personalities in Jack markets, they exist. Based on what you say, the stations with live & local jocks should be beating the jock-less stations, and the fact is they aren't. Jack is actually beating lots of live & local stations in markets like LA, Buffalo, and Nashville. How can that be? Stations with liner card readers are beating stations with personalities. How can that be? The audience has a choice. In many markets they choose no live & local personalities. Given the choice between OTA radio with live personalities, and automated jock-less services like Pandora, 70 million people go with Pandora. Why? Obviously not everyone wants the same kind of radio you want.

[kendallweaver]

Amazing that it's now been 5 years since I wrote this post. The replies have been thoughtful and appreciated. All I can say now is.. that I stand by what I said in the initial post. I'm still in radio, in a strong radio town, and I enjoy what I do for a living. But as a whole, the industry just plain employs fewer people than it once did, and we all wear more hats.
As for the next 5 years.. I will at least say that radio seems to have "leveled off." The myriad of streams available online have not seemed to provide much in the way of job opportunities for Air Talent, but perhaps that will still happen down the road.
The good news is that if you're like me and need your creative "fix," there are more opportunities than ever. Wanna write a book? Do it. I did. It can be on Amazon for sale in a heartbeat, for little or no cost. Itching to make that independent film? I'm doing it now, with a couple of good DSLR camera's that shoot better video than most Hollywood directors had available just a few years ago. If you are a creative person, you can create your art and distribute it on your own, and not wait for publishers, film producers, or "The Man" to give you permission. A quality podcast show can be created with a very inexpensive mic and recorder setup and delivered to the masses. Now the trick is to actually create it, market it, and well, prove yourself good at what you do.
Feel free to find me on Facebook. That's Kendall Weaver in Juneau Alaska, where radio is surprisingly strong and the views are like nothing you've ever seen. For now, I gotta run.. I have a remote to do...