Local radio stations struggle to maintain audience against a wave of digital disruptions

Local radio is dead.....or at least critically ill.

While I have sold against radio for nearly 25 years, in many respects I'm still an old radio guy at heart. I went to school for radio and television, had some amazing times working in the business and made some great friends along the way. A few are still working at radio stations; a place that I would hardly recognize from the stations I trained and worked at in the 1980's and 90's.

I hardly listen to local radio stations ever. My radio is cranking every time I'm in the car, but usually it is on Sirius-XM radio. On a rare occasion, my radio will slip over to WLW in Cincinnati but even that happens less and less.

The problems with the newspaper business is very well documented, as audience habits have changed and digital disruptions have taken over key segments of the business. Every bit of that last sentence is also true for the radio industry.

Pete Van Baalen playing the big band hits
on WFBM Noblesville, Indiana circa 1987

Radio's reaction has been similar as well, cutting expenses like crazy focusing on content. Instead of a local radio station having local programming, they run syndicated programming. To me, the beauty of local radio was that it was.....LOCAL! Programming was different up and down the dial, and from town to town.

Sirius-XM has captured about 99% of my radio time. But their influence is not that big in terms of audience size nationwide. But the audience they have is growing in size and more importantly in terms of influence.

The Wall Street Journal discussed the influence that satellite radio is exerting on country music. While their audience is smaller compared to broadcast stations with a country format, the music industry is taking notice. The typical listener of country music tends to be wealthier, better educated and much more likely to plug into social media compared with other music format listeners. Clearly, marketing and advertising people are always looking for that wealthier audience who can better buy the products and services of the customer. Add in the fact that satellite radio subscribers are going to score even higher on that wealth scale, since they are paying $200 a year for the service.

The full article from the Wall Street Journal can be found at:  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303847804579479631389940754?mg=reno64-wsj