Richard Harker
by Richard Harker
Radio is suffering from a serious case of technology envy. Trade publications, consultants, pundits, group heads, and Wall Street analysts are all absolutely consumed by the multiple threats of satellite radio, Internet radio, and iPods. Frothing bloggers are aghast that radio hasn’t responded quickly enough by rolling out HD radio. Equipment vendors have preyed on this consuming preoccupation by asserting that HD radio will cure all that ails radio. They argue that as soon as listeners discover HD radio, our problems will be solved.
It’s very convenient to blame our troubles on these other technologies and propose that our own technological response will solve the problem, because that way we don’t have to look any further. We don’t have to take an honest look at 21st century commercial radio and wonder whether our problems perhaps have nothing to do with technology. If we did, we might rethink both the source of the problem as well as the solution.
The fact is, radio today is Boring with a capital B. Ask listeners, and they will tell you. Radio is boring. And we have no one else to blame but radio itself. Radio is boring. And that fact will not change if all we change is the way we deliver it. Boring HD radio is just as boring as boring AM radio, which is just as boring as FM radio. Let’s be honest. The sad state of radio has little to do with technology.
Internet radio, satellite radio, and streaming services, along with iPods and computer games have everyone’s attention because they aren’t boring. Those are technologies, you say? The means with which those services are delivered are technological (as are amplitude and frequency modulation), but it is the products they deliver that have created the buzz, not the technologies themselves. Have you heard anyone excitingly talk about Rock or Roll, XM’s two satellites? Have you heard any heated discussions debating the merits of Rhapsody versus Yahoo! Music? Except for a small cadre of geeks, the technologies that deliver these products are completely irrelevant. People are excited about these new alternatives to radio because they are liberating. They liberate the listener from the predictable and the repetitious. They liberate the listener from commercials and chatter. So the technologies are not the problem. The problem for radio is that these new technologies facilitated innovation in radio, and commercial radio stations failed to respond.
Think back to the challenge that radio faced when television appeared. Variety shows, dramas, news, and sports could now be heard and seen. Traditional radio programming seemed quaint by comparison. Radio was forced to change. Radio had to reinvent itself offering new programming that people could not find on television. Radio invented music formats, and then specialized in spoken word formats, and suddenly this quaint out of date medium was hot again. One wonders how today’s cautious controlling centralized programming mind-set would have coped with the arrival of television. I suspect that we’d still be cursing television rather than figuring out how to regain momentum from this new medium.
Radio stations were once highly influential in pop culture. People used radio to find out what was hot and new, and what they wanted to talk with others about. Now the Internet plays that role. The question is whether the Internet displaced radio in that role, or whether the Internet filled the void after radio abandoned its traditional role. Most people would say that radio was pushed out, but was it? If that is the case, how does one explain the continuing success of magazines? If the Internet’s speed at delivering buzz is its strength, how does one explain the success of Spin or Blender? Or for that matter, the resilience of Rolling Stone? If there is anything that ought to be obsolete in the Internet age, it should be magazines. But they survive, and those who have embraced the Internet age flourish. Yet commercial radio, a more immediate medium, struggles.
The difference is lack of innovation in radio. The magazine industry is extremely competitive with magazines continually reinventing themselves to stay alive. Radio likes to play it safe. Radio places a higher value on risk avoidance than success. How else can we explain the fact that there hasn’t been a new format in the past several decades that has managed to consistently deliver more than a two share. What new format has been able to crack the top ten in any market ranker? Doesn’t that suggest that radio is just a little timid, afraid to try anything a bit risky?
Exhibit 1 is the industry’s reaction to what I call the Attention Deficient Disorder format. A company called Radio S.A.S.S. has developed a new patented method to shorten songs. The technology is so sophisticated that the shortened versions are virtually indistinguishable from the original. This is not the crude shaved turntable drive-shaft method of the 1970s or even the more sophisticated time warping methods since. This is an entirely new method that enables a station to play 20-30% more songs each hour. While editing songs to shorten them was de rigueur with 1970s Top 40, it fell out of favor as music formats migrated to FM and it became cool to play longer versions of songs.
The reaction to the ADD format among broadcasters who have heard it has been universally negative. Not a single group who has seen it in action has been willing to even try it. Yet everyone in the business claims to be looking for the “next big thing.” Here we have what represents the first truly new format in decades and yet it sits on the shelf not even given a try. So much for the innovation that consolidation was going to bring to radio. (Harker Research has no financial interest in the company, but has tested listener reaction to it.)
The reasons given are predictable: “People won’t like it, they don’t like edited songs.” That might have been true in the 1970s and 1980s (where radio’s mind-set seems to be stuck), but we live in an era where no one can find enough time, and everyone is looking for time savers. The chance to listen to 20-30% more music in the same amount of time is an offer that few time starved listeners would refuse. More importantly, it would be something that everyone would listen to just to see how they do it.
We need to stop believing that some new technology is going to solve radio’s problems. Innovation in programming and offering what people want to listen to is the only thing that will save commercial radio. It saved radio from television, moved millions of listeners from AM to FM, and is HD radio’s only chance. Radio programmers need to be empowered, encouraged to innovate, and supported. Otherwise HD channels, streaming technologies, and all the other technologies we might embrace will be nothing more than quad stereo for the 21st century.
Richard Harker is President of Harker Research, a company providing a wide range of research services to radio stations in North America and Europe. Twenty-years of research experience combined with Richard’s 15 years as a programmer and general manager helps Harker Research provide practical actionable solutions to ratings problems. Visit www.harkerresearch or contact Richard at (919) 954-8300.
