Generational Ignorance in Radio?

[Force Commander]

An interesting read.

http://insidemusicmedia.blogspot.com/

[CoolBreeze]

I agree with what he says on many levels, but there's one thing he didn't mention that I personally think comes into play also:

In the mid 60s when I was a teenager, we had two ways to hear our beloved music: Radio and records.

Records were a pain and limited, but we bought them anyway and sometimes played a new song over and over until the newness wore off.

Radio was king. Radio defined us vs our parents. Radio was on OUR side. And it wasn't just the music, it was those wonderful personalities that we wanted to be like or sound like or just be as cool as. The transistor radio had caught on in a big way and became affordable. Now we could carry our entertainment with us everywhere. To us teenagers, the night jocks were OUR jocks. The daytime jocks were more... "reserved".. "polished"... more to a young adults taste. But the night jocks were outrageous!

Then... three things happened: We got older, and radio and music turned on us. How? Three ways: The first was automation. Seems like half the stations in town tried it at one time or the other. Guess they thought it was the coming thing and nobody would care as long as the music kept playing. The second (and actually third) was something that got progressively worse until this very day: There was a time when the national charts, local record sales and requests pretty much determined what we heard. Our local music was always a little "different" than areas only 100 miles away. It was "our" music. Then, national programming took hold and we listened to what some guy in Texas thought we should hear. That was the beginning of the music downfall for us.

But the straw that broke the camels back was the incessant commercial time that seemed to begin in the late 70s-80s. It "seemed" that two to three times as many commercial spots started running than ever before. And if you're a kid, that last thing you want is for your Personality and music to be interrupted constantly by commercials (unless he's playing off them somehow). National spots are the worst. Young people care less about PSAs, political ads, or even half the stuff advertised. Interrupt them enough, and now it's IPod city. And this "ADD Generation" (which is what they should really call it and is what you're competing with) will never look back to "records & radio" again.

At best IMHO, radio is a convenience now and not the powerhouse it once was in my day. However, nothing beats local radio in a jam, whether it be a traffic jam, weather issue, schools, or other local point of interest. Do the kids really care about that importance? No. So I think that guy was pretty much on the mark. Question is... what's radio going to do about it?

[lastone]

what's radio going to do about it?

Nothing.








Even with "big" ownership, broadcast radio won't do a thing. Case in point....it only took 30 years to come up with that stupid IBOC.

Radio has to "crash" before it will change. Then, what will be known as "radio" will be all digital. Ma and Pa could have a chance again for after the fall, "big media" will have sold it all off.

At least we can hope so.