In this week’s Programming To Win column, Robby Bridges notes that the reports of radio’s demise have been greatly exaggerated for decades now. Looking back through the years, Bridges points out that the medium has had a number of competitors for Americans’ eyes and ears, and still remains strong.
Robby Bridges
By Robby Bridges
“Radio is dead.”
Or so David Sarnoff, Chairman of the RCA Corporation (arguably the most powerful media mogul of the era) is quoted as saying in 1952. Sarnoff’s proclamation proved correct in the sense that the 25 year run network radio had played as the be to all end all was dying. Radio’s biggest programs like The Lone Ranger, Superman, You Bet Your Life and its biggest stars from Uncle Miltie to Lucy to Jackie Gleason had all moved to television and they weren’t looking back. So too, the moment in history when Americans would sit and gather around radio, piece of living room furniture it was, had passed, TV had replaced it in this role too. However, radio had not died it was about to evolve. As stations, first in the smallest markets, began to fragment away from network programming and traditional fare, a few pioneers had already found the key to the future:
As early as the 1930s, Al Jarvis and Martin Block were widely credited as the first significant “disc jockeys” on radio. They were not announcers but used their own personalities to introduce records they played from “The Make Believe Ballroom.” Storz and McClendon Broadcasting were scooping up stations and pioneering something called the Top 40 format (playing the 40 most popular records of the day over and over again matched with attention grabbing promotions and marketing). Meanwhile, the first generation of personalities such as Alan Freed at WJW/Cleveland, Dewey Phillips at WHBQ/Memphis and others were catching on to the idea of not only introducing audiences to rhythm records, but staging dances and concerts with new artists.
Last, as the baby boomers turned 16 and got their keys and drivers licenses, they turned on the radio as they drove and never turned it off. In the decades that followed thru the migration to FM, the advent of cassette tapes, 8 tracks, CDs, video games, car phones, cell phones, cable and satellite TV, computers, Internet, deregulation, Sirius/XM, iTunes, Pandora and their followers and Napster; radio remained (and remains) a multibillion dollar business year after year. FM music stations ever so slowly responded to the changing listening habits at times by placing value on digital, while AM was reinventing itself (when it too was left for dead in the early 80s) by becoming the source for talk, sports, religion and ethnic community focused radio.
In my last column, I cited Jimmy Fallon as a transformative figure in media in discussing the late night TV shake ups. Much as we keep reading about radio’s demise once again today, we read that network television (indeed anything not on Netflix or linked on social media) is being watched perhaps only by a few sorry souls in nursing facilities. Fallon’s success is not only noteworthy for marked change in tone of the venerable Tonight Show, but in that he has maintained and grown traditional viewing, live +7 day on DVR, but most importantly, connected to his audience (and generated publicity) through the show’s focus on creating digital clips from show content in addition to original content; as well as live chats/web/blogging/social media.
It is fair to say The Lone Ranger is not galloping back to commercial, terrestrial radio. Perhaps, the general example founded by Storz, Freed and others and applied to many stations and formats is also coming to an end. (In the sense that operating as a standalone media has already forever changed) It goes without saying that all talent/stations need to be doing EXACTLY what Fallon and those like him are doing, but radio may need to and certainly will reinvent itself once again as it celebrates its 100th birthday. One thing will never change: its basic human nature and the desire for content. What that content will be is yet to be seen, but it will come.
“A little revolution is good from time to time.” – Thomas Jefferson
Robby Bridges is the Program Director of WEBE/Bridgeport CT, previously programming WFAS/Westchester and has been a host on WPLJ/New York and the True Oldies Channel on Cumulus Media Networks. He is also President of BBOR Productions, developing and marketing syndication, music and production pieces nationally. Previously Bridges has worked in various capacities at WCTK/Providence, Z100/New York, Q102/Philadelphia, WODS and WBMX/Boston and elsewhere in New England. Robby can be reached at 203-333-9108 or robby.bridges@cumulus.com.
