Radio people who were in this business before consolidation remember a very different business.
Outside of a few corporate groups in large markets, most stations were part of small groups, maybe in several regional markets.
Many stations were literally mom and pop operations, with pop selling time and mom keeping the books.
Radio was then more of a shoot-from-the-hip business. If you had a new idea, there was a good chance you could find someone to give it a try.
There were 20% fewer stations before deregulation, yet there were far more formats and format variations. Formats would morph as they moved from market to market, so no two stations sounded alike.
Radio was a loose organic confederation, a giant network of people who’s natural urge was to keep changing things, searching for that next share point.
Consolidation, IPOs, and a focus on Quarterly Capitalism changed all that.
Radio began emulating successful public companies outside radio.
Look at successful companies like McDonald’s or Target. Major decisions are made at corporate headquarters.
Large corporations are all about centralized control, centralized decision making. And today’s corporations believe in standardization.
Adapting the approach of successful corporations outside of radio transformed radio stations into little more than McDonald’s franchises. Today formats are standardized just like the size, shape and weight of a McDonald’s beef patty.
We know that centralized decision making works in many other industries, but does it work in radio?
Not well enough to keep radio growing.
Radio has achieved its level of success through continuous, often chaotic, organic evolution and innovation.
Historically, radio programming innovation didn’t come from the cautious major market players. It came from the small market buccaneers who had little to risk, and who were willing to take fliers based on somebody’s crazy sounding idea.
A lot of the crazy sounding ideas turned out to be just crazy, but every once in a while something clicked, and soon others were emulating, and improving on that first person’s idea. The major players were the last to copy a good idea, to do something different.
As long as the buttoned-down suits ran just a handful of major market stations, innovation continued in the hinterlands beyond the reach of those who felt more comfortable doing the same thing over and over.
However, today’s vision of radio stations as McDonald franchises can be found in every market of every size.
Craziness has been systematically bred out of radio’s DNA. Tranformational programming innovation has essentially stopped.
Cisco's CEO John Chambers recently announced that he was reorganizing the company. The company had lost its edge, was losing ground to new competitors.
He concluded that Cisco had too many committees, too much bureaucracy, and as a result, initiative and innovation had suffered:
We have been slow to make decisions, we have had surprises where we should not.
He then laid out his vision of a mobilized Cisco:
- We will take bold steps and we will make meaningful decisions in a timely, targeted way.
- We will accelerate our leadership. We understand that our competitors are fierce (but) we will not be defined by them.
- We will simplify the way we work and how we focus our attention and resources. We will empower our teams, and allow our people to focus on inspiring and important work.
Even Cisco, a $40 billion computer hardware company, can admit to becoming too bureaucratic, too predictable, and unresponsive to new challenges.
Radio, a business built on innovation, unpredictability, and change should do no less.This is the spirit radio needs today.
This is no time for radio to become cautious, afraid of change. We need the crazy buccaneers of the past. We need people willing to try something different, not afraid to fail.
New media is not radio’s greatest challenge. Radio’s greatest challenge is complacency and a growing buttoned-down attitude that stifles creativity.
Against an onslaught of new highly motivated challengers, it will not be new platforms, new delivery systems, or social networking that saves radio.
Radio will survive if those last strands of crazy DNA that still exist in the minds of a few programmers are reactivated and set free to innovate and reinvent radio.
If that happens, those new-media geeks don’t have a chance.
100 Radio stations in Atlanta and they all stink of vanilla ice cream. Where is the edge? Where is the Wolfman Jack who once said "Colder than a witch's (pause 1 second for effect) TIP of her nose." We are so afraid of scaring even a single listener that we NEVER TAKE THE RISK of good personality. I mean, what the hell? Radio is as bland as Pandora, but at least Pandora plays the music you want.
Radio needs to get back to personality driven formats, and listener drive play lists. Until that happens, radio will continue to lose total shares of audience, just as the newspapers have. Radio is its own worst enemy right now.
Get rid of the no-talent, not funny idiots that wouldn't know a joke if it came up and gave them a Gibbs slap on the back of the head. Get some people who are not afraid to risk; the ones who used to make the station GMs mad by locking themselves in the studio and having a party with the listeners.
I don't give hoot about the corporate bosses in New York... I want the people in my listening audience to love ME. If I can accomplish that then I have a chance at being remembered as more that just a computerized footnote.
Sorry, folks. I just feel very strongly on this one.
Posted by: Steve Robinson | June 08, 2011 at 09:23 AM
Innovation in radio comes from the new part 15 micro broadcast start ups by the dozens. Some serve a few blocks are a couple miles with multiple transmitters.
Posted by: Steve Thomas | June 06, 2011 at 10:13 PM
AMEN! I've been preaching this for at least 10 years. I got so sick of what radio was becoming, I started my own. I now have 3 of them in Cincinnati. They are growing as a result of our innovation (in April '11 we had over 7.3 million hits to our website). We have even started a network in order to take on affiliates and bring our innovation to other markets.
Dear Radio Industry,
Embrace Innovation, PLEASE!
Bill Spry
http://classxradio.com
Posted by: Bill Spry | June 06, 2011 at 02:35 PM
Bravo! Radio is an entertainment medium. Compelling program content draws and sustains listeners.
Competitive "delivery systems" represent a challenge to be even MORE creative. And what's this 07 second limit on talk because of PPM? How about 15? 20?
Pandora cannot compete with great radio that commuicates one on one.
Posted by: Joe E. Kelly - CEO | June 06, 2011 at 12:37 PM