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 July 1, 2008 Moon on . . . Stuck in the Middle with You Every time I think of the state of commercial radio today, I think of the 1973 hit "Stuck in the Middle with You," by Stealer’s Wheel: "Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right / here I am, stuck in the middle with you." The clowns and jokers in charge of the big broadcast chains -- CBS, Citadel, Clear Channel, Cumulus, etc. -- are clearly stuck in their vision of what radio music programming needs to be in the 21st century. They’re stuck with a model that’s nearly 60 years old and needs a good, hard look. According to this model, in order for a station to draw and hold an audience, it must play a short list of songs in a rotation chosen by computer software and based on the criteria of mood, tempo, and, most important, how well each song tests with the station’s primary audience. But this format differs very little from the old Top 40 system developed in the 1950s by Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon. When Todd Storz bought KOWH, a tiny radio station in Omaha, Nebraska, he needed to do something different to draw an audience. The story is that he and his program director, Bill Stewart, were sitting in a diner late one night and noticed that their waitress kept returning to the jukebox, putting in her own money to play her favorite songs over and over. Storz and Stewart decided to play only the 60 biggest hits of the day, in order from lowest to highest, and then start over. Within weeks, KOWH dominated the Omaha radio audience. Storz then tried the same idea in Kansas City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Miami, and St. Louis. It worked every time. Gordon McLendon made his early reputation by re-creating baseball games on radio as "The Old Scotchman." In those days, baseball games were broadcast only on the team’s hometown station. For all the towns without baseball teams (and some with), McLendon would read the sports ticker tape and, with the help of a sound-effects man, re-create the game for his Dallas audience. The idea caught on, and soon he’d developed the Liberty Broadcasting System -- the largest radio network in the US. But the team owners had no control over McLendon or what he said, and wanted to shut him down. (If a game was boring, McLendon, who spoke at least five languages fluently, might call an inning in, say, Japanese.) They saw to it that he no longer had access to the sports ticker. McLendon then needed programming to carry his flagship station, KLIF Dallas, through the day. He’d heard about Storz’s success, and amended Storz’s formula of playing the hits with breathless newscasts and big-time promotions. Soon KLIF, another tiny station, had taken command of Dallas’s listeners. Over the years, Top 40 adapted and changed. But its core principle -- playing a small selection of hit songs -- remains the basis of nearly every music format on radio. The problem is that the radio audience has changed. Until a few years ago, radio was the only option the masses had to discover new music. Program directors had the power to make or break songs, and usually only a few new tunes per week were added to station playlists. Even the playlists of supposedly "deep list" stations, such as Adult Alternative, Active (Current) Rock, and Classic Hits/Oldies, total only about 300 songs at any given time. Then came the Internet. All of a sudden, listeners could select from a nearly endless array of music old and new. They weren’t tied to broadcast radio anymore. And they were fed up with short playlists. They wanted real variety -- not what program directors tried to pass off as variety. The people and their music were set free. Radio people still don’t seem to understand that the world they program for no longer exists. They keep trying to play and make the hits. According to Arbitron, the leading firm that measures radio audiences, listening to any and all radio dipped from over 22 hours per week in 1997 to 18.5 hours in 2007. In an article in the June 9, 2008 New York Times, Alex Mindlin reported that, "Over the last 10 years, the average share of Americans listening to radio at any given time has shrunk about 14 percent, or 2.3 percentage points. Teenagers account for a well-recognized chunk of that decline. But Larry Rosin, a radio consultant with Edison Media Research in Somerville, N.J., points out that college graduates are also far less likely to listen to radio than nongraduates, a gap that has widened with time. Over the last decade, college graduates ages 25-54, who make up an increasingly large portion of the population, have abandoned radio eight times faster than nongraduates. Today, they listen to 15 hours and 45 minutes of radio a week, while their peers without degrees listen to 21 hours and 15 minutes weekly." Edison Media Research, a major firm that researches US radio and public events (they conduct the exit polling for US elections), offers on its website an interesting take on what it calls "The Infinite Dial": "No longer bound ‘between 88 and 108 on your local FM Dial,’ radio has been liberated and now can be found virtually anywhere." They continue, "We are fans of great radio, whether it be on AM, FM, Satellite, Internet, HD, a Podcast, in any country on earth, or on any platform. The Infinite Dial will explore, analyze, and keep you informed about all the intersections of broadcast media and technology." The latest findings from a recent EMR Internet & Multimedia study, done in conjunction with Arbitron, indicate that, among people who are employed full or part time and listen to radio at work, the portion listening most often via the Internet has grown from 12% to 20% in just one year. Tom Taylor, one of the top reporters on the radio industry, noted in the May 6, 2008 edition of his Taylor on Radio-Info.com, "The latest Internet & Multimedia study, conducted among people who are employed fulltime or part time and who listen at work, shows a clear up-and-down trend. . . . The portion who listens most often via a regular radio has declined from 88% to 80%. That’s a real swing in just 12 months. And Arbitron says when you control for education, ‘among college graduates, 30% say they listen most often to radio stations over the Internet.’ That’s contrasted to a figure of 12% for non-college grads. Edison’s Larry Rosin says ‘the findings suggest that broadcasters need to think about the quality of their streams, and promote the ability to listen to radio online.’ And here’s the Hammer of Doom, if you didn’t see it coming: ‘After all, on the Internet, the competition is not just the other stations in town. The possibilities are essentially infinite.’" Most radio programmers aren’t stupid. But most of them are so hamstrung by tight-fisted management dictates and having to run four or five stations at once, and are so scared of losing their jobs, that there’s no room and little incentive for taking the risks that creative choices require. Yet if radio doesn’t do something soon, it will make itself irrelevant. However, a number of radio programming and research consultants are talking about a new style of popular-music radio station. They talk of stations with broad playlists that mix new tunes with old and one genre with another. The music is to be offered up by "presenters," to use the British term ("disc jockey" doesn’t really apply), who actually are interested in the music they’re playing, and sound it. The presentation is low-key and intimate. The format also includes many opportunities for listener/station interaction via phone, text, or Internet. The playlist will encompass a diverse range of music -- possibly 3000-5000 songs, perhaps more. The station will back this on-air policy with multiple HD Radio and Internet streams that offer different genres, complete with information about each track, and provide on the station website multiple links to musicians’ websites and other music sources.
Stations that adhere to the new format will also find new ways to develop revenue, such as hourly sponsorships with limited commercial interruptions -- rather like underwriting announcements on public radio stations in the US, but with more selling points allowed. A few stations are trying this already, but it’s too early to judge the success of their efforts. There are several reasons this concept might work. Most important is that making broadcast radio once again a place to hear new music will bring people back to the medium. It will never be the only source for new songs, and it will never have the power it once did, but radio is still the best way to expose new tunes and new artists to large numbers of people, simply because it’s ubiquitous. For the new, musically savvy generation that radio has ignored the last ten years -- a generation now joining the 25-54 age group most desired by advertisers -- tight formats such as hard rock or classic rock just don’t cut it. These people are looking for a genuine variety of music -- which means they don’t want the bulk of the songs repeated every six hours. There’s also that change in presentation. Audience research indicates that younger listeners (ages 12-34) abhor pointless DJ chatter, on-air games, and promotional slogans that claim "the most music" or "the best variety." This increasingly sophisticated segment of listeners knows better than to believe radio stations’ claims. They want to know about the music being played, and they want information that affects their own lives -- not the lives of people at the station or elsewhere. They believe that anyone who would call in to a radio-station contest is a rube. Unfortunately, these people are some of the least likely to fill out and return radio-listening diaries to Arbitron -- but it’s they whom radio must reach to ensure its future. Trying the new approach will require someone with deep pockets and a lot of patience, or a station or company desperate to save its investment. But it will happen, and probably sooner rather than later -- because radio, like many other organizations whose viability is challenged, must change or die. . . . Thom Moon
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He’s Thom Moon, a radio geek with more than 30
years in the business, and who specializes in audience research. He’s worked in radio
audience ratings (which determines who listens to what station), audience analysis, been
managing editor of a radio trade journal, and most recently edited a series of newsletters
for radio programmers and commercial-time salespeople for a major radio
research-and-promotions firm. He’s one part frustrated program director, another part
would-be general manager and recovering entrepreneur, and a part-time radio tech head.
He’ll be commenting regularly here on radio topics. One warning: Moon tends to fall
into the editorial "we," hoping that by so doing he won’t be the only one
blamed . . .