The Internet and file sharing have been ringing alarm bells at radio stations across the country for years. The traditional response is to compete: beef up talent, add more contests, etc. What if radio could…cooperate instead? Why beat them if you can join them?
Clear Channel isn’t the first group to announce that its stations will only broadcast 10 minutes of spots an hour, but its recent spotload initiative announcement has focused attention on radio in a way that may benefit all broadcasters. While fewer commercials will make any station more listenable, they won’t automatically make stations more compelling.
For the last 15 months, I’ve been dubbing as many Iraq-related songs as I come across to CD. I’m up to five CDs now and roughly 100 songs with more materializing each day. And how the tenor of those songs (and what radio selects from them) has changed says a lot about the national mood.
The last few months have seen numerous heritage Top 40s, usually under attack from the Rhythmic end, walk away from their call letters or format or both. But in this week’s contrarian Ross On Radio, Sean Ross suggests that not only aren’t heritage calls an insurmountable problem, they may be all a station has to fall back on.
Hip-hop records typically open big in station research, due to their awareness from other formats and MTV, and burn quickly. Top 40 stations often find themselves one single behind R&B radio and in the trick bag of sounding too edgy for some listeners and not hip enough for others. Since just giving Hip-Hop to the R&B station isn’t an option for most, could PDs be getting a few extra weeks out of these records, and remain more competitive with their actives by playing them sooner?