Dennis Constantine has seen a lot of changes in the radio and music industries since he first strapped on the headphones in Baltimore in 1966. In 41 years Constantine saw the birth of Progressive Rock radio and helped FM overtake AM as the consumers’ band of choice. Working his way across the country from WYRE/Baltimore, Constantine helmed the launch of the legendary KBCO/Denver-Boulder, creating a Boulder-centric AOR station before it had the signal to serve Denver. Constantine was a key part of the birth of the Triple A format as KBCO-like AOR’s morphed into the fledgling format, leading him to form one of the key consulting companies guiding Triple A stations through the format’s formative years.
Today, Dennis Constantine is PD of CBS Radio’s Triple A KINK/Portland, and its Classic Hits sister, KLTH. While he has seen the industry adjust to the changing marketplace, Constantine spends more time looking forward than he does looking back, and recently chatted with e-QB about the impact those changes have had on the industry, and how he sees the future for both the radio and the music industries.
There have been a lot of changes in your 41-years in radio. When you look back over the last four decades, what is the single biggest difference in programming a radio station today?
The more scientific and specific approach that radio stations take. In the ’60s it was much more shoot-from-the-hip. We would try something to see how it worked. Today it’s much more measured and everything is much more deliberate and thought through. When you have the kind of tools we have available to us today, you know your listener better so you can deliver a product that’s going to be much more focused and to their liking. There’s more competition, so it doesn’t allow for as much room for error. There was a little more leeway because you didn’t have the kind of competition we have today, which is brutal at times because there are so many places people can go to hear music or radio services.
Speaking of change, how has the relationship between radio and listeners changed?
When we were programming stations in the ’60s and ’70s, we were appealing to 18 to 34-year-olds. The way that people in their teens and 20s listen to the radio is a lot different than the way people in their 40s and 50s listen to the radio. That in itself is a big difference. An older audience is much more passive because they have so many things going on in their lives. They have a career, a family. They have all these other things going on, and radio is just background to them, whereas to a teenager and 20-year-old it’s much more foreground.
Now, today’s teens and 20-somethings are much more inclined to work with interactive media because that’s what they’ve grown up with. So for them radio is passive and is not nearly as interesting as all of the interactive media, whether it’s games, iPods or even text messaging. For radio stations appealing to the teens and 20-somethings, it’s important to find ways to be interactive with them.
And how would you do that?
There are lots of ways including text messaging or instant messaging with the deejays. It’s whatever we can do to reach out and connect with people on a one-to-one level, because that’s really what media has become, a one-on-one relationship. Whereas, the idea of broadcasting is really kind of yesterday’s thought, today we individually reach out to people.
Can you cite specifics at KINK or KLTH?
We’re experimenting with various interactive things. A lot of the promotions we do are aimed at getting people involved with the station, because when they’re involved it triggers the memory. It makes that connection when they are asked what station they’re listening to in a “diary world.” They remember because they were having an interactive relationship with us, whether it’s through contesting or an on-air promotion. In the PPM world it’s going to be even more important.
How do satellite and Internet radio impact terrestrial radio?
Satellite was the first new kind of technology to come along offering an alternative to traditional broadcast, and it’s a subscription model that’s only going to appeal to certain people. People are being asked to subscribe to so many things – whether it’s cell phone service or Internet service or cable TV – at a certain point people are going to have a limit to how many things they can subscribe to. Yet there is a market for some people who want to have the subscription service. They just love the idea that they have this service that has all these channels that are so specific to musical genres.
But that said, what’s coming next is going to leave satellite radio in the dust, and that is broadband connections in cars. As a matter of fact, right now Portland is being wired up, and about half the city has broadband service and by the end of next year the entire city will be wired up. They actually have a free service for everybody at a slower bit rate. But for $10-a-month for a high speed Internet connection in your car or laptop, you can then tap into hundreds of thousands of radio stations on the Internet and bring them right to your dashboard. This is going to be another place where people suddenly have the opportunity to bring all this new media into their cars and their homes.
What are you doing in Portland to keep your listeners with you?
The first thing we’re doing is we’re making sure we have a presence and a brand on the Internet. As far as our broadcast, we just need to make it damn compelling. We need to be totally connected to the community. We do a lot of things at both of the stations I program that really help make the community a better place.
We’re involved with breast cancer, AIDS, hunger, the environment – all the things important to the people who live in our community. Whatever community it is, radio stations that are involved in those things important to people in their day-to-day lives are going to make an emotional connection with people. It goes beyond being a radio station that’s a jukebox. The future for radio is making a change in the community and really connecting with people on an emotional and value-based level.
In the last decade the corporate face of radio has changed dramatically through consolidation. What did the industry learn during that time?
First, the companies all took a different approach. There were some that were trying to consolidate and bring everything under one umbrella and manage the whole thing as one unit. Then there were other companies buying up properties and consolidating functions like accounting and engineering, but still allowing all the stations to operate individually, which is what the company I work for, CBS Radio, did. Every station here has its own facility. I program two stations that are in two different buildings.
Bigger is not necessarily better. But bigger can be more supportive of the individual brands. That’s been my experience. We’ve had tremendous support on continuing to build on our brand and make it more important and bigger in the community, and with resources of people. It’s great that people like [CBS VP Programming/WXRT PD] Norm Winer and other really smart people work in the same company and are all working together and can use each other’s resources and brain power to have great discussions about what we can do to make radio better.
Another challenge on radio’s horizon is the campaign to charge stations performance royalties for the music they play. What are your thoughts on that?
Will it really make a difference? That’s the question. I’ll use Shawn Colvin as an example. She had a Grammy Award-winning album and sold millions of copies of it. She finally left Columbia Records never really making any money from selling CDs. She made her money from performance, and most artists do make their money from touring. They don’t make money from the sale of their music.
So the bottom line is if it will make a difference and if so, why there’s the sudden push to change the way radio’s been doing business? Ultimately it’s going to create a more contentious relationship between radio and records. It’s going to be more costly for radio to the point where there’s going to have to be another wave of consolidation, because there are a lot of radio stations – especially smaller stations – that are already barely just making it because they don’t have enough income to support themselves.
Then you have all this new competition coming in, which is going to make it even harder to make money. Then they’re going to have to pay these additional fees. If something like this happens, I’m sure there will be a push for further consolidation of radio where one owner can come in and basically own all the stations in the market. I’d rather not see that happen. I think we’re big enough as it is.
With so many opinions about the future of the music and radio industries – both optimistic and ominous – how do you see it?
I’m not ominous; I’m very optimistic, but that’s my nature. First of all, music speaks to a special part of a person. It connects with the person in a place that’s artistic and there’s always going to be room for art in the world. As long as musicians are creating their art and not doing it for business but doing it for passion and love, and that’s being shared on the radio and with consumers, then there’s always going to be a market for that.
In radio we have to find ways to compete with these services that don’t run commercials, and still make money. However we do it, it’s going to take creative people to come up with solutions to keep it going. That’s ultimately what’s exciting about it – finding new ways to make it successful.
**QB Content by Jack Barton**
