Guest Blog by Charlie Warner: Is Radio Dead?

Published: August 20, 2007 at 01:17 PM GMT
Last Updated: October 10, 2007 at 01:17 PM GMT

By Charlie Warner

Media guru and blogger Shelly Palmer on his Media 3.0 website posted a blog entry titled “When Will Radio Die?” in which he elaborated on the challenges the terrestrial radio industry faces. In keeping with his advertising background, the headline was much more provocative than the body of his blog and was misleading. Palmer did not predict the demise of terrestrial radio, but merely listed its many challenges.

Palmer also listed terrestrial radio’s strengths for the near-term future: simplicity, ubiquity, and inertia. But he left out a big near-term strength, localism. Recently, Jack Myers interviewed CBS Radio’s new CEO, Dan Mason on JackMyers.com. Myers, who does some of the best interviewing in the media, talked to Mason who said, “Every radio station can become a TV station.” “Radio is the most powerful local medium there is,” Mason elaborated. “It has the ability to call people to action with a swiftness no other medium can claim. Announcers can reach out and touch people. Too often, the personality aspects of radio get lost. WCBS-FM is a station that blatantly and passionately was a part of New York City . That’s what radio needs to do in every market.”

Hooray for Mason! It’s about time a corporate radio executive got it right and reversed the all-vanilla corporate radio (all dumb, all the time) that Mason’s predecessors at CBS Radio instituted and that Clear Channel perfected. Clear Channel is selling off most of its radio stations because, as a top industry consultant told me, “Clear Channel couldn’t organize a two-car funeral procession.”

As I wrote in a blog last year, the corporate radio format, Jack FM, that failed at WCBS-FM before Mason switched it back to its oldies format, was a real turkey. Any format that wanted to appeal to adults and featured “No Underwear Tuesdays” and no announcers was doomed in New York . I’m listening to WCBS-FM’s live webcast as I’m writing this and it sounds great—like it did when Herb McCord switched it from the taped “Love Sounds” automated format in 1968 to all-hit radio and when Nancy Widman ran it as an oldies station in the late 1980s. At one time WCBS-FM was number-one In New York in the 25-54 demo.

Mason predicts that with the ability to do webcasts and webisodes, radio stations can become TV stations—at least on the Web. I think this is a stretch, but if terrestrial radio emphasizes local content and is fun to listen to, it will continue to survive and be profitable.

What about satellite radio? I don’t think the FCC will approve the merger between Sirius and XM Satellite Radio despite Mel Karmazin’s, Sirius’ CEO, attempts to placate the FCC. Too much bad blood there. The Republican-dominated FCC has been overly concerned with indecency in the past four years, so why would it enable Howard Stern and XM’s and Sirius’ X-rated comedy channels to continue, especially now that Internet radio is available on table-top receivers.

The NY Times’ David Pogue wrote a column on August 9, titled “Internet Radio Made Easier,” that gave details about Internet radio receivers that use Wi-Fi technology to make the hundred of thousands of Internet radio websites, such as Pandora.com, easier to use by not tying them down to a computer. Internet radio makes everyone a broadcaster and provides listeners with virtually an infinite variety of programming, and it’s free—no $12.95 a month subscription fees. Who needs satellite radio now?

Radio is still the Rodney Dangerfield of the media. No one coming out of college wants to work in radio. No one ever goes into Best Buy and asks to buy a radio set. No media buyer ever wants to plan or buy radio. But if you’re in your car and want to listen to the Who or the Stones or a baseball game or want the traffic and weather, you listen to terrestrial radio.

Radio isn’t dead, it’s just breathing a little heavy, like me riding my bicycle to the yacht club, and I’m not quite 100 years old like radio is. Radio will be around for awhile, getting little respect, but surviving.

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