Radio, Radio and more Radio

As promised at this month's FCC hearing, the Future of Music Coalition has released its second report on the state of radio in the post Telecom Act era. It's a big document, but here are its own quickie conclusions.

Data in the report shows that station ownership consolidation at the national and local levels has led to fewer choices in radio programming and harmed the listening public and those working in the music and media industries, including DJs, programmers and musicians.

Key points included in report:

The top four radio station owners have almost half of the listeners and the top ten owners have almost two-thirds of listeners.

The "localness" of radio ownership – ownership by individuals living in the community -- has declined between 1975 and 2005 by almost one-third.

Just fifteen formats make up three-quarters of all commercial programming. Moreover, radio formats with different names can overlap up to 80% in terms of the songs played on them.

Niche musical formats like Classical, Jazz, Americana, Bluegrass, New Rock, and Folk, where they exist, are provided almost exclusively by smaller station groups.

Across 155 markets, radio listenership has declined over the past fourteen years, a 22% drop since its peak in 1989. The consolidation allowed by the Telecom Act has failed to reverse this trend.

Comments

[George]

I would suggest to you that a whole lot of things have happened since 1989 that could affect radio listening besides consolidation.

Regarding niche musical formats, I'd suggest you look up the National Endowment for the Arts study about non-commercial public radio. It turns out that the pubcasters have been dropping classical, jazz, bluegrass, and folk from their stations, replacing it with national news and talk, all from Washington.

Why are public stations dropping niche formats? And why should commercial stations, whose income comes from advertisers, run formats that even non-commercial stations don't want?

One thing the FMC study points out is that listeners like the programming on stations owned by the ten largest owners. Otherwise, those stations would not have such a large percentage of the listeners.

If the FMC is so concerned about the quality of music on the radio, perhaps it could ask some of its members to pool their fortunes and actually buy a few stations.