Can anybody make radio work anymore? I mean, really work, remaining profitable with a long-term future in store?
Stephen King couldn’t. He had what some people would consider the ideal situation for a radio operation – nice little cluster with competitive ratings in a small market where radio sales business is transacted in person – and he’s given up. We get reports from other towns across America of mom-and-pop stations closing and selling off the land under their towers. If you’re one of the dreamers we see on Facebook with the desire to take over a small town station and do it right/have fun/prove that radio isn’t dead, you can get in cheap right now. Why aren’t you?
Correct. You know better. The audience is not growing. Sales are not growing. Entire clusters are now fully automated/voice tracked/unmanned. Big companies are praying that AI will save them. It’s becoming increasingly hard to remain optimistic about the medium.
The other day, while running errands, I listened to a lot of South Florida’s broadcast radio stations. Throughout the week, I kept asking myself, who is this for? Who needs this? The talk radio was abysmal, the music radio pointless in a Spotify age. Is anybody excited by a radio station’s year-end countdown, if they have one, or are they more concerned with their Spotify Wrapped, flawed though it may be this year? (I can think of one exception, WXPN Philadelphia’s wildly eclectic 885 Greatest Songs of the 21st Century, but that’s all.) When Assad flees or Pete Hegseth has another drink, are politically-minded people tuning to radio for opinions or listening to podcasts about it? And is there anyone left doing truly local talk radio or morning radio? (I know, yes, some are, but it’s increasingly rare and if AI could produce even a poor imitation of a local show, radio operators will do it.)
All of this is to say that when you’re looking for reasons why some stations are turning out the lights, a lot of it comes down to whether radio’s providing anything you can’t get elsewhere, anything better than what you can get from streaming. It’s the same dilemma print publications encountered years ago – do you need a newspaper with yesterday’s news when you can get today’s news online – and you know what happened to print.
Take a walk around your neighborhood some morning and count the number of papers on people’s driveways. Then imagine the number of car radios set to streaming instead of AM/FM, and the lack of actual radios in homes, and the percentage of people walking around with smartphones capable of replacing radios, newspapers, television… it’s nothing new, but more people are noticing, and no amount of industry number-slinging – reach! We have reach! – is going to change that.
Once, I thought that the future for radio would be similar to that of newspapers, where insanely rich benefactors would step in and buy properties to preserve them as local institutions, or non-profits would operate commercial stations for the same altruistic reason, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen. It’s not working too well for newspapers, either, if the Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong experiences are any indication. Besides, the old school prestige of being the owner of the local paper doesn’t translate to radio. You own the local radio station? That’s nice. What else do you do?
I don’t know if there’s a return from this, but I do know that reducing local content has killed off one of radio’s two traditional strategic advantages (the other is ubiquity, and that’s just about gone, too). It was about the content and the people who create it, and the lack of effective competition, and now that the content is not compelling and the creators off making podcasts or working in different fields, it’s not unimaginable that other station owners will follow Stephen King in pulling the plug, and taking a write-off rather than try to find another EMF to take the thing off their hands.
If you ARE crazy enough to buy into radio, though, do everyone a favor. Put something on there that’s truly different, something Spotify or podcasts can’t do. Find creative talent and let them do every “you can’t do that” idea they have. If radio’s going down, it might as well go down fighting.
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
Perry Michael Simon is a weekly news media columnist for Barrett Media. He previously served as VP and Editor/News-Talk-Sports/Podcast for AllAccess.com. Prior to joining the industry trade publication, Perry spent years in radio working as a Program Director and Operations Manager for KLSX and KLYY in Los Angeles and New Jersey 101.5 in Trenton. He can be found on X (formerly Twitter) @PMSimon.
