I just took a stock market course this past weekend, which could provide fodder for five blog entries in and of themselves. But since I signed an NDA, I won't be doing that. However, one of the key elements I took away was the importance of looking for patterns.
Well, anyone living in or near a major city for the last 20 years has witnessed the slow but steady death of commercial radio, an end of life the industry brought on itself through excessive consolidation, minimal creativity, an over-reliance on consultants, and a lack of willingness to move beyond the mainstream. Sure, the radio industry can play victim and blame satellite radio, Internet radio, satellite radio,etc. But if these folks programmed more innovative, vibrant and exciting stations, I still think people would listen to them. Isn't it sad that:
--Starting several years ago, the TV show "O.C" rather than your favorite FM station became a beacon for new music discovery, breaking out new artists and songs that many months later MIGHT find a home on a commercial FM station?
--Since that time, TV commercials, particularly VW, Mitsubishi, and AT&T commercials, have become similar beacons?
--Radio stations still trot out tired formats. Sure they may play different types of overplayed mainstream music, such as female-oriented R&B, but still with the same tired DJ pitter patter.
--CBS, while I have to give it credit for braving the world of Internet radio like none of its peers have, still streams most of its stations, save for a few gems in NYC and LA, in virtually unlistenable 64Mbps.
It's no wonder folks and particularly young folks either tune out and/or listen to NPR. Me, I'm pretty much the same: either NPR or Live-105, a CBS-owned mainstream alternative station in San Francisco that's a fairly close clone, music-wise, of KROQ in LA. And the only place I listen to radio, and briefly at that, is in my car. At home, it's all Internet streaming, baby.
Well, in the surest sign yet of the death of commercial radio, in San Francisco CBS is pulling a 60's-70's classic hits format, with the classic call letters KFRC (as classic as WABC in New York or WRKO in Boston, etc., etc.), from one of its more newly acquired frequencies (one that has seen two formats since its purchase from a religious broadcasting outfit, a failed FM talk format and classic hits) and replacing it with an FM simulcast of all-news KCBS-AM 740.
The BS-ometer from CBS representatives is off the charts in this article. Here is the real deal, KFRC was a decently formatted station for its genre, although the air talent was painful to listen to, the promotions for the station were lackluster, and programming was frequently interrupted by Oakland A's games. I'm an A's fan, but this past season was such a buzzkill that I tuned out early. Many others apparently did as well, KFRC ended up being one of the least listened to radio stations in San Francisco. Although I think it's a bit rash, it's not unheard of to pull the plug on a format after 15 months, but for a station in the fourth biggest radio market to simply simulcast an AM ratings winner rather than invest in another format is the clearest sign yet that this medium is truly dying. In Boston, where I grew up, one could hear a simulcast of WBZ radio on the FM dial...in the early 1970's!
Howard Stern, who left CBS Radio in a huff a few years back and went to Sirius, is most certainly having the last laugh. RIP commercial radio.
