Can Commercial Radio Survive?

With the advent of Satellite subscription radio, iPods and Mp3 players, can commercial radio continue to be as popular as it was in past decades?  According to Barron’s Magazine, commercial radio listenership is at a 27-year low and is projected to go even lower with media mega-corporations losing money for the first time in decades.

What happened?  The old wireless radio medium may be going digital, but radio stations playing music are getting worse, relying on too many advertisements between songs.  Beyond that, corporate-owned radio stations won’t play anything slightly obscure or different. Their play-lists always seem to rotate the latest crap which is already overplayed in dizzying repetition. 

By removing the limit on the number of stations a single entity can own, we have begun to unravel the integrity of commercial radio.  Corporations like “Clear Channel” and “Infinity” have now purchased hundreds of radio stations across the country. You could literally fly to 15 major cities during a given week and hear the exact same playlists, jingles, and promotions. That familiar local “town feeling” or regional identity no longer exists.  In order to remain profitable, these corporations have cut on-air staffs in favor of automation and syndication. The name “Clear Channel” has become synonymous with everything that is wrong with commercial radio: lack of diversity, repetitious music, boring programming, endless commercials, and censorship.

Another downfall to commercial radio came with the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, a United States FCC regulation requiring broadcast licensees to present controversial issues of public importance in a manner deemed by the FCC to be honest, equitable and balanced.  The doctrine has since been withdrawn by the FCC resulting in media outlets delivering questionable and misguided “truths” to the general public.  We no longer have any oversight regarding the way “media pundits” use the airwaves.  We have all witnessed the results: an extremely partisan, distorted version of the facts. 

Satellite radio (XM, and Sirius) is a digital radio signal that is broadcast by a communications satellite, which covers a much wider geographical range than terrestrial radio signals do.  Satellite radio, along with the advent of the immensely popular “iPod”, offers a meaningful alternative to ground-based radio services.  As of February, 2008, XM claimed over 9 million subscribers, while Sirius claimed 7.6 million.  XM radio, alone offers more than 170 channels, ranging from alternative rock, religion, new and classic country, big band, comedy, conservative and liberal talk, deep-track classic rock, Hip-Hop, to Jazz and Blues and more. 

I believe the only way to “save” commercial radio is to go back to the good ol’ days…when one person (or business) could own only one AM and one FM station.  Those were the days when true competition made the programming more adventurous and exciting; where you knew you’d hear your favorite “afternoon-commute” disc jockey and not a pre-recorded voice track.  You could call a station, speak to the DJ, request a song and actually hear it!!  The time (and need) has come for us to break-up the mega broadcast corporations and return radio to an art, not a business.