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This topic comprises 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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Topic: what is wrong with the radio industry?
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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 12-27-2012 09:49 AM
Here in the NYC metro area, a lot of stations are pushing their OTA "digital HD" radio, which sounds worse than plain old analog FM. It's everything you don't like about OTA radio with less sound quality.
As to the impending (maybe) demise of Compact Discs, you can blame the record/radio industry at least as much as downloading. When radio ceased playing a diverse selection, people ceased being able to hear a wide range of new music, so people stopped buying.
I like 60's rock, folk rock, dark new age, and the standards. Yes, I know that is a strange combination, but I can count on zero fingers how many OTA stations play any of it here in the NYC area. Years ago, I would use the original Napster to download songs, and if I liked them I would eventually buy the CD. At the time, I was buying a couple of CD's every week. These days, I buy a couple a year. I just don't have an opportunity to hear music I like on the radio.
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Jack Ondracek
Film God
Posts: 2348
From: Port Orchard, WA, USA
Registered: Oct 2002
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posted 12-27-2012 11:38 AM
quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
Here in the NYC metro area, a lot of stations are pushing their OTA "digital HD" radio, which sounds worse than plain old analog FM. It's everything you don't like about OTA radio with less sound quality.
That's happening a lot around here, too. Just about all of the Seattle stations have added HD. Beyond that though, not so much. We have a big of HD in 2 or 3 other Washington cities, but nothing remotely close to saturation.
The stations have a reason to promote. They spent an obscene amount of money on the chance they'd hook new listeners to their programming... not to mention the opportunity to push additional shows on the extra channels HD allows. They only have so much bandwidth however, so the more extra channels they fit in, the worse all of them sound.
HD has been a massive "chicken and egg" scenario. Car manufacturers wouldn't put it in until there were stations to listen to. Station owners didn't see any reason to invest if nobody could hear it. Neither side had a scenario to cover listener indifference. The radios are available now, but few people actually seek them out.
I wonder if New York might be a tough city to broadcast HD in the first place. With all those buldings & most stations transmitting from only a couple of decent locations, HD could be a tough nut.
... and then there's HD for AM.... another sad story.
Program offerings are a completely different matter. Louis covers it pretty well. Listeners want more diversity and fewer commercials. They also want it for nothing. Broadcasters face enormous recurring overhead to run a station. Get as folksy and community-oriented as you want... that doesn't change. You can't maintain a few hundred feet of tower and other station infrastructure for nothing.
Clear Channel is the most often mentioned poster boy for bastardizing the business, and there may be some blame there. They've sucked up a huge number of stations and centralized much of their programming. Still doesn't matter. If you're a mom-n-pop station, you have to find a format that enough people will support in order to keep the advertising money coming in, yet balance that so you don't lose the listeners. By ratio, it's probably more expensive for Mom & Pop to attract you as a listener, with no assurance you'll be a supportive one.
With all the other entertainment options available today, radio has lost its mystique, and I think listener loyalty is all but a far-distant memory. In the '70s you could send your mid-day announcer to an auto parts store to hawk windshield wipers, and the place would fill up. Only way you'll do that today is if you convince some gas station to give their inventory away for free... and the customers won't notice the radio staff at all.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 12-28-2012 07:50 AM
Online radio is great for home listening, but it is really pretty useless in cars, which is where most people listen to the radio. Similarly, people can listen to records/CDs/MP3s/etc. for music, but doing so can be inconvenient and is not helpful to people who want to learn about music, as opposed to just listening to material that they already know.
What I find interesting about the comments in this thread is that the sort of programming that people want to listen to is not necessarily the sort of programming that would make a successful radio station. Most listeners (well, me, at least) want a high percentage of locally produced programming, either intelligent news/talk or any of various music formats with a large playlist that is programmed by people who actually know about music and can share that knowledge with the listeners. Yet, automated and/or satellite programming seems to be common. Could it be that many businesses (dentists' offices, barbershops, etc.) play the radio as background music and that those businesses prefer the more generic formats (my dentist does)?
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Edward Havens
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 614
From: Los Angeles, CA
Registered: Mar 2008
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posted 12-28-2012 01:57 PM
Several years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles, there was a radio station called Indie 103 that I listened to every day. This station was awesome. Their DJs included Steve Jones (guitarist for The Sex Pistols), Dicky Barrett (Mighty Mighty Bosstones), Henry Rollins, Rob Zombie, original MTV VJ Nina Blackwood and Dave Navarro (Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers). Rolling Stone named Indie 103 the Best Radio Station in America. They were the first in the US to play Lily Allen, Arctic Monkeys, Wolfmother, Kasabian, Kate Nash, Adele and Duffy, amongst others. Their logo was designed by Shepard Fairey. It was the best damn radio station I'd ever listened to, and that included KROQ in the early 1980s.
It was also the only non-Spanish language station in the Entravision Communications family. Which changed in 2009, when Entravision decided it was more important to have yet another Spanish language radio station in a market that already had at least a dozen others. So Indie 103, which was truly a unique station in the #2 market, became El Gato 103.
Indie 103 is still available online and on (at least) an iPhone app, but it's not the same, since most of the big name DJs no longer participate.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 06-21-2014 07:14 PM
Some updates here:
WEDX (former WHBA 101.7 listed above) just switched last week from electronic dance to, of all things, country music (and is still owned by CC). That seems like a really weird format change considering that the Boston market already had one country station (WKLB 102.5) which, annoyingly, swapped frequencies with a classical station (WCRB) a few years ago, giving the country station a much better signal and the classical station a much weaker one. Also, the 101.7 signal mostly covers the city and not the suburbs, which is probably not the best way to reach the relatively few country listeners in this market.
Also, the FM talk station that I mentioned in 2012 (WTKK) switched to WBQT "Rhythmic AC" soon after I posted that.
There have been other minor format changes, too. In any case, we now have two FM sports stations, two FM NPR news/talk stations, two FM country stations, a weak FM classical station, no FM oldies station, and no FM rock station (unless the rather weak WAAF counts).
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