Radio Needs To Change...Now! (Apr 24, 2009)

Why can't the flunking radio stations ditch the formats that aren't working and come up with something different, yet appeals to everybody from 18 to 54?

What do people do when they get home? Watch TV, play video games, watch Internet video, listen to Internet radio, rent movies, and just about anything except listen to the radio.

Radio can embrace technology with all of that Web 2.0, facespace, podcasts, and twitter stuff but that ain't going to work unless radio does one thing: get a format that will attract listeners.

Radio can be interactive all it wants, but still get no listeners if their format doesn't attract them in the first place.

Case in point. KLSX 97.1 in Los Angeles. Since switching to a top 40 format, it has beaten the highest rating its predecessor talk format ever did in a ratings book, and has brought in new listeners from everywhere, enough to give top 40 oldser KIIS-FM a shock of its 28 year top 40 life. The only question is whether KLSX will eventually top KIIS, or peter out and drop back down after its listeners had enough of its sampling and go back to whatever else they were listening to.

Launching a competeting top 40 format, or any format that challenges a ratings leader, can work only if the programming is interesting. If it's not interesting, like, say, Sophie and XTRA Sports, then the station won't do much better, or do even worse, than the format it replaced.

Putting its signals on the Internet so that iPhones and other wireless Internet devices can listen to it is one thing, but putting on something that's proprietary enough for people to have to tune in is another. Enough of all of those 50 KIIS branded stations that all sound alike! Let the programmers put on what works for their listeners in their local areas. Playlists do not need to be all clones of each other. Have the playlists different in each market. Put on songs the other stations aren't playing...yet.

Getting people to listen to the radio after they get home is a big challenge for radio when the listeners have far more competeting ways to be entertained than they do when they're commuting. Come up with some compelling formats that will entice people to want to tune in. Put on what's not being offered, yet, has wide appeal. Let the locals time broker some slots so they can program what they really want ( as long as it doesn't sound like a 60 minute informercial on financial services) in exchange for paying the station to run the client's sponsors that they bring along. Let one client say program an hour of deep psychedelic rock, another program a trivia game show, another announce job openings or people who need a cheap apartment, and so forth. Make radio have a purpose once again in the people's lives. Clients can even produce some radio dramas like radio did back in the olden days.

The way things are going, iPhones and other portable wireless radio devices will be owned by more people than radios. All radios can do is to tune in stations in a given area; some with great receptions, but others with a scratchy signal, but still cheap to run and requires no expensive $100 a month subscription. That's where radio still has an advantage over iPhones.

The only way that the Internet radio devices can really make broadcast radio obsolete is when the wireless Internet for radio becomes free. That's it. There will be a wireless band solely for free Internet radio. That's when broadcast radio will become obsolete.

But not so fast, Internet radio. We got royalty tribunals demanding that radio stations of all kinds pay out money per song streamed per listener. Who's going to pay for that? The listeners? No. The radio stations? No. Who? The advertisers? If there's not enough, then an Internet radio might as well do a talk format instead of music. Broadcast radio can afford the song royalties, whereas Internet radio can't.

Broadcast radio is currently in a state of flux as listeners (the ones that can afford iPhone subscriptions) flee while royalty tribunals demand more fees for playing music, advertisers paying less money for spots, the expenses of HD radio not helping matters, and jobs are all on the line. Broadcast radio needs to get going with some programming ideas that are unique enough to interest listeners beyond their time spent listening to them in their cars or they'll find themselves extinct, spending its last days programming formats only 10-20 people care about.