What's on the radio? There is still a lot to hear, but with each year, there seems to be less and less stations on the airwaves.
As I write this, we here in the Seattle area are experiencing a slight respite from the freezing weather we had for the last two weeks. It seemed that since the last half of November every time I went out onto the porch to check my thermometer was 25 degrees F (-6C or so) outside. And that cold snap seemed to continue through most of December as well.
We're now in Solstice, the shortest day of the year, and -- consequently -- the longest night of the year. In theory, this is the best time for MW/AM and SW distance listening. The reality is not quite so rosy, but there still is a lot to hear on your radios. You just gotta turn them on and tune around!
But the cold! 25 degrees F is Brrrrrrrr! cold.
That said, I have been doing a considerable amount of DXing over the past few weeks, and there have been some changes to the MW dial here in the PNW at night.
The changes haven't been all positive. And looking at some of the changes, once again I feel the need to opine on the state of the industry that once put food on my table: the Radio industry.
But first -- the changes!
CKJR Wetaskiwin, Alberta -- about 30 miles from Edmonton, has good coverage of the Edmonton metro, and some sports talk hosts in the area decided that Edmonton still needed a sports radio station.
SPORTS TALK COMES BACK TO EDMONTON!
The first major change concerns Edmonton, Canada -- my mother's birthplace. After Bell Canada got rid of Edmonton's sports talk station CFRN 1260 early in the year, when they got rid of 6 or 7 AM stations, another radio company has decided to deliver Sports Talk to Edmonton!
CKJR 1440, which was an oldies and Punjabi station for a few years, has been flipped to Sports Talk. They are now a Fox Sports station, and they apparently have at least a couple local Edmonton shows, too. One of the people behind CKJR's move to sports was a CFRN talk host, who thought that Edmonton still needed a sports talker in their market.
Although CKJR is located in Wetaskiwin, a smaller city maybe 30 miles / 40 km south of Edmonton, at 10KW they do get out OK, and hopefully Edmonton sports nuts will tune in and listen. CKJR does come in well here in Seattle during the night, especially if conditions are good from Canada.
Here at my location CKJR usually dominates the 1440 channel, although KVON, Napa, California is often heard behind them with an interesting mix of Spanish language AC music hits (AC is a radio format that is a combination of pop and soft ballads, and the Spanish language market has their own variety of such hits).
KMED's last logo where they promoted their AM station on 1440. When they were KYVL they didn't have a logo that I am aware of. KYVL, which simulcasted KMED after KMED went FM only, just lasted a couple months at best.
SO LONG KMED AM 1440
KYVL / KMED, Medford, Oregon, which used to dominate 1440, has been MIA. Although the station is, or was, officially KYVL, they were known as KMED for almost 100 years.
I understand that the signal was permanently taken off the air. The Wiki on KYVL 1440 says it is "Silent". That's too bad, because it was fun to hear Medford on my radio. The only other Medford station I can usually hear is KRTA 610, which plays Regional Mexican music (often called "ranchero" by DXers).
I really like the area of Southern Oregon where Medford and Ashland are. It's one of the reasons I enjoy hearing stations from that area. One of the better ones is KAJO, 1270, Grant's Pass, Oregon, a decently large city on the Rogue River maybe 20 miles from Medford. The weather in the Rogue Valley is moderate -- a lot drier than Seattle, but greener than the Eastern halves of Washington and Oregon, which are desert-like. It's a really nice place to visit, and being that they're further south than Portland or Seattle, the cities of Medford, Ashland and Grants Pass get a lot more sun, because it's higher in the sky.
KRLC's last logo -- the LC stood for "Lewiston-Clarkston"
Another AM station that's had its plug pulled is KRLC, Lewiston, Idaho, which used to dominate 1350 kHz. I noticed that it wasn't present in local 1360 KKMO's ranchero splash several nights in a row, which was unusual. Then I went online and found out that the owners had pulled the plug.
Lewiston is a nice area. It's on the Snake River, and there are a lot of orchards there, and it's near the Palouse wheat region in WA and a similar wheat region just south of Lewiston in Idaho. Right across the Snake River is Clarkston, in Washington -- it's Lewiston's 'twin' city. The climate is somewhat desert like, and it's an interesting place, with maybe 40K people in the two cities combined. For those oldies music enthusiasts, the song "Hot Rod Lincoln" was written about a real hot-rod race that took place in the 1950's on the switchbacks on Highway US 95, just north of town. You can see some of the switchbacks in the pic below.
By Iidxplus, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2452755
KRLC used to be a Top 40 station back in the 1960's and 70s, and then went Classic Country. I used to hear it nearly every night when I got back into MW DXing in 2011, and even during the crap DX conditions after late 2016 I would hear KRLC most nights.
Now it's off the air forever -- another AMer that can't pay the bills to make it worthwhile to operate apparently.
Some celebrate this sort of thing. Even some MW DXers online celebrate this 'culling' of the band. I never have.
ESPN YAKIMA 1460, R.I.P!
Recently, there has been yet another station that used to dominate a MW channel here, 1460, that is no longer on the air: ESPN Yakima, KUTI. ESPN Yakima was generally a friendly standby -- a station I could hear nearly any night, and a couple times I could even hear them during the daytime as well. About two weeks ago I noticed they were MIA. Every night I'd tune in, and I would hear nothing but a very weak KION, Salinas, California, and maybe a little bit of the ranchero station that broadcasts out of Santa Rosa, California, KRRS.
Now, I like hearing California at night, especially when it's cold weather time here in Washington state. But I wondered what was going on with ESPN Yakima? Their Wiki said they were still on the air. The website seemed to still be intact, also.
Earlier this week another DXer online, who lives in Central Washington, informed me that ESPN Yakima is off the air permanently. I guess they don't care much for national sports in Yakima? Sports radio generally does well, and the sports stations don't need much in ratings to sell advertising. But the radio advertising revenue is not what it used to be, and I suppose the owners just decided to pull the plug on KUTI.
Checking out ESPN Yakima's website, it still exists, but there is no streaming button that I can see. It's a page with a table full of news, sports-news, and some infotainment story thumbnails.
Here is a link to their website:
There is a link to download their app. What their app does, I wouldn't know. Maybe it's the ESPN radio app. It claims to play 1460 ESPN Yakima. They also promote their Alexa stream. Which begs the question: what about commuters in cars and trucks? The ones who apparently use radio the most?
I suppose they are either going to use the app, connect their phone to their soundsystem via Bluetooth, or you won't hear ESPN Yakima.
This is an indication of the future of radio: it's heading online.
PERSON TO PERSON, VIA THE RADIO -- A DECLINING TREND
The demise of 1460 KUTI is sort of sad, because when Mt. St. Helens blew up in May, 1980, I remember listening to this station that night, when the Yakima region was covered in several inches of volcanic ash. A DJ on the station (then called KMWX) was telling the listeners not to despair. "We can beat this thing!" he said. Of course, he was right. But it was interesting hearing the DJ encouraging the listeners to keep the chin up -- there might have been ash everywhere, but all was not lost.
It was a case of radio being used, person to person, live and local communication. Something the radio industry no longer values, because -- according to their beloved research -- the listeners no longer value it. Of course, research shows that listeners no longer value radio all that much, either -- especially the younger demographics, under age 30. The internet has changed everything to a form of 'content.'
Some of the radio people out there treat the demise of stations like ESPN Yakima with a yawn, like "so what else is new?" Some even have a smug, 'good riddance' attitude towards this station, and other similar stations' demise. They refer to AM stations like ESPN Yakima and the former KMED/KYVL 1440 Medford as "dogs", stations that companies want to get rid of.
And these same experts seem to embrace streaming to a bizarre extent, almost viewing it as being this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, that -- compared to modern day OTA radio -- will be just like pulling the arm on a slot machine and getting nothing but jackpots. There will be no transmitters, no antennas to deal with, no STL's, less hardware -- you'll just curate playlists, put them online, and make tons of money!
NO POT OF GOLD, NO ENDLESS JACKPOTS EITHER
It's almost like reading John Steinbeck's Grapes Of Wrath, a classic American novel about the plight of Oklahoma Dust Bowl refugees seeking work and a new life in the agricultural areas of California in the 1930s. Early on in the book the grandpa is enthusiastically talking about how awesome it would be once they get to California, where he's going to eat grapes all the time and even splash in a tub full of them. Of course, the reality in the story turns out much different. The grandpa dies before they even get to California, and the family starts to starve (because the California farmers at that time treated Okies like trash), and the oldest son, Tom Joad, ends up on the run from the police. The ending of the book is quite dim.
Reality often doesn't turn out to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
In the same way, the reality that hits radio, once it goes 100% online, will be different also.
The majority of radio experts I read and/or interact with seem to be out of touch about this. These guys obviously know radio. There is absolutely no doubt about that. But online streaming is not radio. Online streaming is digital, internet-based audio content distribution. It's a completely different animal. It's a completely different industry, really, and the market dynamics are different, too.
So, even though many in the radio industry embrace the demise of AM stations like KUTI, KRLC Lewiston, and KMED/KYVL Medford as "dogs", just junk, yesterday's trash radio to be discarded, soon enough, it will happen to all of them. AM, FM, TV, Satellite -- it's all headed in the same direction: Online Content.
And thousands of radio (and TV) people will eventually lose their jobs.
Actually, all of them will.
I don't give the radio industry much more than 20 more years.
Then I lost interest. Some of the online platforms, like TuneIn, would have dead links, thanks to geo-fencing, and I just tired of having to lug my tablet or phone around and plug it into the radio. I never got into the earbuds / phone thing, either. Either way, this method of streaming -- using a device to stream a radio station's website, has taken second fiddle to just using an online playlist app like Spotify or Pandora. It's a brave new world for what we call "radio".
THE RADIO INDUSTRY LEADERS SIMPLY DON'T GET IT
I hang out at a lot of radio forums, some of which are populated by radio professionals. These are the guys who run the stations, run the networks, fix and install the equipment at the stations we listen to. They also are involved in the business side. They are very knowledgeable people.
Many, if not most of them know the listenership stats: a 50% drop in listeners ("persons using radio") overall since 2008, when the Portable People Meter was introduced. In 2000 the percentage of "persons using radio" was around 18 to 20%. When the more accurate PPM was introduced in 2008, that percentage dropped to 12%, and it's 5% now -- barely 16 years later.
Here's an article on how one radio personality lost audience due to the introduction of the PPM. The article talks about some of the controversies surrounding the use of the device to measure radio audiences.:
LOSING AUDIENCES, BUT WHAT NEXT?
The experts definitely understand the writing on the wall. They all have seen the numbers, and are aware of radio audience research.
Yet, they seem to have their heads in the sand when it comes to radio's actual future. On one hand, they admit that the internet is the future. Everything audio is headed for streaming. Streaming is already the dominant music consumption model, and increasingly it's becoming the dominant non-music, audio delivery model. The experts all know this, and admit that this is happening. In that they are correct.
But what they don't understand is that once your content is completely internet based, you instantly have infinite competition for the same couple of device screens. And you also have nearly infinite competition on whichever streaming platform you are using to deliver your audio entertainment.
Indie book authors already deal with this effect on just the one or two dominant retail platforms they use to sell their books. Once you put a book up for sale, your new book is instantly in competition with 5-6 million other books on the platform, with thousands of new books being added daily -- all dependent on search algorithms, and all of them competing for screen time. As an author, you may have over 5-10K competing books in your own genre. And -- as said before -- you are also dependent on the platforms' search algorithms.
In one of my book genres, I have at least 5K other authors I am competing against. Maybe 2-3K of them are no longer active. But that leaves maybe 1000 authors whose works are competing with mine. Most of them probably have more than one book out there. Many have 30-50 books or more.
That's in just one genre.
This is how it is when you are an online content creator / marketer. Your competition is MASSIVE.
You are competing with thousands of other creators. And you are completely dependent on search algorithms. And EVERYTHING is Visibility. In the case of radio, of course, they're not necessarily content creators -- they are also music curators, but the same basic rules apply.
They are the middleman. Right now, because people still listen to FM and AM radio, they can still make money as middlemen.
But who needs the middleman anymore? Record companies are discovering that fact already. Musicians bypass the middleman. Curators? Gatekeepers? Who needs them?
But -- ignoring that trend, let's look at the next 10-15 years from the standpoint of your average radio company.
If you are running a radio company, and you already have your own dedicated streaming radio website, or channel, your streaming site is already in competition with a gazillion others, worldwide. And what is keeping your station's streaming website visible is your Over-The-Air station, which is sending listeners to your streaming site.
Remove the Over-The-Air station, your visibility is going to drop. You'll be dependent on whatever big tech platform's search algorithm pushes or dodges -- or ignores -- your content channel. Good luck on that. Chances are high that you will be as vital locally as your local #2 or #3 newspaper that maybe went online in the 2010's. I.e., a massive drop in viewers / listeners, lots of clickbait to try to bring in some revenue, etc.
Even if you try to market your own 'streaming app', you are already in competition with a gazillion other apps people will load on their phone's tiny little desktop screen, and then instantly forget about, or move aside, once they load the next one.
Today, if you have a radio station, you maybe have 10-20 competitors in your market. Once you're online-only, you have competition from every other form of internet audio and visual content available -- millions of channels, from all of the channels on Spotify and Pandora, to YouTube channels, to Instagram, to X content 'channels', and even to the thousands of content 'channels' on sites like OnlyFans -- the choices are literally infinite.
And they are all competing for the same one or two screens.
While it's true that -- in a sense -- Radio is already competing with these other, internet based media, once the antennas and transmitters disappear, all bets are off. Your prime source of visibility promotion is gone. You are now completely dependent on the platform, and many stations are already dependent on big platforms for their streams -- TuneIn, IHeart, Audacy, etc.
I've been in convos with some of these expert radio guys about this particular aspect of "radio's" future, and they just don't seem to get it -- they don't seem to be taking the negatives of online-only seriously.
They seem to think that 'you just build it, people will come' (a paraphrase from the movie Field Of Dreams). But this isn't a baseball fiction movie. This is internet business. And Visibility Is Everything.
The Radio folks see the future implications, to a certain extent, but the negatives to what remains of the Radio industry are not on their radar screen. They're all caught up in the exciting new technology, but the marketing aspect of it -- i.e., facing all that internet competition -- is not apparent to them. Not yet.
Maybe they don't need to: by the time everything goes 100% online, those guys will be long retired.
But I fear that radio's days in general are numbered. If Dereg 1996 slashed radio jobs by 50% or more, as some seem to think, the move from Over-The-Air radio to online-only will finish off the other 50%. Right now, a lot of stations have their streaming websites, but by 2050 there won't be many, if any, of those radio sites active. They will be reduced to some 'channel' on a large streaming website, and the revenue simply won't support them. The ad revenue really isn't supporting them enough now. Subscription rates only can go so high before people balk at paying for them. And digital music royalties aren't going down.
Right now, the big streaming sites are still mostly in the red. If they can't make money now, how is podunk online radio going to in a few years?
RADIO: LOOKING AT THE CLIFF
So the entire industry is looking at a cliff, and the movers and shakers, who apparently haven't dealt with online content marketing to the extent that I have, as an indie author, really are in for a rude awakening when they go all online and pull the plug on their AMs and FMs completely -- which the experts admit eventually will happen, sometime later this century. I would say 2040-2050 -- when the older Millennials start to "age out" -- will be the breaking point for that to occur.
They're all going to lose their jobs. The revenue won't support them.
Some of the experts on the radio forums disparage AM stations for running what they think are wonky and questionable ads -- for ED medications, gold and hard assets investments, insurance, timeshare removal, alternative medicines, etc.
But take a listen to your local FM station sometime. You'll often hear the same sorts of ads. I even hear them on highly rated, local FMers -- spots for ED meds, timeshare removal, alternative medical procedures, hair transplants, dental implants, pay as you go cell service, etc. At least two highly rated local FMers run these sorts of ads. It's not just for AM talk radio anymore.
Radio in general, even today, is desperate for revenue. I don't think the online model is going to save the industry in the future. It will be nails in the coffin once the antennas come down and the transmitters are recycled into beer cans.
Even so, as a MW DXer and radio fan, and as one who worked in the industry for nearly 20 years, it's sad to see stations go off the air.
By Cacophony - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:YakimaWashington.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1374302
250K PEOPLE ISN'T ENOUGH TO SUPPORT A SPORTS STATION?
Back to ESPN Yakima: the situation seems to beg the question -- can't a market of over 200 thousand people support a network sports station? KUTI seemed to be a station that might have a decent enough audience to keep the lights on and the signal on the air. The Yakima market is a metro of around 250K people (98K live within Yakima itself). You'd think there would be enough sports fans in a 250K market to support the station.
I guess that wasn't the case.
So now that station is 'lost' to the airwaves. So long, KUTI/KMWX/KIMA. You had a long run.
GET 'EM WHILE YOU CAN
I'll end this article on the most positive note I can think of right now: Get 'em while you can.
If you're a radio fan, enjoy what you can hear on your radio before that radio becomes as useful as a paperweight or doorstop -- or, for that matter, as useful as that electronic calculator in your drawer, or that flip phone that no longer works on the cell system but you didn't throw away. Maybe you've got a digital snapshot camera you don't use. You've replaced it with your smartphone's camera, so you can post grainier, semi-HQ and lossy looking pics of your meals on the internet. Even though the old device may still work, it's just too old-school for you.
OK, that happens.
Tech seems to make a lot of devices redundant over time, and radios eventually will be made redundant. I don't like the idea at all, but it's inevitable. Give radios maybe 20-30 more years before all bands -- AM, SW, FM -- are nothing but hiss and static. The revenue eventually won't support the Over-The-Air infrastructure. It's that simple.
Bob Dylan once wrote a song called The Times They Are A Changing, and they always are.
Sometimes you've got to appreciate what you have now, because you never know when it's going to vanish. It's just a part of life.
So, if you're a radio fan, switch it on, throw on the headphones, tune around, grab a book, and just listen. If you're a DXer, enjoy the sound of the distant signals, allowing you to travel hundreds, and sometimes thousands of miles, without leaving your chair.
Appreciate what you've got. MW curmudgeons, please quit bitching about what's on the air at night. Would you rather hear nothing but static?
And if you work in the Radio industry, hopefully you get at least ten more years of employment before they slash your job. Not trying to be negative here, but the media business isn't exactly kind to people. The radio industry wasn't always known as being kind to its workers, but it's even less so now. And as the march of audio/internet tech progresses, and "radio" continues to gravitate towards the online model, the radio / TV industry is going to shed jobs that will make Dereg 1996 look like a birthday party.
Keep your wits about you, guys.
Peace.
C.C. Solstice, December 21st, 2023. Picture of Steinbeck's book Grapes Of Wrath and accompanying description added on Christmas Eve -- December 24th, 2023.
No comments:
Post a Comment