Clear Channel Imploding (April 17, 2009)

The economy is difficult for radio, yes, but amplify that with the fact that people are so fed up of corporate playlists that they just don't trust radio anymore in terms of people selecting good new music instead of bad new music that sounds just like noise.

Another hour of syndicated Ryan Seacrest shows. More voicetracking from out of area jocks. Clear Channel announcing their idea of premium choice content. HD2 and HD3 radio stations that are more of a waste of bandwidth than innovation. Mass firings of veteran employees in January. Less local deejay time. More syndicated deejay time.

And all this leads to...yup...more firings. Hey, how about having just one person in the entire building running the seven station group building? Just go to the bone and fire everybody except the owner and outsource all of the services like sales, deejaying, programming, and engineering from other companies.

Are you a Clear Channel employee? Now is the time to find another job. You have more security flipping burgers than to be employed by radio.

If Clear Channel wants to seriously improve program quality, first, they should get out of the radio business and let more qualified businesses run the radio stations. The stations they bought a decade ago are now just a shell of their former glorious selves.

CHR has been decimated by national programmers as far as quality is concerned. Nobody over the age of 34 can stand that mix of music today.

Hot AC sounds too much like lite rock and roll on Star. Either go real AC or all real rock. Make up your mind! Hot AC makes no sense.

KGB is unlistenable 24/7. Nuff said.

Rock 105.3 has none of the spirit the old Rock 102.1 did back in 1992.

KOGO is basically a reshuttled KSDO format. Channel 933 is a reshuttled format of the defunct Q106 except that it skews younger.

XTRA Sports 1360 is a loser. U.S. 95.7 does nothing for country music fans.

Clear Channel just can't do radio right.

Solution: sell off all of the Clear Channel stations to companies that can run them.

Tom Taylor reports that 266 radio stations have gone dark since the fourth quarter of 2007. There's too many stations serving too few listeners. Most are failing because they're not programming what the listeners want to hear, so they deserve to go off the air. Have the smaller stations go dark permanently or sell them to the locals so they can try their hand at running the station, which is harder than they think it is.

No offense, but I have yet to see a local religious formatted radio station be among the top 5 on Arbitron's quartely period reports. Are there really THAT many people who don't care for religion on the radio?

Let's get some innovative formats on the local dial soon. How about current top 40 aimed at people over the age of 25? Kill the CHR and Hot AC formats. Bring back real country formatted radio. Some R&B that has soul and maturity. Rock and roll music that really rocks and rolls. All reggae, house mix, real soft pop, industrial, and true alternative rock formatted stations is what will kickstart the stations. Are those formats the ones the people are listening to online? What are the other music formats that the online listeners are making popular?

You tell me.