RADIO IS DYING -- It is being KILLED

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.:

Sweeping Cuts Ongoing at iHeartMedia - Radio World

Here is another article on the layoffs, mentioning 'dozens of cities' being affected.

iHeartMedia Layoffs Hit Programming Hard in Cost-Cutting Push - Radio Ink

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. 

May Showers, Solar Flares, et. al.

My flag flies again on Memorial Day. Grey skies, moderate temperatures, hey -- it must be the end of May!

As I start this article, it is around 65F out, and it's lightly raining outside. It's mid-morning here. The neighborhood's rhododendron farmers (folks who have a few rhodie plants out in their yards) have done well -- there are less of them than in previous years, but their bushes are blooming, finally. And yes, you heard that correctly -- there are less of them than before.

There used to be a street in my neighborhood where maybe half of the homes had awesome rhodies, and I have posted pics of those as recently as 2018 or 2019 here on my blog.

 

Here is a couple of those photographs. All the bushes in the next two pictures no longer exist, sadly.:

 

One pic I took in May, 2015, and which I posted on a blog article here back then. All of these beautiful rhodie bushes are now gone. They were torn out some time last year. :-(

I took this picture in April, 2015, and posted it in my blog that month. In fact, it was April 15th. The rhododendrons started flowering a month earlier than they did this year. All of these beautiful rhododendron bushes were torn out maybe two years ago. 

This is a rhododendron that was full of awesome blooms this year. I took this pic in May, and this bush is in one of the few yards where the owners kept all their rhodies intact. :-)

Here is a mixed rhododendron, on a moderately warm, grey morning in May. There were a lot of bumblebees checking out the flowers, but unfortunately none of the pics I took of them came out well. The little guys would either hide inside a bloom, or fly away just before I could get them in focus. This is the one yard left in my neighborhood that has all of its rhododendrons intact.

But over the past two years or so, a lot of those beautiful, tall rhododendron bushes were torn out by more than one neighbor, for unknown reasons. I don't know why anyone would tear out a rhododendron bush, but they apparently do. There used to be about four or five yards in my neighborhood that had 4-6 rhododendrons, and they were always a beautiful thing to see every mid-April. Now there is just one neighbor who has about four or five bushes -- the other neighbors who had multiple rhodies had them removed.

On a personal level, I'm still dealing with the aftermath of tax season, and I'm still recuperating from an illness I got a week and a half ago. And no sooner than I got my car back from the shop after a serious repair to the leaky gas line / dying gas pumps / clogged gas filter, etc., a tire went completely flat. As they say -- when it rains, it pours. My fiction writing has halted, due to the recent illness and a serious case of writer's block. Maybe I need to drink more coffee? I still play my guitars -- both 12 string and electric, but it's mainly to keep the ability going, and relearn a few acoustic songs I wrote in 2011-2013. 

My cat is doing O.K., although she still demands that I watch her eat. 

What was left of the Great Aurora by the time I photographed it. I missed seeing the colors, but I did see these haunting looking rays projecting upwards and outwards from the North, at the time I took this picture on my Nikon L32, around 3:30 a.m.. I wish the rays of light would have shown up in the photo. Oh well.

SOLAR FLARES & THE GREAT AURORA

On the radio side of things, the night-time, long distance radio conditions have been mediocre, with a few notable exceptions. As always, even when overall SW conditions are mediocre, there are some surprises. 

As most MW and SW DXers know, we had a massive Solar Flare about two weeks ago, on May 10th -- the biggest one in 20 years -- and it wiped out all of the SW bands, turning them to quiet hiss. The night of the biggest Flare (and the Aurora, which I could just see early in the a.m.) produced just one SW station out of Mexico, that I could barely hear on two of my radios (my XHDATA D-328 + wire, and Panasonic RF-B45 + wire), so I know it wasn't some sort of overload image. Besides, the MW band was mediocre, so no MW stations would be strong enough to overload SW -- and they don't play Mexicano folk music, which I did hear on 6185 kHz, fading in an out in the grainy, Auroral static. 

So here's to Mexico's Radio Educacion: you were the only station on SW heard in my part of the world during the 'killer' Solar Flare. PS, your music and programming is cool.

Since the Solar Flare of May 10th subsided it's still mostly poor to fair DX conditions on the MW and SW bands, so even though I tune them to see what's out there, it's not like I'm hearing a ton of new and interesting stuff.

The MW band in general has been sounding like poor summer evening conditions since the flare, although I did hear a Las Vegas station really well a couple nights ago, KMZQ, on 670. It was the loudest and most consistent signal I'd ever heard from that station. Other nights? It's nothing but staticky hiss in KBOI Boise's extremely tight 'null' spot on 670. And for those not acquainted with 'nulling' a station, it's what one does on the AM band to reduce one station's signal to nothing, so you can hear a second or third station in its place. It's a trick I discovered on my Sanyo M9926 Boombox in 1983 or so. I had read about it previously, but hadn't actually tried it.

Even a simple AM-FM-SW radio like this XHDATA is probably capable of FM DXing, as this radio pulls in FM almost better than most of my other FM portables, thanks to an excellent DSP chip inside.

This XHDATA D-328 pulls in a few fringe region FM stations really well at my location, just off the whip antenna. No real FM DX on any radio, yet, though. A lot of FM DX depends on location, location, location.

On the FM side of things, I haven't really done any attempts at FM DXing, although in other parts of the US there are guys who have started doing it. Spring and Summer are apparently the best times to hear Ionospheric E-Layer skip on the FM band, which is a bit more sporadic than the D- and F-layer skip that we MW and SW DXer's experience. Some of the catches FM DXer's get in other parts of the country are fairly spectacular, considering.... One WA state FM DXer has heard most of the Western US states on FM. Any time I've tuned around it's locals, fringe stations, or nothing. Sometimes Tropospheric 'ducting' will bring in Canadian stations from Victoria fairly well -- well, two of them. One time I heard a station out of The Dalles, Oregon -- I can't remember which one. It had to be either really good Tropospheric ducting, or perhaps some E-skip, as The Dalles is over 200 miles away and there are a lot of mountains in the way. That station is my best catch on FM, on my GE Superadio 1, a long long time ago.

I suppose I should try a lot more at the FM DX hobby. Some day, maybe....

 

I've also entertained the notion of eventually becoming a ham radio operator, although I don't presently have the finances to get a decent rig. If I do eventually take that step, it will be some years away, when finances permit. I already know that it would be a simple, bare-bones operation. One simple rig, a code key, and one simple antenna. Make the best out of whatever you've got.

But I have other, more pressing tasks to deal with before I even consider something like that.

My mystery bush -- some sort of Wild Rose, I think -- that blooms around this time every year. A friend of my father's planted it next to our birch tree one year a long time ago, and it's bloomed every year, ever since.

Despite the mediocre SW and MW conditions, things did improve over the past week or so, and there always are a few gems that appear even when SW and MW conditions are mediocre. The DSP in the DSP radios can help, but I've also done a lot of listening to two of my analog portables, my Panasonic RF-B45 and Radio Shack 200629, and the readability of the weak SW stations is still pretty good -- usually more than enough to ID the station. 

The ham bands have been a wash, before, and after the Solar Flares. 160M, 80M and the bands above 20M have been mostly dead with few exceptions. 20 meters has had a few DX stations present on different afternoons and evenings, but it hasn't exactly been slammed with signals.

30M sometimes has a CW QSO, but the past few nights the 'beacon' to the EU, the RTTY station at Pinneberg, Germany (10100 kHz), has been MIA. The other beacon, NAU, RTTY in Puerto Rico (10155 kHz), has been in at varying strengths.

In the past weekend (May 25-26), SW conditions did pick up. I heard several Japanese hams on the 41 and 20 Meter band during a ham CW contest, and I also heard a German ham and a few American guys talking about stuff. I also heard Reach Beyond Australia, broadcasting to a small population of people in the hills between India and Burma, in a language I'd never heard before (Nga La -- maybe 40,000 speakers total). That was cool. Reach Beyond Australia transmits from the old Radio Australia transmitters in Kunnunura, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. Like Radio Australia, they use the cackle of the Kookaburra bird in their ID's. Pretty cool.

The DX-350A radio -- like a lot of smaller portables -- sometimes can overload on really strong SW signals. At the same time, just using the whip antenna sometimes just isn't enough to bring in a lot of stations on the SW bands. Clipping a wire to the whip antenna can help, but it can also overload the radio's front end amplifier transistors.

Placing resistors in between the wire antenna and whip antenna can help with this. The resistors lower the signal levels just enough to keep the radio from overloading.

I'm using two resistors here because I didn't have a small enough value one. 200-500 or 1000 ohms or so would probably be just right -- both of these resistors were over 33K ohms. Clipping them in parallel like this dropped the resistance to around 19K ohms. It got the job done -- it worked!

USING A WIRE ANTENNA WITH MY REALISTIC DX-350A

& NO OVERLOAD!

After a while of not using them, I fired up my Realistic DX-350 and DX-350A earlier this past week, trying my indoor, 25 ft. wire antenna by clipping it to the whip. Normally, the 350A would overload with a wire antenna, but this time I had my drop-down resistors that I rigged up to experiment with, and the results were pretty satisfactory. It's pretty easy to rig up an antenna drop down resistor -- all you need is an alligator clip. Being that most alligator clips have set screws, there is no soldering necessary. Run one resistor lead through the 'handle' of the alligator clip, loop the lead around the set screw, and screw it down, and make a small loop or hook with the other resistor lead to give your wire antenna's alligator clip something to clip onto.

It worked really well. My 350A, as I mentioned, will often overload on SW if you use an external wire antenna. Sometimes you'll get lots of extra hiss and FM transmitter hash (one of the two major FM transmitter locations is about 5 miles N of me, and it can slam the 31 and 25 Meter bands with hash in a couple places). 

With the drop-down resistor, the overload was eliminated. I had to use both of my resistors in parallel because the only ones I had in my parts box were pretty high value -- 47K ohm and 33K ohm. Ideal resistance would be 250 ohms to 1-2K ohms or so. But with both of my resistors in parallel, I got roughly 19K Ohms, which wasn't bad. It got the job done.

PANDORA: WHERE 2010's E.D.M. POP LIVES STILL

As I've stated here on this blog in the past, for some reason the pop music of the early 2010's really appealed to me, and -- to be honest -- it still does. I wrote a blog about this over a year ago, where I was commenting on the general state of music at the time -- and to be blunt, the general state of popular CHR and rock music hasn't really improved. There are a few bright spots here and there, but overall, it seems about as dull as the grey weather outside.

And the pop music of 2012 was so upbeat, so emotion-tinged, so technically concise, so well produced and put together, and often technically edgy -- but it was also so easy to listen to and enjoy. And, face it -- much of it was PARTY MUSIC. Nowadays, the pop music isn't really party music. Neither is the rock music. Country music has its party moments, but it's not really my cup of tea.

The autotune which was popular in the 2010's was overused, but it gave the singers a nearly super-human quality to their voice. They sounded more AI than AI, but in a good way. Every note perfect. It seemed to fit the high tech tenor and delivery of the computer-driven EDM music that backed the singers.

2010's pop is miles from Rose Tattoo, of course (and Rose Tattoo is my favorite artist anymore), but it's still good. The pop music today is nowhere near as fun.

Where is Pitbull when we need him around?

On local FM radio today the 2010's hits that were so cool to hear -- Katy Perry's Part Of Me, Cobra Starship's You Make Me Feel, Calvin Harris's Feel So Close, Taio Cruz's Dynamite, Ollie Murs' Heart Skips A Beat, and the like -- get rare airplay, and some of them get NO airplay because they didn't pass the radio company's beloved "research". 2010's pop hits also are too new for Classic Hits and too old for Recurrents. It may take ten more years for a 2010's heavy pop format to show up on FM. And some songs that were so cool back then -- anyone remember the Gym Class Heroes? Or Andy Grammer? -- would never make it to a 2010's Radio format because everything on radio is researched to a crisp.

Well, rest assured, yours truly has discovered the appeal of streaming. My Android phone came with Pandora installed. I never used it until this weekend, when I decided to give the service a spin. I mean -- it's on my phone, so why not try it? So I did. Instantly, I was taken back to 2011-2012, when I discovered Pop Music again.

Within minutes I heard the Chainsmokers w/ Daya in Don't Let Me Down, Nick Jonas's Jealous, Taio Cruz's Break Your Heart, Nico & Vinz's Am I Wrong, and Ke$ha's Tik Tok, Nicky Minaj's Starships, One Republic's Counting Stars -- you get the idea. A lot of them I hadn't really heard before, like Flo Rida's Wild Ones. I'd heard a couple of his other hits but not that one. And I heard Pitbull within the first half hour -- on an Usher song. And Adele's classic, well-written hit Set Fire To The Rain played -- all within the first 45 minutes.

Here's a link to the 2010's Pop Channel on Pandora, for those interested.:

2010s Pop - Pandora

I can see clearly now, how Radio is being replaced, and redefined. 

Do I like it? Not necessarily. After all, I'm still a radio guy. I've always listened to radio, DX'ed radio, and I worked in the business for 20 years. You don't work in a business for 20 years and not have some feelings for its future.

But when I can tap an icon on my phone and hear my favorite, 2010's hits, one after another, do I like it? Well, yeah, I do like it. I see the appeal.

On the airwaves, an all-2010's pop channel probably wouldn't get good enough ratings to get a radio station agency buys. That's why there are no 2010's pop-heavy FM radio stations. But on a streaming platform, ratings isn't so much a concern that all music is researched to death. Online streaming platforms are a totally different animal.

Even the 'curated' music channels, like Pandora's 2010's Pop channel has a feature where you can give a song a thumbs up or thumbs down, so the algorithm will alter the music it sends to you. So it's like listening to a 2010's Pop radio station, where you can send in requests and they actually alter their playlist for you. 

I realise that for a lot of you this is already second nature -- as millions use Pandora, Spotify, and other streaming platforms. But I see now why people are into this.

Streaming platforms like Pandora have sizeable -- and growing -- chunks of the listening public for a reason.

I have heard the future, and the future is now.

Here's the Gym Class Heroes, by the way. The Fighter. Excellent song, released in late 2011. I heard it on local pop station KBKS 106.1 FM in early 2012. Wish I could find my CD copy of it. Better yet: I wish there were more songs being released like this today.:

In 2011 Andy Grammer said "Keep Your Head Up". I first heard this track on Radio Disney in 2012. Keeping your head up -- it's still a good idea.:

Yep, with inflation the way it is nowadays, we definitely have to keep our heads up, don't we.

I used to sing that Keep Your Head Up in karaoke at Uncle Mo's Pub in Renton back in the mid to late 2010's, sometimes closing the karaoke show with it. It's a good feeling song to sing.

As I pointed out in my second-to-last posting here, I was sick for a week. I'm mostly recuperated. This last Monday was Memorial Day. At first I wasn't sure whether I wanted to put my flag(s) out, which generally was my custom. Partly because it was going to rain, and partly because I didn't know if I wanted to risk my flags getting messed with or stolen. I was certain that one of my flags was stolen last year. I even wrote a post about it. I had literally thought it was stolen. But it turned out that someone had shoved it into the hedge, and I found it a while after I had written up the blog post.

I finally decided to go halfway, this year: I put out one flag, my newest one. And I kept an eye on it.

Happy end of May. 

Peace,

C.C., May 26th & 29th, 2024.

KPNW-FM, 98.9 Seattle's Flip-O-Rama Station -- Flips Again, This Time To Country

KPNW-FM lasted about a year and a half with an Alternative / AAA format. Next!

A few years back, on of our local Seattle area FM stations, Click 98.9 flipped to Rock, call letters KVRQ. They called themselves, unremarkably, "Rock 98.9". I remember wondering what Rock 98.9 could bring to the table, as -- at that time -- we had KISW 99.9 for Mainstream Rock; KNDD 107.7 for Alternative Rock; KFOO 102.9 for Classic Alternative Rock, and KZOK 102.5 for Classic Rock.

As it turned out, KVRQ Rock 98.9 filled the niche between KISW and KZOK very well. They were a fun station to listen to. They played a lot of 80's, 90's and 00's music that the other stations didn't concentrate on, and the music was programmed very well. You could hear Motley Crue, followed by Red Hot Chili Peppers, followed by Linkin Park, followed by Rage Against The Machine, followed by A Perfect Circle, followed by Disturbed, followed by Danzig... you get the idea.

Rock 98.9 was yanked off the air after a year and a half. They had a lot of loyal listeners, like myself (as well as a couple musos I know in the area), but they weren't promoted enough, and consequently didn't get the ratings. They did a few promos at rock shows, but the problem with Rock promotions is that there aren't many current rock stars, and 'classic' artists -- who usually play at the local Indian Casinos and draw crowds of maybe a thousand or so -- don't usually have the same pull that the few, huge classic rock acts like the Stones, Pearl Jam and Metallica have. And apparently having a fifth rock station in the metro just wasn't paying the bills.

The banner which was atop the long defunct KVRQ Rock 98.9 website.

They were a fun rock station. They lasted just a year and a half, to 2 years.

I wrote an article about KVRQ Rock 98.9 here.:

Interrock Nation: KVRQ 98.9 FM -- New Classic Rock Station in Seattle

So, being that Rock 98.9's ratings weren't what the owners, Hubbard, desired, they did what seemed natural: they flipped to Country -- now they were "KNUC The Bull". Why Country, especially in tech mad, anything but farm country, West Coast Seattle, the home of grunge? Well, Country music is the most popular music format in the US. 

The Bull got ratings, but they never beat their main competition, a longer established station on 100.7 called The Wolf. The Bull's promotions were mainly at Country shows. Country radio is one of the few remaining formats where word of mouth, and or promotions at shows works. This is because Country is one of the few remaining formats that has big stars. But even with a popular morning show, and whatever promotion they were doing, The Bull's ratings began to drop after about a year. 

The station was then flipped to KPNW-FM, an alternative / AAA (Adult Alternative) station. A lot of the radio guys on the radio forums I go to thought KPNW-FM (there is a KPNW-AM, a talk station in Eugene, Oregon, about 350 miles south of here) might be a non-starter. AAA is a dying format nationwide, and there are AAA channels on the streaming services that have gained the listeners that the Over-The-Air radio stations cast off when they flipped to other formats in the 2010's. The Pandora app on my smartphone has an AAA channel. I'm sure the other platforms have them, too.

That said, KPNW played an interesting mix, and, once again, just like Rock 98.9 before them, they got some loyal listeners. I listened to KPNW-FM a lot. It wasn't always my cup of tea, but they played a decent mix of music. The station wasn't promoted much, however. There were no KPNW billboards, no KPNW placards on buses, few, if any ads in local online media -- nothing like that.

In other words, they weren't exactly creative in their attempt to reach all the alienated AAA listeners.

It was another case of Radio thinking "If we just put it on the air, the listeners will show up, as if by magic." That might have worked well in 1985, when FM listeners tuned around a lot, but it doesn't work so well in 2024, when FM listeners don't tune the dial much. Most radios in newer cars, for example, don't really have dials. You have your favorites, and punch the virtual buttons on the dashboard screen. Also, many listeners use streaming services a lot. 

Radio somehow hasn't figured this out yet. More on that later...

Anyway, KPNW's ratings started low and then kept going lower.

The logo for The Bull last time around, when it was KNUC 98.9 FM. The new logo is similar. I posted the older logo here because I think it looks a bit cooler.

On a radio forum I go to, where a lot of pros hang out, I asked them why KPNW wasn't promoting their station to gain listeners in an increasingly multi-media, internet dominated world.

In other words, why weren't they advertising? Stations used to do that all the time in previous decades. I used to see radio station billboards, and placards on the sides of buses. The concept of advertising a radio station seemed to work back then -- why not now?

What I got back from the experts was the keyboard equivalent of a shrug. Experts there said that KPNW was indeed promoting. They were giving away tickets to shows. They may have had some sort of presence at some musical events (what type of presence isn't really clear). 

I said "But.... what about advertising, though?" Radio used to advertise heavily -- and now, with so much competition from streaming platforms like Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, ApplePlay, and other platforms, advertising seems like a no-brainer.

No, said the experts. That's not how it's done. You do what KPNW did -- ticket giveaways. "That's how you reach their potential listeners."

OK, offer ticket giveaways -- but to who? If your potential audience doesn't know your station is present on the FM band, how are they going to get your tickets? The point is to get people to listen to the station, right? How is giving tickets to people who already are listening going to gain more listeners to your station? FM listeners don't troll the band looking for new music like they did when I was a kid. They keep their radio on a couple presets, and -- increasingly -- they use streaming services, streaming playlist, and curated streaming channels (like Pandora's AAA/Adult Alternative channel -- which I can get on my phone through the app) to listen to music.

You've got to find a way to get them to check out your station. They're not going to find it on their own anymore.

Not everyone is a radio nerd. Today, it's more like "What's a radio?"

Anyway, any time I asked questions about KPNW's lack of internet and billboard promotion, I got what seemed to be canned replies. "That's not how it's done in radio," seemed to be the gist of it. "It's word of mouth. That is the only thing that works."

Now, most businesses probably love it when a satisfied customer tells others. So the concept of 'word of mouth'? I get that.

But advertising is a billion dollar business for a reason. Advertising often works.

I shook my head after these interactions with the experts. If THAT is really how the people running radio stations think you promote your content brand with all that internet competition out there, RADIO IS DONE.

Now, I'm no radio expert. I'm a radio blogger / journalist, but I'm no expert. I'll admit that completely.

But I can tell you this: whatever form of promotion KPNW tried -- ticket giveaways, word of mouth, it wasn't working.

As Radio ditches music formats that cater to age 50+ demos, treating the older demographics like they are little more than yesterday's trash, the migration away from Radio to services like Pandora and Spotify continues. Pandora has several channels featuring the AAA/Adult Alternative music that a lot of college educated, older demographics like. They also have several oldies channels, including a surf music channel. They have a smooth jazz channel, too.

 Radio ditches 'em, Pandora hitches 'em.

THE INTERNET: IT'S A DIFFERENT ANIMAL. GET USED TO IT.

News flash: The Internet is becoming the dominant form of music consumption, with YouTube, Spotify, Apple and Pandora leading the way. Amazon Music is also a key player. The radio based platforms like IHeart and Audacy have a long way to go to compete, but they're trying.

But when your industry is losing listeners to online platforms, shouldn't it be time to think outside the box?

Whenever I mention the FACT that in 15-20 years the vast majority of the more than 15,000 radio stations in the US will no longer exist, even online, the radio experts respond with crickets.

But it's fact. Online is a different animal. There are visibility issues. There are subscription problems. If you run ads, it can drive listeners / content consumers away from your site, so you have to work around that issue. There are expensive digital royalties for streaming music services -- including the radio ones. Even if you get them to load your "app", your "app" may be lost in the gazillion other icons on their phone's screen.

Online -- even for a radio station -- really isn't plug and play. Especially when you switch off the transmitters and antennas, and your entire operation is just one more website out of millions of them.

And that visibility issue is MASSIVE. It's so easy for any content channel to get lost in the vast internet static. Just ask any online newspaper that still failed. There are a gazillion news sources, valid and invalid, out there -- all that competition for screen time. The competition for the news marketplace today even is global in scope. All those websites, worldwide.

And even a decent local newspaper has issues keeping the lights on. Even national newspapers have problems. Ask the LA Times, which loses tens of millions of dollars a year, and laid off more than 100 staff in the past couple of years. 

The internet is a harsh mistress.

When I bring this up on the radio forums, no one gets it.

And that, in itself, is another problem.

THE 'NEW ECONOMY' ISSUES THAT ALL THAT RESEARCH MISSED

When the Audacy radio corporation bankruptcy was a news issue on the radio websites a couple months ago, one guy asked the experts: Why didn't the big radio companies foresee that the internet media competition would hit them in the wallet? Why didn't they -- with all their blessed RESEARCH and highly paid consultants -- foresee that the internet would drive down advertising rates, because of the infinite number of slots -- you know, all that competition?

The experts really didn't have a good answer. I suppose a lot of what is slamming radio now is post-Pandemic economics, something that nobody could foresee. But it still remains: the Internet has been vaunted as THE FUTURE since 1998-1999 -- just before the Dot-com crash -- when news articles were constantly talking about the "New Economy" versus the "Brick and Mortar" economy. That was 25-26 years ago.

These big radio companies depend on consultants, research, studies, polls, ratings services -- they have all of this expert information at their hands and they didn't see the advertising issue happening, and right now many of them seem to be lost when it comes to the future of Radio.

Personally, I think that if I'm still alive and kicking in 2045, there won't be more than a couple hundred AM radio stations on the air in the US, and more than 3-4 thousand FMs. And those numbers will probably drop, year by year. They may migrate to the internet, and still will probably fail. Because of the economics of streaming. Very few radio stations 20 years from now will have viable, independent streams. 

The vaunted future of every station on the air today having a viable streaming station tomorrow simply will not happen. The economics of competing in an increasingly national and global media audio market, and the complications of internet streaming economics will not support it.

Now, maybe that future dominance of just 5-6 major streaming platforms is inevitable, promotion or no promotion, thinking out of the box, or not thinking out of the box. Maybe there is absolutely nothing radio stations can do to see the end of this century. But that said, it appears that "Radio" -- as we know it -- won't last. It will be streaming networks, on one of the massive platforms. Your local station won't survive. The economics won't support it anymore than it's supporting your local newspaper right now.

And the backwards looking leadership at a lot of radio companies seems to be helping it on its way into the electronic trashcan in the sky.

Either way, this latest debacle here in Seattle on 98.9 is a head scratcher. KPNW-FM looked like a potential money maker -- maybe not a massive moneymaker, as the older Millennials and younger GenX'ers they wanted to reach are in their 40's and 50's, the high end of the sales demographics. But AAA listeners are generally educated, and well-to-do -- not much different from your average Public Radio listener.

I thought that if KPNW-FM advertised and actively promoted their station, they had a chance. Seattle, the home of Grunge and Alternative, would be receptive to Alt and AAA music. The listeners just had to be reached out to, and found. So that they would set the virtual buttons on their car system to KPNW.

But it didn't work out.

There, of course is another wrinkle in this story. Another Seattle FM station, Star 101.5, flipped from AC to Classic Country. They're now "101.5 Hank FM" (not to be confused with the "Hank 101.5 FM" in Dayton, Ohio). They flipped Classic Country the same day that KPNW-FM flipped to Country.

The question is whether a Classic Country station can do well in a city that isn't exactly rural or Country lifestyle oriented. In the 1990's we had two big Country stations (KMPS 94.1, which often topped the ratings, and KRPM 106.1), and a third one that made an attempt (KYCW, Young Country 96.5).

But that was when Country was massive, and their big stars were literally superstars. Garth Brooks, Clint Black, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt, Shania Twain, the Dixie Chicks, and some others were super popular even outside the Country music arena. But that was the 1990's and early 2000's. The young people who were into Country in the mid 1990's are over 50 now, and advertisers don't care about listeners over 50.

Also, Classic Country, as a music format, is said to be a hard sell to advertisers, as a lot of the listeners are older demographics. So KPLZ's flip from Hot AC -- one of the top radio formats in the US -- to Classic Country could be a gamble.

So what does this all leave for a station like "Hank"? It's hard to say.

I guess time will tell.

For those curious to hear "101.5 Hank FM" in Seattle (not the "Hank 101.5 FM" station in Dayton, OH), here is their website, creatively called "CrankTheHankSeattle".:

101.5 - HANK FM SEATTLE (crankthehankseattle.com)

If you want to check out "The Bull 98.9", here is a link to their stream.:

Number One For New Country - 98.9 The Bull (989bull.com)

If you want to get a feel for what many Seattle listeners thought about 98.9 flipping to Country and 101.5 being turned into "Hank FM", this RadioInk article covers some of that, and the numerous comments below the article are enlightening.:

Two Seattle Stations Go Country As KPNW and Star 101.5 Flip - Radio Ink

My Radio Shack 200629, which I got in 2013, strikes again! I logged WWL, New Orleans with it earlier this evening. The 200629 is a good MW DXer, especially if you couple it with an external loop antenna. The three way tone control works really well. 

With that, I'll close this article. Life is normal. As per usual, I've been MW DXing nightly... Earlier this evening, I actually heard WWL, New Orleans, briefly on 870 kHz, on my Radio Shack 200629 with my crate loop. WWL were playing the Dave Ramsey Show, his theme song "Baker Street" (by Gerry Rafferty) being easy to pick out in the mix. The snippet came up for several seconds and then faded back to unreadable audio behind Pasco, WA talker KFLD.

I hadn't heard WWL in nearly a decade. New Orleans is a long, long distance from here. When I hear WWL, it generally means that the really long distance DX is coming in. So perhaps this present dud of a Solar Cycle is sharpening up!

One can only hope, as Solar maximums are also good for other things, like growing crops. :-)

Aside from that, the weather is improving. I have a few radio articles I'm still working on. I hope this blog post finds everyone out there -- all over the world -- doing well.

Peace.

C.C. April 4th, 2024.