Radio is dead. It actually died quite a while ago, and now, it’s beginning to smell funny. Just now, a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers introduced a bill calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to require AM in new vehicles. It’s pointless.
Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., one of the bill's sponsors, said eight of 20 major automakers including Ford, BMW and Tesla have pulled the band from new vehicles. “Ford's reversal reflects an overdue realization about the importance of AM radio, but too many automakers are still going the wrong direction.”
Ford removed AM from the 2023 Mustang Mach-e and F-150 Lightning electric pickups after data showed less than 5% of customers listened to it, spokesman Alan Hall said. Electrical interference and reducing cost and manufacturing complexity also played a role.
This is an ingenuous remark, considering that the ability to receive AM was already present in the radios, but had been turned off by software. It’s almost as if those car makers wanted to prevent you from listening to AM.
In the spring of 2007, (analysis) of the 257 news/talk stations owned by the top five commercial station owners revealed that 91 percent of the total weekday talk radio programming was conservative, and 9 percent was progressive. It’s unlikely that these proportions have changed much.
Voice tracking: The death of ‘local’ radio.
Clear Channel Communications Inc., owned 173 radio stations in 1997. By 2004 Clear Channel owned 1,207 radio stations. It was rebranded as iHeart.
Back in the ‘good old days’ radio stations were individual and catered for local audiences, up to a maximum reach of about 50Km. Thus each station had an owner, engineers, and on-air talent. Locals found it relevant because it was ‘live and local’. But then, the technology changed. It became easier to transmit, in real time, over satellites and then, the Web. The bean-counters said to management, “If we bought other radio stations with the same format, we could use one voice talent to do the links for all of them. We can pick the best talent and fire all the others”.
And so it came to pass. The FCC (in the USA) and OFCOM (in the UK) allowed radio stations to be bought up by conglomerates such as iHeart and Bauer, and very quickly, most of the presenters were fired and replaced by voice tracking. Engineers found themselves scurrying from one problem to another, many were fired.
So, no more ‘local and live’. No more of what attracts listeners to listen. If your radio station isn’t local, why not listen to a podcast? Or a selection of tracks on a USB? Back in 2006, only 22 percent of the adult population in the United States was aware of podcasting. By 2022, this figure had risen to 79 percent.
If you want to listen to music, radio is a poor medium to choose because it’s a ‘serial’ rather than a ‘parallel’ format. Songs on the radio arrive one at a time, you don’t get to pick. On a USB stick, you can select whatever you like, or use (EG) Spotify to play a curated list of your favourites. So radio loses out. If you want to listen to talk, you can choose a podcast—or you can listen to the radio where nine out of ten stations are spouting propaganda for Trump and Ron de Santis. The requirement for ‘fair and balanced’ radio was removed by the FCC in 1987 and replaced by “Those with the most money get to shout the loudest.”
Finally, I’d like to ask you to think about your own listening. Other than in the car, do you listen to radio? Is talk radio fair and balanced? Do you think it should be? Is radio dead, to you?