Company News · January 28, 2009

What National Radio Could Be

By sross

Most of today’s broadcasters grew up under the sway of something more than their own local radio. It might have been the powerhouse AM rockers of the ’60s and ’70s – WLS Chicago, CKLW Detroit, WABC New York. A decade later, it might have been “American Top 40,” “Open House Party,” or even MTV – an extension of radio programming offering the same shared experience that the 50,000 watt AMs once did. Then it was Howard Stern, Tom Joyner, or Rush Limbaugh; (in the early ’90s, I knew a medium-market Midwestern PD who headed out to the car at lunchtime to catch Rush on WLS, not unlike night jocks across the country listening to John Landecker on WLS 15 years earlier).
National programming is, of course, as prevalent as it has been at any time in the last 50 years, but what we’ve gotten so far isn’t CKLW or MTV. Despite the rumors that last week’s Clear Channel layoffs would be accompanied by more national programming, the spread is still happening in bits and pieces – a Ryan Seacrest affiliate here, a new John Tesh station there, a new ESPN FM affiliate every few weeks. The potential national networks are mostly on national broadcasters’ Web players, for now.
Some syndicated shows for music radio are better and more compelling than others. A few networks, like Scott Shannon’s True Oldies Channel, have a well-developed stationality. (So do some Sirius XM channels, although few ever took full advantage of being national, and that stationality is now challenged by their own austerity issues.) But much of our national programming – seemingly built from the template of the early ’80s satellite programming suppliers – is generic, unable to pass unnoticed for local programming, but not offering the full bigness of being national. The demand to plug in something is growing faster than any aesthetic for what that programming could or should be.
To say that national radio could be better isn’t to be against great local radio, or in favor of the elimination of local jobs. Rather, it is to demand a better tradeoff for the local programming that’s being lost. Whether it was voice tracking a decade ago or syndicated shows now, the rationale we’ve been offered has always been that non-local radio could provide something different and better. So it’s time for broadcasters to ante up. With so many in the business having grown up with national music programming in some form, we have the collective brainpower to make national music radio something more than a placeholder.
National FM music radio could be great if:
* It was as good as BBC Radio 1, Britain’s national Top 40 station which regularly drawn complaints from rival broadcasters who feel they can’t compete with it (and who are now creating their own national brands), or any of Europe’s other great national commercial stations;
* Like Radio 1, national radio took better advantage of its own bigness. The prizes nobody else could offer. The format’s seven greatest personalities in the country in one place.
* It had the stationality that compensated for not offering a sense-of-place. (Again, think ’80s MTV.) Again, that’s a little hard to do when we’re creating programs, not stations. Or failing that…
* It offered any sense-of-place, even if that place was somewhere else. Radio from Chicago, New York, and even Detroit, Buffalo, and Little Rock, once represented “bright lights, big city” for somebody. Part of the excitement of KROQ or Ryan Seacrest in real time on KIIS is that those stations are in Los Angeles. That’s not something that a successful national station would necessarily have to hide.
* It were creating a shared experience – something radio has been in danger of losing for the last decade.
* It were creating community on a national basis. The big national shows, whether they’re Steve Harvey or Rush Limbaugh do it. Even weekly syndicated shows like “AT40” created community, as became apparent when all the music junkies who grew up with it finally met each other in the business. So will there Facebook postings from fans of (the thus far hypothetical) “Coast to Coast Hits”? Will “Coast to Coast Hits” spur its own social network?
* It was making formats that couldn’t otherwise sustain themselves in a single market available nationally on AM/FM radio, or keeping them there.
* It was targeted to audiences who weren’t consistently served by local radio, starting with the teens who, unless they happen to like the same Top 40 music as their moms, remain disenfranchised.
* It were creating more jobs on a national level, not merely shaving them on a local level. The veteran programmers and air talent who find themselves most vulnerable now are the ones who should be in demand — the veterans of the 50,000 watt powerhouses who remember exactly what national radio can be.
* If great local radio remained viable. Nobody would begrudge a market four nationally programmed music choices if there were 10 strong locally programmed stations. Or five. Or two.
* If it was the best radio available. Not merely the most expedient.

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