Commentary: Mark Mays Is Nuts (Oct 10, 2005)

Yes, free radio is at risk, but there is a reason why there are competetive threats coming from satellite, mp3 players, at-home Internet radio, and coming in the future, portable wireless Internet radio in your car: mother was the necessity of invention.

To be more clear about this, you have Clear Channel and other radio conglomerates gobbling up to eight radio stations in a given market, reducing the amount of unique voices and diversity of views. You have playlists that are stagnant and stale with the likes of Magic, Channel, Star (94.1), KGB, and the like. People don't care for hearing the same old pop songs that are no longer popular everyday. Why do you think they're called pop songs? Once they're no longer popular, it's time to stop playing them and play something else that's new. With fewer companies running more radio stations comes the less likelyhood of taking risks and favoring the tried and tired.

When one company becomes complacent, they don't feel they need to innovate and create exciting and relevant formats, and favor sticking to the formulac playlists that offer nothing new for the listeners to enjoy and buzz.

That is the mother. It was necessary to invent some competetion.

Fortunately in the late 1990s, Internet radio and mp3 music downloads began competeting with radio broadcasters with small numbers of music fans embracing the format at first and growing year by year as broadband Internet access increased, eventually becoming big enough on its own to take a major chunk of time away from listening to the radio at home and at work. Some people listen to Internet radio or downloads exclusively and eschews radio completetly.

Satellite radio was launched four years ago and has about seven million subscribers, and still growing. Portable wireless Internet radio for your car may be at least a year off in terms of becoming mainsteam.

With more and more competetion chewing away from the time spent listening to free broadcast radio, what does Mr. Mays suggest? Allowing companies (i.e. Clear Channel Socialist Republic) to run as many as ten stations in a given market. Isn't that why the younger folks are ignoring radio today? It's because Clear Channel isn't programming music for the younger folks, that will eventually graduate from college, get careers, have families, buy cars and homes, and guess what will happen in the future? Free radio may very well become extinct because Clear Channel chooses to program for the dwindling audience that enjoyed certain pop music when they were teens and not grow up. Why are they dwindling? They're either dying, retiring, or subscribing to satellite and wireless Internet radio for their music enjoyment. The younger folks are listening to their mp3s and getting portable wireless Internet radio installed into their cars.

So what's free radio to do? Program for those who can't afford the alternatives? Program the same old songs and unexciting pop formats for those who can't afford the Internet or satellite radio or don't know what a music download is. They're often uneducated or nothing more than high school graduates, make low wages, and have very little disposable income, the kind of audience the advertisers don't care to reach because they're going to be ignored anyway.

Yes, free radio is at risk, but Mr. Mays has the wrong solution for the survival of radio. Eight stations in a given market has been causing playlists and formats to go bland and Clear Channel and Infinity doesn't care about that.

The government needs to step up and see the error of its ways of allowing a radio station company (which nobody envisioned 10 years ago that Clear Channel would gobble up 1200 stations in six years time) to own and operate as many as eight staitons in a market. The government needs to revise its rules to reduce it down to two AM and two FM, or one AM and three FM depending on the lack of AM stations in relation to FM in a market.

Free radio's vital role in our culture is dimmer than ever. Although talk and sports radio remain the last bastions of programming creativity and are bringing in the listeners, music radio has become almost irrelevant in terms of maintaining the listeners when there are so many more choices for listening to music than ever before. Nobody feels a need to drop a format in favor of a new format anymore. Big conglomerates will stick with a 1.5 rated radio staiton for years without changing the format, while voicetracking it to death, using very little labor to achieve the result. Meanwhile, fans of oldies music have been enjoying the genre on the Internet and satellite for years, making KOOL oldies obsolete and unneeded on free radio.

According to Mark Mays off of the Clear Channel press release:

"More than 20 million iPods were sold as of June of this year. The so-called “podcast” programs created for them offer endless hours of commercial-free music and talk programming.

"Internet radio already attracts 19 million American listeners each week."

"WiMax technology is expected to deliver [Internet radio] to automobiles as early as 2008."

"Wireless phones are now able to download music and stream satellite radio broadcasts."

"Each of the two satellite radio companies has more than 120 stations in every single market in the continental United States."

Mr. Mays goes on to say for each competetor is not regulated but free radio is limited to just eight staitons per market. Hello? Don't blame to necessities of invention that competes with Clear Channel. The mother is "the need to listen to music you want to hear but the radio stations don't care to program." They're programming music basically for poor women and children. What about men? Is Clear Channel programming music for middle class or rich men? No. Just old rock they're sick of hearing all the time.

In order for Clear Channel to compete, they shouldn't ask the government to give them more radio stations to run in a given market. Look at what Clear Channel did to San Diego, being allowed thorugh a loophole to run as many as 13 stations in the city until last year, turning San Diego into America's Behindest City along the way. Clear Channel should hire music and program directors with new ideas, not the same old ones cut from the same 1950s cloth again and again. That's the reason why radio is loosing listeners.

If Clear Channel really embraces new music, they should redefine the formats, dumping all music older than six months old. People know that they can listen to them on satellite and Internet anyway. Put on 100 new artists every 90 days per radio station. Dump the songs people are tired of hearing.

Ten years after radio stations were allowed to own and run eight stations in a market, jobs were being lost, not by stations going broke, but by companies "right-sizing" and combining of staffs and squeezing out the surplus employees.

If a radio station is going broke, the owner should sell it to someone that has a better idea how to make the station make money and get listeners, or go off the air.

Radio may still be profitable today, but it's because many of the companies are housing several radio stations in one building with one person representing two or more staitons per position, some as many as eight such as receptionists and General Managers, reducing the need for a large staff, and saving the company money. That much is true, but for how much longer, nobody knows as more people are leaving music radio for the competition.

If Clear Channel says that their pop music stations are diverse from city to city, why do I hear mostly rap, Hot AC, soft alternative, or love songs, instead of having some playing comedy music, dance, and country? Where's the diversity?

Clear Channel has become a leading broadcaster of so-called progressive talk radio. What about All Comedy Radio? That's more entertaining than Air(head) America.

In our country's largest media markets, there is no room for low power radio to grow. When the low-TV bands currently housing channels 2-6 in analog are relinquished by the TV broadcasters, that band should go to low-power radio, which could theoritically have as many as 180 radio staitons broadcasting in a 20-30 mile radius depending on terrain. That could be great competetion to the broadcasters, and the commercial radio companies wouldn't be allowed to own, operate, JSA, or LMA any of these stations.

There is no room for free radio to own more than four stations in a market, and allowing them to own eight has created the necessity for competetion because many good new music isn't getting any airplay, while the ugly face of payola has reared its ugly head on a Clear Channel station near you, playing crap from Jennifer Lopez and Alicia Keys instead of better musicians.

Forget allowing radio station companies to operate as many as 12 stations in a market. Look at what happened to San Diego radio. There isn't much music culture on the radio outside of hip hop, alternative, and soft music anymore, which is why I'm not much of a FM radio music listener anymore: there's nothing for me to listen to anymore.

With large companies in given markets, is it necessairily true that smaller owners can't compete? Not necessairily. Look at what Mike Halloran did for alternative radio. In 2000, 91X was so complacent that they couldn't find it necessary to play anything new and exciting, sticking to formulac bands and no-name clones. Halloran got the general manager of KFSD 92.1 to change from classical to alternative, and a buzz was created (except for the dinosaur Union-Tribune newspaper). Listeners in North County flocked from 91X to 92.1. People in the middle county dealt with static as they listened in preference to the clearer Clear Channel-ized 91X. In 2002, Halloran helped launch 94/9 and 91X has been the underdog ever since. Who says smaller owners can't compete?

Why are profits down? People are favoring downloads over music. Why is that true? Radio isn't playing half of the stuff people are downloading.

Clear Channel is simulcasting more of their stations on the Internet. Does anyone care if they launch multiple station brands from the same website? Who would care to listen to a Clear Channel narrowcasting brand on the Intenet when you can listen to genres Clear Channel doesn't understand all over the place? I find electronica and folk music on satellite and the Internet much more appealing than the same old crap at KGB and Magic 92.5 anyday. Clear Channel can't even compete with live365.com in terms of diversity, altough they're beating them in the number of hours people are listening to a given company on the Internet. Just wait until live365.com fights back at Clear Channel.

To close, let's say that a mistake was made and it's time to force Clear Channel, Infinity, Disney, and all those other companies to reduce their stations in a given market to 2-4 per market, and not allowing any of their sell-offs to be turned into a foreign-based language such as Spanish or Tagalog to reduce competetion. Only then will free radio feel the need to come up with new ideas for getting listeners away from the competetion and putting on something relevant enough to create a buzz and force general managers to think about hiring employees with ideas to help save radio instead of letting it die off into the sunset in front of an audience entirely hooked on iPods.