by paterson » Mon May 20, 2019 8:42 pm
Well we have a bit of a gap here tuned because I am of the opinion that radio is not destroyed at all. So because of this I have concerns with some of the arguments and statements made.
As I mentioned, radio seems to be doing better financially than the print or television businesses in Canada. New stations are still being licensed every year and how many do you actually hear go out of business? A few mostly AM but not many. Canada has more over the air radio stations than ever before. Yes there are things about consolidation that I don't really like either. Having said that, where I live, I can think of three local stations that sound better and seem to be doing better financially under corporate ownership than when they were independent.
One of the first things that the new owners did was update studios and facilities with new equipment and bring these stations into the 21st century. Corporate stations squashing the little guy with low rates? Other than the bottom feeders, most advertisers that use radio don't really care that much about low rates. They do care about results, and return on investment. If the ads work, they will pay higher rates. Low rates and poor or no results, wasting your money.
In terms of voice tracking and shows without a host, I was working at a smaller station in 1984 that would do this on a somewhat regular basis in evening after 6pm and the all night show was always without a host. I also remember in 1978 in a medium market doing a 12 hour airshift occasionally. That's right 12 hours. Eight hours live and four hours voice tracked. The company that I worked for at the time had two radio stations and two television stations. Yes this is much more the norm now but it also was happening back in the day too.
My beef with radio, particularly music radio stations is the actual presentation style, and general laziness of programming. Today many stations have an over reliance on technology, repetitive music, on air talent with little personality that seems unfocused on the audience and community, and there is a general lack of surveillance material. Many FM music stations even in smaller markets have virtually no news which I think is a mistake. Is all of this the fault of consolidation? In some cases yes, in many cases no.
Lack of diversity of opinion? Talk radio today is better and there is much more of it than 30 or 40 years ago. Where I live, off air one talk station could be classified as right of centre, another centre/right, two in the middle and one centre/left. Decades ago this was not the case, true stations had talk shows, but all talk, all news radio was rare.
Loss of jobs because of consolidation? Absolutely correct and absolutely not a good thing. But, many job losses have also been caused by technology. And sadly stations whether corporate or not, now have a fraction of the number of employees that they had 30 years ago. In this respect radio is similar to just about every other business or industry.