Breaking News: RIP Terrestrial Radio - News Paper

Still being a radio geek at heart (not to be confused with I-Heart Radio), I read a number of online radio trade websites. Yes, I know. This is a cry for help. But invariably these sites will point out how robust terrestrial radio is when the facts would suggest otherwise. They’ll boast that more people listen to radio than make waffles, stuff like that.

And it has seemed to me over the last ten years that terrestrial radio is Nero fiddling while Rome goes up in smoke.

Now a new study has come out, published by the head of New York University’s Steinhart Music Program, that basically says terrestrial radio should look into hospice care. Here are some of its points:

Generation Z (people born after ALMOST PERFECT premiered in 1995) account for 40% of all consumers and they could give a shit about traditional media. They’ve been brought up in a digital world.

The big attraction for young people gravitating to radio was to discover new music. Between 2005-2016 50% of the teen audience has abandoned terrestrial radio. They now find their new tunes on YouTube, Spotify, and Pandora.

“Hey, Nero, can you play ‘Love in Bloom’?”

By 2020, 75% of new cars will be connected to digital services. So much for terrestrial radio’s choke hold of the dashboard. It’ll be just as easy to get my podcast as it is to get a major heritage radio station that cost I-Heart or Cumulus $40 million to buy. Probably more people listen to me now than KABC Los Angeles.

“Smart speakers” like Alexa and Amazon Echo don’t have AM/FM antennas. Neither do smart phones.

Record labels prefer to offer their new product to digital services because they pay royalties whereas terrestrial radio doesn’t. At one time record labels needed radio to break hits. Not anymore. So forget the loss of listeners – there goes the payola.

These are just some of the studies salient points. (The whole report is 30 pages.)  I would also add that these mega companies that own the vast majority of the terrestrial radio stations in the United States have mortgaged their future by bombarding the listener with commercials and driven them away due to cost-cutting measures like replacing local programming with syndicated fare.

So what can terrestrial radio do to at least stem the tide? The answer is simple but they won’t do it. Provide better programming. Fill their airwaves with local personalities. If there’s somebody really funny and the only way to hear him is to tune to the FM station he’s on, you will. If the only place you can go to hear a lively discussion on your city’s politics is the local AM station at the top of the dial that’s where you’ll go. Unless, in either case, there are 25 minutes of commercials an hour.

But this takes money. This takes commitment. This takes the genuine desire to serve the public you were entrusted to serve. So it will never happen. What little funds these conglomerates spend will be on bow rosin and the sheet music to “Fiddler on the Roof.”

from By Ken Levine http://ift.tt/2h9CAat
Breaking News: RIP Terrestrial Radio - News Paper