I recently found a few pics of my cats I had in the 1990's and 2000's. This pic I took in 2004. I had just cleared a bunch of brush that had overgrown part of my yard. Scooter is the cat in front. She was my little pal. She is followed by Boots, who was a really personable cat. Snoopy is the cat in the back. Better days, really. I decided against having yet another Radio company icon at the top of the article. Instead, it's buried below.
Throughout my tenure here as a blog article writer, I have tried to stay as positive as possible about the Radio hobby (MW DXing, SW, etc.) and the Radio Industry in general.
It's been difficult at times, because the Industry has been in slow decline since the mid to late 2000's. But despite my skeptical and cynical nature, I always have tried to remain positive, and have tried to reflect that here in this blog.
It's more difficult to do as each year, and each month, passes.
Recently, the largest Radio company in the United States, IHeartMedia, just laid off more programmers and airstaff. It's one of those 'end of the quarter' firings that have become all too common in Radio.
IHeart has laid off an undetermined number of people -- many of them long-term veterans of the stations where they were on the air. The stations where they worked were in large and medium sized markets. The reports say that the layoffs will be 'massive', and include 'dozens' of airstaff and programming personnel.
You can read about it here.:
Here is another article on the layoffs, mentioning 'dozens of cities' being affected.
In the Radio World article, a former air personality, 'ChloeOnTheAir', talks about being laid off. She says that the station where she worked was getting good ratings, as was her show.
But she was laid off anyway.
As someone who lost my last Radio job in late 2006, during a large layoff, I can sympathise with Chloe and all the others who lost jobs.
My guess is that most of them will never work in Radio again. It is a shrinking industry.
Now, IHeart gets a LOT of pushback in Radio circles for these sorts of layoffs. They laid off roughly 10 percent of their workforce in early 2020, and there have been other layoffs since then. Other Radio companies have also had their layoffs.
But this latest round shows that Radio is dying, and -- in my opinion, as someone who worked in the industry for a couple months shy of 20 years -- Radio is being killed off by bad corporate decisions. This round of layoffs, of popular and veteran air personalities in several cities, is one of those bad decisions. Morning drive and Afternoon drive are highly rated for a reason -- they tend to have the popular air personalities. When you sack the popular air personalities, you're bound to lose listeners.
If all people want to hear is music, they don't need radio -- they've got Spotify, they've got Pandora.
The use of super long commercial sets is another factor driving people away from Radio.
The industry, of course, is veering away from Over-The-Air broadcasting and is aiming for digital. Awesome. Once Radio is all online, the number of 'stations' and channels will diminish. There is infinite content saturation and competition online. Certainly, the heads of the Radio companies must know this. If they don't, they're not thinking.
But the rot that seems to have set in deep inside the Radio industry looks like it's amplifying the decline. Some of the symptoms -- super long commercial breaks, sacking of air personalities, short playlists -- all of which practically guarantee that no one listen longer to a station than just 15 minutes -- they all point to an industry that has lost its way.
FM RADIO IS NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE
I don't listen to FM radio much. I haven't listened to FM since the early 2010's, when I tuned into the pop stations, because the pop music back then was so good. After 2015 or so -- when Radio Disney went off the air -- pop music began to change, and it wasn't upbeat and fun anymore. At the same time, streaming services like Spotify and Pandora started taking over, and Radio found it increasingly difficult to compete with online streaming. I remember hearing people talk about Pandora and Spotify a lot during the late 2010's -- a lot more than they talked about Radio.
In the late 2010's, after the pop music changed for the worse, I tended to listen to FM HD2's, like KISW's Metal Militia channel -- until the best ones -- the Metal Militia channel, and a Delta Blues channel on another local FM -- had their plugs pulled in 2018 or 2019.
Once those HD2's had their plugs pulled, I stopped listening to FM for a few years.
I listened to a lot of Sports talk radio on the AM band. My favorite shows were on CBS Sports Radio. That network started its decline about the time they turned into 'Infinity Sports Network', and then last year that network was yanked off the air. They were replaced by Westwood One Sports, which most radio listeners I've interacted with online seem to think is simply not as good as CBS Sports Radio was.
CHARGING RADIO STATIONS TO PLAY YOUR NETWORK PROGRAMMING
And WW1 Sports -- and WW1 in general -- apparently is going to charge stations to play their programming. This is a rumor that has been discussed on a couple Radio forums, mainly on Reddit, by people who work in Radio. How the charging for airing WW1 plays out, if the rumor turns out to be true, is a good guess.
CBS Sports Radio never apparently charged for their programming. Instead, stations would give CBS Sports a certain number of commercial breaks in exchange for playing CBS Sports Radio. In Radio speak, that's called 'Barter'. "You play our programming, and we won't charge you, just give us X number of spots per hour." That kind of thing.
Well, apparently WW1 is not getting enough money in barter spots. So they are going to charge stations for running the programs. Or at least that is the scuttlebutt in the industry.
What does this say for Radio in general? It says that the power of the Radio commercial as a sales tool is lower than it used to be -- or, at least that is the apparent thought in the advertising industry.
Anyway, as I said, I haven't listened to FM much since around 2014-2015. But I recently got a great FM radio, the Qodosen DX-286. So I've tuned around the FM band, hoping to hear some DX, which is rare enough here in Western WA state. So far, I've heard no FM DX whatsoever, although I've logged a few weak translators from fringe areas in the region.
But one thing I've also done is listen to local FM stations -- to see how they sound, and to see what music they are playing.
And one thing I noticed is THEY RUN A LOT OF COMMERCIALS.
'COUNT THE SPOTS'
In the Radio business, commercials are called 'spots', and the commercial breaks are called 'spot sets'. Lately, while listening to several local, popular FM stations, I've been counting the commercials as they play..... counting the 'spots' in the 'spot set'.
The first time I literally counted the commercials as they played, and wrote them down in my DX logbook, I was flabbergasted.
I was listening to the local, popular Rock station, and they had just played a song from 2001 that I liked, called 'Blurry', by Puddle Of Mudd. Then they went into the commercial break.
I counted 13 commercials and liners in a row.
More recently, I tuned into the local, highly rated Classic Hits station. There were 11 commercials in a row. Then I tuned into one of the two local Modern Country stations, and there were 9 commercials in a row. Then I tuned into the Rock station again and heard 9 commercials in a row.
A few days later, on June 29th, I tuned into the local Classic Rocker and heard 19 commercials and liners (where there is an announcement saying 'don't go away, music will be back in a few') in a row. Earlier today I tuned into an AC / classic hits station and heard 8 commercials in a row, and then I tuned into the Classic Hits station and heard 15 commercials and liners in a row (that commercial break was 7-8 minutes long).
By any measure, this is overkill. The quality of the commercials isn't bad. They're usually well-produced. But do these Radio companies think that the average listener is going to stick around while they play 8-15 commercials in a commercial break?
They're driving away listeners.
There may be valid, business reasons that these stations and Radio companies are playing so many spots on their stations. Radio stations need money to stay on the air and pay whatever staff they still have working at their stations and networks. Electricity isn't free, and neither is the rent, the equipment, the maintenance. Perhaps running more commercials per break is the only way they can pay the bills.
But 15 commercials and liners in a row is just overkill, and I can't help but think that it's driving away listeners to Spotify and Pandora and similar streaming services. Of course, some of these services, like IHeartRadio, are associated with Radio companies. But at the same time, it's disturbing to tune into a highly rated FM station and hear so many commercials, knowing that there are people tuning out -- and possibly tuning out FM forever.
The national numbers on Radio listening, while seemingly good, really aren't encouraging. 80 to 90 percent of Americans of all age demographics listen to Radio at least once a week. A smaller percentage -- depending on age group -- listen daily.
Eighty to 90 percent listening to Radio may seem like a lot of people, and maybe it is. But 'once a week' is definitely not a great statistic, especially when the Time Spent Listening to radio used to be much, much higher.
Are the increased spot loads driving listeners away from Radio? You be the judge.
I think the commercial loads are killing Radio. Combine that with layoffs of popular Radio air personalities, and other negative trends in the industry, like short, dependable playlists (both times I heard the long commercial break on the Classic Hits station, it was followed up by "What I Like About You", by the Romantics, it was almost like clockwork), the future doesn't look very bright.
DIMINISHING SHORTWAVE STATIONS, AND ABSENT HAMS
Now let's talk about Shortwave.
With the ionosphere weakening over the past 30 years, and this latest Solar Cycle starting to fizzle, it's turned into a game of 'Count The Carriers'. In other words, when I tune the 49 Meter Band at night, many times I have to have the BFO/SSB on my radio to hear the carrier signals, where just 10 years ago -- and even 3-4 years ago -- I'd hear audio programming.
This is because at night there are only THREE Shortwave stations that I can hear regularly on any given evening on the 49 Meter Band -- WWCR 5935 kHz and WTWW on 5920 kHz, and WRMI on 5850 (it used to be located higher in the 49 Meter band). Sometimes Nikkei 1 and 2 crop up, usually with grainy signals (but cool music). Amazonia on 6180 kHz just cut their hours. Radio Educacion on 6180 is usually just a carrier. CFRX on 6070 is usually a carrier with a trace of audio. Marti on 6030 has been MIA since the plug was pulled after the Trump Administration took office.
Sometimes I hear WRMI with good signals on 49 Meters (on 5850 kHz), but often it's already off the air by the time I tune the SW bands (if it's past 2-3 a.m. here in the Pacific time zone. If it's earlier, they do come in well, sometimes with Radio Slovakia and Polish Radio programming).
I love hearing Radio Slovakia and Polish Radio -- and some of the other programming -- on WRMI, but the 49 Meter band used to be loaded with signals. Now, many nights, there's just three of them. That's how depressing it's become.
And the SW ham bands are just as bad. No one's on the air compared to 15 years ago, or even a couple years ago. I remember when the 20 Meter Band was filled with CW and SSB, Solar Maximum or Solar Minimum, it was still a popular ham band.
Now? It's spare or empty most of the time. Now, I know that in the Southern US and Eastern Seaboard there still is a lot to hear on 20 Meters, because of more distance from the Auroral Zone and because those regions are closer to highly populated areas. But here in the PNW, 20 Meters -- the most popular SW ham band -- is dead most of the time, or partially dead. It's the same with 15 Meters, and the other bands. Even 80 Meters and 40 Meters are spare during most evenings.
Before the mid 2010's, it never used to be that spare of signals.
The hams aren't on the air, except during contests.
Recently, the ARRL had their annual event called 'Field Day', where hams operate from parks, RV's and the like. I switched on my old Realistic DX-160 to hear lots of CW signals on the 20 Meter band, and the SSB section was pretty active, too. It was unbelievable. My old DX-160 had lots of Morse Code signals and sideband, too.
It was just like the old days, when I'd switch on my DX-160 and the 20 Meter Band was packed with signals nearly any Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
Then, once Field Day was over -- nothing.
Some hams say 'well, most guys are on FT8. If you count FT8, ham radio is healthy and doing great!' FT8 is a digital radio mode that sounds like dying aliens or a sick ice cream truck. It's used by a lot of hams because your computer does all the work while you watch video or cruise the internet.
Well, I've actually counted the signals on FT8 channels. The audible ones are usually 3-7 signals at any given transmission window. They're easy enough to count -- you count the different tones, or, if you have an old-school analog receiver, tune the bandspread through the FT8 frequencies and count the zero'd signals that way.
There really aren't that many FT8 signals audible -- and even if you add in the number of FT8 signals that aren't actually audible (maybe 10 or 15 of them during a typical transmission block?) there aren't that many of them, at least compared to the vast number of CW and SSB signals that used to be clearly audible 12 years ago, or 22 years ago.
In the 1980's I'd hear nearly every other channel in the 20 Meter band loaded with signals. The 20 Meter Ham band has about 40-50 different 5 or 10 kHz 'channels' that hams can use for sideband (every 5-10 kHz between 14150 and 14350, roughly). That means I used to hear anywhere between 40 or 50 hams or more, using the SSB section of the 20 Meter Band. And these were all audible signals.
There's no way that FT8 is making up that much difference.
It's just another barometer that Radio, and the Radio hobby, is in decline.
I'm not happy about it, but there's nothing I can do about it, either. I can write about it, and try to encourage people to get on the air if they are a ham, or keep tuning their radios if they are SWL's and DXers. But I can't make the ionosphere work better, and I can't unilaterally tell SW hams to get off their asses and get on the airwaves.
If they'd rather cruise the internet instead, there's nothing I can do about that.
And I obviously can't keep the corporate nature of the Radio industry from jacking up the commercial loads, or laying off people, or programming stale, short playlists, or otherwise sabotaging their industry.
So what can be done, if you are a Radio DXer or hobbyist?
You can appreciate what you have, because some day in the future it will be gone.
What I'm doing is maximizing my antenna. I added about 90-100 feet of wire to my antenna, running most of it outside to my hawthorn tree. I may also get a new radio later in the year, that may out-perform the SW radios I already have. Tecsun makes a PLL radio with several stages of gain and filtering, and it also has a DSP chip for filtering, and I may get one in the Fall -- it's their PL-880 model, and from what I understand it's really good, and for such a good radio, it's reasonably priced. I could use the extra tuned circuits PLUS the benefit of DSP.
I've got the territory to extend my outdoor wire to around 150 feet or so (50 Meters), so I will probably do that before Fall.
I may build a bigger loop antenna for MW DXing at night. I've already got the best MW DX radios you can get (GE Superadio 2 and 3; Sangean PR-D4W).
And I'll keep listening until the last stations are off the air.
Hopefully that's a decade or two away.
I'll end this article with my mantra -- 'Get 'em While You Can.'
IN OTHER LIFE....
Today it is the early morning of the Fourth Of July, an American national holiday. When I am done publishing this article, I'm going to go out on a bike ride, and then I shall put out my flags. I really don't feel like celebrating this holiday, being that the killjoys in local government have decided to make it illegal for someone to even light a sparkler in their back yard or out in their driveway, and I haven't exactly been feeling patriotic for reasons I don't care to go into here.
But it's the Fourth nonetheless, so the holiday should indeed get a mention here.
I may also put out my Australian flag, well, just because.
Until next time, friends,
Peace.
C.C., July 4th, 2026.
ADDENDUM, July 5th. I added information on WRMI in the Shortwave section. It often comes in with readable signals on 5850 kHz, something I'd forgotten when I first wrote this article. So that info has been corrected. I also added that I enjoy much of the WRMI programming. I think they need credit when credit's due. I just with there were more stations on the 49 Meter band, and the other SW bands as well. Most SWL's feel the same way.
