| Radio’s Real Estate Bubble To Bust Soon |
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| Home Theater News Industry-Trade News | ||||||||||||
| Written by Jerry Del Colliano Jr. | ||||||||||||
| Thursday, 03 November 2005 | ||||||||||||
Page 2 of 2 What Can Radio Do To Save Itself From Its Ugly Mistakes? Nothing. The broadcasting corporations’ unprecedented arrogance has created a protectionist environment that is so filled with yes men that they can’t adapt quickly enough to save their sinking ships. If they want to address the issues at hand, they need to completely rethink the way they look at their media and that isn’t likely to happen any time soon. Radio’s solutions are tremendously difficult and way out of their skill sets. First, they need to embrace new styles and types of programming. Conservative talk, classic rock oldies and Jack are boring beyond belief to the money-spending Gen Xers and soon-to-be money-spending Generation Y. The first step in solving radio’s problems is for its movers and shakers to rededicate themselves to programming. The next step is to rule the Internet radio airwaves. The biggies of traditional radio need to bring professionalism to this new and exciting format without making it sound like some overly corporate, heartless media. Lastly, terrestrial radio needs to pray that satellite radio keeps moving towards sounding more and more like traditional radio. Sirius, ever since Mel Karmazin took over, sounds more and more like the old days of Infinity. With Howard Stern on board, it will be even more like Infinity on satellite. Sirius needs to fight that urge if it wants to compete. Customers who pay for commercial-free radio should get commercial-free radio. Customers who pay for radio in many formats should not have to hear the blabbering, senseless commentaries of hashed-out jocks who go on about meaningless gossip or tell age-old stories about classic rockers. Nobody cares – just play the music. In the end, I see a victory for consumers and enthusiasts of music and a bust for terrestrial radio and its incredibly overpriced FM stations. Radio invested in stations like they were the only beachfront properties on the planet. Less than a decade later, consumers are sending the message that they are moving to the moon, leaving $100,000,000 FM radio stations worth pennies on the dollar. One scholar suggested this will inspire local interests to recapture radio and make it a provincial format again. In this instance, radio might have a future, but it needs to be shaken up, much like bloated 1993 Los Angeles real estate needed a devastating earthquake to reprice the market. Radio’s leaders should be looking for the ground to start to rumble any day now, while radio’s listeners are packing up the Bekins truck to move to more solid land – namely satellite and Internet radio or their iPods and cell phones.
3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."Like this article? Bookmark and share with any of the sites below.        |
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