The Big Picture is a blog run by Barry Ritholtz, a financial marketing guy, and it has an excellent analysis of why you're listening to the radio a lot less lately. The problem is, according to The Big Pic, that the business model driving it guarantees that the product offered will be uninteresting to most people. The posting starts like this:
Listen to music on the radio much lately? If you answered “no,” you’re in good company. Americans are listening to broadcasts -- especially of music -- much less frequently then they used to.And with good reason, too: Stations which were once a way to discover new music have become bland sources of uniform playlists. At present, the heavy emphasis (or over-emphasis) is on hip hop; This comes after a long dalliance with insipid boy bands. Listeners left in droves.
The problem is, too many radio stations are owned by too few programmers, and those programmers are chasing the same audiences, over and over.
What used to be a huge diversity of voices, each competing to find its own niche in the marketplace, has become a radio dial owned by very few companies. Radio stations that used to compete now coordinate, breaking the audience into tidy demographic morsels that appeal to the most profitable advertisers. If your musical taste doesn't conform to that of an easily identifiable, advertiser friendly audience, you're out of luck.
The pioneer of highly marketable in inoffensive radio programming is Clear Channel. In Louisvlle, where I live, Clear Channel owns ten radio stations, which is most of the market.
You often hear people say things like, "I think polls area scam. I've never been asked who I support for President." In broadcasting, only few thousand people nationwide form the basis of almost commercial transactions. In TV, its a few hundred Nielsen families that determine whether shows are hits or misses. In radio, it's Arbitron that polls a few households to find out what people are listening to.
In the world of Clear Channel, marketing departments define audiences that can be easily sold to advertisers, and then market research go out to try to find what those audiences want. (Remember: In broadcasting, the programming is not the product, and listeners/viewers are not the customers. Advertisers are the customers; the audience is the product.) I may be a nobody to you, but to Clear Channel's researchers I'm a goldmine of information. You see, I'm one of the polled few. I fit a profile that can be sold to advertsiers -- I'm guessing manufacturers of big, overpriced cars and erectile disfunction drugs -- so, about once a month, a polling service calls and plays music for me over the telephone. I get to chose whether I'd rather hear "Gimme Three Steps" by Lynyrd Skynyrd or "More Than a Feeling" By Boston.
The effect of this kind of poll-driven programming is, according to Big Pic, an entire music industry that is stagnating:
Clear Channel didn't only hurt radio -- they drew first blood from the recording industry also. Music fans only buy what they hear; Less music on the radio meant decreasing purchases of CDs. I'm convinced that the ever shrinking national radio playlist caused by radio consolidation is one of the key factors in the declining CD sales nationwide.
For the record, I haven't bought any CDs by eiher Lynyrd Sknyrd or Boston.
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