Posted on 08/16/2012 9:24:10 AM PDT by raccoonradio
With a third of talk radio's audience now over 65, on-air talent is aging apace -- leaving the future of a stagnant, debt-saddled industry in question.
There's no room on the radio for a new Howard Stern today," says Tom Leykis. The firebrand talk show host is among the few former FM personalities who could command a Stern-like contract, thanks to stellar ratings in 25 markets over 12 years. But after CBS Radio pulled the plug on his show in 2009 (paying out his $20 million-plus contract), the popular host didn't jump to a terrestrial station or to satellite, opting instead to create his own Internet radio network symbolically dubbed "The New Normal." With four fully-licensed music stations streaming some 50,000 songs along with his own daily call-in show, 400,000 tuned in during launch week in April and 1.7 million in its first month -- "more than the cumulative audiences of 14 Los Angeles radio stations," Leykis boasts. With a $1 million investment of his own money, he expects to be profitable by the end of the year.
Leykis, 56, says he left his first love not because he couldn't get paid, but because he believes traditional radio is dying. Thanks to iPods, podcasts and hundreds of satellite stations, radio audiences are getting older (more than a third of talk-radio listeners are 65 and older) and the personalities are aging out of relevance. "KABC's new show is hosted by Geraldo Rivera, who's 68, John and Ken came on KFI in 1992, Bill Handel in 1988, Rush Limbaugh in 1989," notes Leykis of the L.A. market's top English-language stars. The spring chicken, he says with a laugh, is 48-year-old Tim Conway Jr. At 37, KIIS star Ryan Seacrest is actually younger, but it is telling that L.A.'s youth-targeted alt-rock outlet KROQ has had the same morning hosts, Kevin and Bean, for more than 20 years. Pop station KAMP's Carson Daly, 39, first appeared on KROQ in the mid-1990s.
More frightening for lovers of traditional, ad-supported radio: There don't appear to be too many future Seacrests primed to take over (the American Idol host got his start as an intern at Atlanta's WSTR), partly due to diminishing pay but also because people aren't listening. As many as 40 percent of Americans consume audio on digital devices, according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, and that number is expected to double by 2015. "Each successive generation is turning away from radio," says Michael Harrison, publisher of radio trades Talkers and Radio-Info.com. "That’s not necessarily terrible. The upper demos today are wealthy, involved and active and have a lot of years ahead of them. The same is true of older DJs and talk show hosts -- they’re not over the hill; with age comes better talent and wisdom. But looking down the road 15 years, it’s problematic.”
More pressing is the reality for congloms such as Sirius XM and Clear Channel, which are saddled with debt that came post-consolidation and prerecession. In Clear Channel's case, its 2008 sale to Bain Capital and Thomas H. Lee Partners has left the radio group, which owns 850 stations and has the largest reach in the country, $20 billion in the red, with massive payments due in 2014 and 2016. "A lot of radio can't afford to be radio," says Harrison. "They're winging it. High-paid personalities, news departments … When the ownership has to concentrate on cutting costs, alleviating debt and not taking on expenses, it's difficult to put attention into creating a product."
Leykis agrees: "Radio stations are like many of the homeowners in Corona -- they bought a $799,000 dollar house that’s now worth $496,000,” he says, referencing the foreclosure-ridden L.A. suburb. "Why spend $100 million to buy a frequency when most people, even those over 40, are getting content on their iPhones? It’s hard to make those payments, just like it is for the homeowner. You have to find another way to get your curated content out."
For the most part, the belt-tightening has only served to stem the bleeding, not increase profits -- although radio revenues grew by 1 percent to $17.4 billion in 2011, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau, that's a fraction of the medium's 6 percent growth in 2010.
It's a grim outlook that radio industry observers long have dreaded, where centralized programming rules (Seacrest is currently heard on 177 stations worldwide), program directors oversee a half-dozen stations and local jocks are rarely present. Leykis predicts many AM stations will simply cease to exist in the coming years. Instead, the frequency will be used for "WiFi, cell phone service, opening and closing garage doors, police, fire or aviation channels …" And he doesn't bemoan that future. "It would be a better use for the frequency." That leaves one wondering: Will anybody object?
TOP 5 RADIO PERSONALITIES
Terrestrial radio's most popular talk show hosts are also among the oldest. Rush Limbaugh, 61: The Rush Limbaugh Show (Premiere Networks) -- 15 million listeners per week Sean Hannity, 50: The Sean Hannity Show (Premiere Networks) -- 14 million listeners per week Michael Savage, 70: The Savage Nation (Talk Radio Network) -- 9 million listeners per week Laura Ingraham, 48: The Laura Ingraham Show (Talk Radio Network) -- 6 million listeners per week Ed Schultz, 58: The Ed Schultz Show (Dial Global) -- 3 million listeners per week
I’m a Dennis Prager listener myself.
Yea, that’s what I thought, too.
Want to know something really funny?
Back when commercial radio started, hams had access to what is now the AM band - and frequencies below.
When the US Navy (who was the first federal agency given control of the airwaves) decided that only medium and low frequencies were of use, the Navy took control of about 2MHz and below, and gave everything else to hams.
Sadly, we hams then went on to show the government bureaucrats just how useful the higher frequencies were, and they came back for them.
They had the music I remember!
I feel the same way about KWIZ, broadcasting at 1480 kilocycles out of Santa Ana, Calif., which broadcast songs from the 1950's and early 1960's--with an occasional new release from Engelbert Humperdinck or Dean Martin--in the late 1960's. I was one of the station's few teenage listeners.
conservative radio is pretty neutral here in Miami.
You’ll have Glen Beck and then Rush andthen it gets a bit “squishy” after Rush. I do enjoy Rich Menaya (sp) because he seems to be just fed-up with a lot of BS, but he tends to back track. The Schnitt Show is meh.
Savage is on 850 am and inaudible in some parts of Miami Dade.
Liberal Radio doesn’t exist outside of NPR
Those AM frequencies would be utterly unsuited for any of the uses he proposed. Certainly the thought that they could be used for WiFi is laughable. He is a radio pro and certainly he knows better.
That being said, we have had 5 small AM stations “go dark” in this area over the past couple of years, and a couple of others are teetering. Part of the problem is that for stations with directional signals that have to use multiple towers, the land they sit on has become more valuable than the earnings of the station (much as has happened to drive-in movie theaters)
I think the future of AM will be in smaller, lower-powered, nondirectional community stations (perhaps 1kW max). They will be cheaper to operate and viable for concerned citizens (dare I say Tea Party) to get together and run.
And a lot of those ‘ham’ stations morphed into commercial stations, once the industry matured a bit, and the Commerce Department began to get the idea and issue commercial licenses.
In the meantime, one of the Commerce Department’s not-so-forward looking ideas at the beginning of the 1920’s was to put all stations on exactly 360 meters (833 KHz,although they used wavelength back then). I guess they didn’t foresee that more than one party every thousand miles might become interested in setting up a radio station. Of course, they got past that idea pretty fast.
Wikipedia:
>>The Advertising Council, commonly known as the Ad Council, is an American non-profit organization that distributes public service announcements on behalf of various sponsors, including non-profit organizations and agencies of the United States government.
The Advertising Council generally does not produce public service advertisements itself, rather, it acts as a coordinator and distributor. The Advertising Council accepts requests from sponsor organizations for advertising campaigns that focus on particular social issues. To qualify, an issue must be non-partisan (though not necessarily unbiased) and have national relevance. The Advertising Council then assigns each campaign to a volunteer advertising agency that produces the actual advertisements. Finally, the Advertising Council distributes the finished advertisements to media outlets.
The Advertising Council was conceived in 1941, and shortly after, in February 1942, it was incorporated as The War Advertising Council for the purpose of mobilizing the advertising industry in support of the war effort. Early campaigns encouraged the purchase of war bonds and conservation of war materials.[
Famous campaigns:
Rosie the Riveter
The crying Indian (pollution)
United Negro College Fund: A mind is a terr. thing to waste
Smokey Bear
McGruff the Crime Dog
Crash Test Dummies (no not the rock band. “Don’t be a dummy. Buckle your safety belt.”)
Rush is all politics all the time. At least Dennis mixes it up alot. I usually enjoy his Ultimate Issues hour, and the last hour of his show on Fridays which is call in, any topic.
Leykis was a ranting lefty. Not competitve with the conservative talkers.
? Golf, NFL, and Apple.
Well, that proves one thing.. the consultants are DNC moles.
Beware aged 1960s Marxist-Alinsky campus radicals (psycho spoiled brats actually) and their robotized ideological brats; they are truth vandals and are using their patented "sharpie" attacks to deface truth.
Count me in too. I can't listen to three straight hours of politics. The dedicated hours are great.
If "leykis" sounds like the name of a social disease, that's because it is.
It’s a near invisible way to keep the ‘economy’ going.
“Hopefully there will indeed be new voices for conservative talk. The article I posted lists some like Andy Dean who is 31 (and some say he sounds more like 14).”
I know about him. He’s a mere baby compared to most on the AM dial.
“It is true though that many talk hosts are really getting up there. They didn’t even mention that fossil Imus.”
A perfect example would be a guy like Jim Bohannan who does his daily “List Of Celebrities Who’s Birthday Is Today” and never once mentions anyone under 55. Talk show hosts like him who give the impression of being totally out of touch with the pop culture of today do not attract younger listeners.
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