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Radio Ponderings
I've been reading here and there about radio stations losing money, and what they're trying to do to fix that.
The big problem, if you care to call it that, is competition from digital audio; MP3 players and online streaming music. There are all sorts of technological solutions proposed, from streaming your radio station online yourself, to trying to get a law requiring people to build radio receivers into all cell phones-- bad luck on that one, guys. If someone has all the streaming radio in the world on their smart phones, do you think they're going to listen to YOU instead? Especially when you're Satellite Feed No. 812 of Boring New York Try-to Shock Jock, or Satellite Feed No. 3,017 of Right Wing Whacko Bully with a Microphone. Why would they go out of their way to listen to you? Why would anybody?
Yet I think radio has an important place in the world. The power does go out sometimes- winter storms, or Heaven forbid troubles like Japan is having right now- and then the streaming computer radio dies too. Ten bucks will get you a decent transistor radio; Sony still makes a pretty good AM-FM pocket set. At night that will pull in news and emergency information from hundreds of miles away, if not a thousand or more. And you can use it to listen to the ball game when you're out back in the summer sipping a cold one.
In my crackpot opinion the biggest problem with radio is (a) we really have too many signals in our major markets, in the US anyway, and (b) everyone is going after the major market and the major marketing demographics. There are all sorts of small markets that could support a small audience and get rich doing so. But everything has been market-analyzed to death, with all the radio stations fighting for crumbs of that one big pie, ignoring the tens of thousands of small yet tasty pies sitting untouched all around.
Our local radio station is a good example of that. Cheap, poorly produced, corny, with the local high school kids coming on to sing to promote their musical play that's on in the High School Auditorium this evening. And Friday they have the public school football game at 7:00, the Catholic school football game on tape delay- next week it's the other way around.
And they make a good living. Not only that, they matter to this town. Everybody knows them. Everybody needs the information they give.
It's not a bad life, Radio Guys. Think about it.
The big problem, if you care to call it that, is competition from digital audio; MP3 players and online streaming music. There are all sorts of technological solutions proposed, from streaming your radio station online yourself, to trying to get a law requiring people to build radio receivers into all cell phones-- bad luck on that one, guys. If someone has all the streaming radio in the world on their smart phones, do you think they're going to listen to YOU instead? Especially when you're Satellite Feed No. 812 of Boring New York Try-to Shock Jock, or Satellite Feed No. 3,017 of Right Wing Whacko Bully with a Microphone. Why would they go out of their way to listen to you? Why would anybody?
Yet I think radio has an important place in the world. The power does go out sometimes- winter storms, or Heaven forbid troubles like Japan is having right now- and then the streaming computer radio dies too. Ten bucks will get you a decent transistor radio; Sony still makes a pretty good AM-FM pocket set. At night that will pull in news and emergency information from hundreds of miles away, if not a thousand or more. And you can use it to listen to the ball game when you're out back in the summer sipping a cold one.
In my crackpot opinion the biggest problem with radio is (a) we really have too many signals in our major markets, in the US anyway, and (b) everyone is going after the major market and the major marketing demographics. There are all sorts of small markets that could support a small audience and get rich doing so. But everything has been market-analyzed to death, with all the radio stations fighting for crumbs of that one big pie, ignoring the tens of thousands of small yet tasty pies sitting untouched all around.
Our local radio station is a good example of that. Cheap, poorly produced, corny, with the local high school kids coming on to sing to promote their musical play that's on in the High School Auditorium this evening. And Friday they have the public school football game at 7:00, the Catholic school football game on tape delay- next week it's the other way around.
And they make a good living. Not only that, they matter to this town. Everybody knows them. Everybody needs the information they give.
It's not a bad life, Radio Guys. Think about it.