For decades, articles, posts, and comments about the Death of Radio flourished – and not without good reasons.
Here’s a quick and easy comparison.
In 1965, Stan Freburg produced a series of spectacular spots for Radio. The idea was to let advertisers know that, despite the rapidly growing popularity of TV, Radio still delivered “150 million people”. The message was obvious and Freberg’s campaign was beyond successful. Where I worked(WIBR/Baton Rouge), listeners would call requesting we play ‘em! Freberg went on to make a very comfy career writing these superbly entertaining radio/TV commercials and even a couple of Top 40 hits satirizing currently popular tunes. When I interviewed him in DC, he told me how his commercial work was so powerful, that the client company would often fire him because the commercials produced results beyond expectations. For the advertisers, sales spiked so well “they said they didn’t need me anymore!”
I haven’t seen or heard creative, seriously entertaining commercials on radio, TV, or Cable since…Budweiser’s Super Bowl ads!
Existing “Legacy” media cannot satisfy thirsty, inquiring minds so people seek out a better place. This explains why Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson have a massive viewership that conventional media will never see…Half of today’s population gets at least some of their news from social media because, among other things, corporate media is so deficient in thought, creativity - and integrity.
Conventional media has also lost its ability to deliver modern breaking news. Sudden significant events like the Trump rally shooting and the Iranian attack on Israel had instant minute-by-minute coverage on X. Conventional media was hours behind, and could just repeat what X readers already knew. One might say that X is to Big Media what Amazon is to Sears.
The decline has been severe. In the United States, 3,000 newspapers have closed since 2005 and ad revenue dropped from US$49 billion to US$10 billion in 2022. Canada’s Nordstar (which publishes the Toronto Star) closed a bunch of newspapers in 2023 and cut more than 600 jobs. Television networks like CNN (rumored to be For Sale) are fighting over the age 67 to 71 group—an audience that shrinks by the hour.
Arguably, Nov. 5 was a day of reckoning for the media. More than defeated, many outlets were humiliated by a social media brigade armed with memes about squirrels and garbage trucks. Musk tweeted, “X won. The mainstream media lost!”
Like the legendary Humpty Dumpty, there has been a great fall. And nothing can put it back together again.
Last summer, the National Association of Broadcasters was running ads lobbying listeners to Call Your Representative to pass a bill requiring AM radios in new cars.
iHeart (one of my former employers) owns 860 stations in 160 markets in the United States. In what has been cynically (but accurately) become an annual tradition, the “largest radio employer”, cut between 500-800 jobs across the country right before Christmas.
Some call the layoffs iHeart’s “Merry Christmas cuts.” One former employee called them “further proof that the company is unfit to hold a broadcast license. When you tear apart the very thing that made your station successful, you truly have no clue what you are doing.”
“Not to be overly dramatic,” said one industry observer, “But we appear to be witnessing a sad historic moment in the devaluation of local radio.”
Just as mega-broadcasters like iHeart and Cumulus push for a law to ensure AM is included in vehicles because “AM provides important local news coverage during emergencies,” iHeart dismantled one of the best local news departments in the industry KFI/LA, and will instead rely on their syndicated “24/7 News” operation to provide local newscasts…out of Phoenix.”
Instead of developing talent, iHeart CEO Bob Pittman and his team have continued to cut from the local markets, leaving listeners no reason to stay and plenty of reasons to search out other entertainment sources. The result: fewer listeners, lowered ad rates, and a declining industry. ( LA Daily News)
The most often repeated solution to “iHeartless legendary cold-blooded Christmas firings is to fire Pittman, sell his $14M plane and hire back the Talent that made the Company and pays the execs sky-high, 7-figure salaries and bennies.”
If Pittman and his ilk wanted to increase radio’s fortunes, they would put the money locally where talent and creativity would allow the industry to thrive. That they do not proves that there is no reason to save iHeart and competitors like Audacy. Let them die a well-deserved death in bankruptcy and allow local owners back into the game. Then and only then will radio start to come back from the death spiral. BTW, George Soros recently purchased Audacy with approximately 220 radio in 40 markets across the country. Gee…I wonder that he’ll do with them!?)
“Radio can be successful again. But it won’t happen until the people who destroyed radio are no longer running things.” (Richard Wagoner, LA Daily News)
Retirement may have come right on time! But I’d be tempted to jump back in tomorrow – just not with any of my former bosses!
Thanks for reading this far.
BW
Here are a couple Rare Sunday Specials:
Courtesy of BWW Reader, Charles Menut: One Evening in NYC, 1996
And speaking of Special Talent, here’s something you might missed. Enjoy!
In your assessment, how much of the decline in radio is because radio is largely "push media" and its competitors are now "pull media"?
I think radio competed favorably with TV because they're each essentially playing the same game: push media. It's similar to how neither radio nor TV killed print; they're all push media, offering different ways of accessing it.
The modern pull-media competitors, however, seem to be playing a drastically different game. All push media categories are declining, no?
Having been a radio station chief engineer from the mid 70s to the mid 80s, all broadcasting will almost inevitably become virtual, with computers in the rack next to the transmitter with Internet and LTE connections replacing control rooms with DJs in them. All of the talent will work from their laptops with headsets, wherever they want. AI will negate the need for most "talent" with relate lines delivered along with playlists from the cloud. Television will become a highly refined Max Headroom operation with expert localization provided by advertising sales staffs.