Back to the...50's?

So, this is a very long post, I hope it makes up for not posting this weekend as it was hectic, full of finals and documentary shoots. I also hope this makes up for the chance that I don't update too often this week as I try to enjoy my spring break.

Anyway, it has been increasingly tough for all media during this era of convergence. TV is losing ratings to VoD and the Internet. Newspapers are closing all over the country due to the high costs of ink and paper and losing revenue from classified ads to websites like Craigslist. Radio is losing ratings to IPods and other portable devices. Of the listed media, one medium was already secondary to another.

Back in the 1950s, when television took over as the main source of entertainment in the home, radios were banished from their spot in the living room to the bedroom. Television was the new king of the house, but it didn’t make radio obsolete. They lost, and never regained, a large chunk of their ratings due to the move to TV. Instead of trying to fight the future, radio adopted new formats, including the Top 40 format and various music genre formats, for those who didn’t know, radio wasn’t a primarily music device until the 1960s (which can explain the rapid expansion of Rock and the British Invasion, but that’s a story for a different time).

With another force threatening to take away its audience, what is radio to do? Well, the obvious answer is to go back to the 1950s. Yes, I mean this sarcastically due to the nature in which stations are reverting to the past, but I also mean this strategically to suggest it is time to go back to that time period as a way to re-discuss what its strengths and weaknesses are.

For all of the cynics out there, yes, radio has strengths. For one, there are some radio formats that just don’t translate to video too well. Talk radio, though it can be translated into a rather dry TV format, and the shock-jock formats still work extremely well. Ratings in Myrtle Beach, S.C. proved the talk radio station WRNN-FM 99.5 racked up the highest ratings in the autumn, with a 9.5-estimated share. Many television shows are lucky to pull in a 9.5, let alone an entire station. As for the “radio jokesters,” the Paul and Young Ron show in South Florida repeatedly tops the ratings for both of the stations it is feature on, and has just recently been added to the line-up of a third. They are no Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony, but the price tag that dragged them from terrestrial to satellite radio should be proof enough of the power of the shock-jock.

Moving from Music

Let me be one of the first to say that I do not want radio to move away from music. I for one, when I am in the car, love to turn on the local college station or public broadcasting station. It is generally these stations that you find great non-mainstream music, not trying to knock mainstream or try to sound cool that I only listen to underground (there is no such thing as underground unless you are still playing basement shows). The majority of the artists I have started listening to in the past 5 years has been because of rather because of being part of a college radio station to listening to one or NPR. Also, I will skip over a station if there is a talk show and no music.

With that said, I hope I have established my love for music and hearing new things on the radio, because this next part is going to be rough for me to say. Radio needs to start moving away from music. It doesn’t pull in the ratings that it used to, which means they should still have music, but not focus on it as much. Sure they will lose listeners like me, but we are the music snobs at parties that nobody wants to talk to anyway because all we do is degrade them for being a sheep. Losing that audience wouldn’t necessarily be bad. But all jokes aside, chances are we rarely listen anyway and usually listen to our IPods. The few times we do listen might happen to be the few times the station has music on.

As for the NPRs and the college radio stations who don’t get funding based on audience ratings (NPR does rely on audience contributions though), even they might eventually have to, but the time isn’t necessarily as pressing as it is for commercial radio. With the music industry taking huge loses thanks to the Internet, they have become less likely to take risks, expect commercial music to start to become more stale than it already is (hard to imagine, I know). That negatively impacts the stations as they will eventually have an even less of a variety from them, which the more I think about may be a good thing, might force stations to look more independent. Also, with the record industry taking such hits, they are trying to milk money from anything, including those who advertise them. If this law makes it through, it didn’t the first time, every station will have to pay royalties on any music they play, regardless of the station being for or non-profit. The simple fact this is the second time this law has been put forth, shows that this is a growing concern.

Becoming the 1950s

As radio moves its presence online, many have decided to do what the networks did in the 1950s. When TV was invented they decided to move their shows to television. Regent owns 60 stations in the U.S. and,

“Each of Regent's radio station web sites will feature its own individually-branded Internet television channel capable of providing listeners and Internet visitors with access to originally produced or syndicated video content and programming.”

First off, this may prove to be a bad investment as when Radio networks first moved from radio to TV, they generally had no idea what they were doing and it took them almost a decade to figure it out. Secondly, TV is not figuring out how to move from regular TV to Internet TV. If it is just going to be video content, and not interactive content, then radio stations are going to paint themselves as being consistently a transition behind. Finally, what is the purpose of the video product, to enhance their radio product or to create a new product? If it is to enhance very few shows have gotten away with transitioning from radio to television so how do they expect to transition an entire line-up to TV and be successful? If they are going to create a new product with it, then they leave the realm of radio and thus forfeit moving radio forward.

But what do I know; I am just a grad student? Professionals run the radio industry. I guess that is a scary thought when considering professionals run the record industry as well. We have all seen what professionals do when they don’t get their way; they act like three-year-olds and scream, kick, and lash out at those who provide for them (the audience). Let’s hope radio professionals are a bit more mature, embrace new technology, and find a way to make it work for them instead of fighting and losing to it.