I know more local operators in Alabama than I do corporate.
But do those local operators own more stations than the corporate ownership? Bob's Local Radio LLC might own a few FMs and an AM each in Jackson and Troy, but iHeart owns 5+ stations in each major market. And so does Cumulus. And then there's Summit, and Bluewater, and someone else I'm probably forgetting (URBan? They are worth forgetting.)
I bet that at worst it's a wash between local small town radio and corporate as far as sheer numbers go statewide. And the biggest signals in the biggest cities with the most people under them are almost all corporate.
As for corporate greed, what about Pandora, Amazon, and Apple? Aren't they big corporations? Aren't they greedy?
I don't think any of those are a fair comparison to broadcast radio. Mainly because the pure plays are not exactly known for making money on streaming programming, and the Apples and Amazons of the world are merely offering music/audio as a complimentary service to keep people in their ecosystem. They are not necessarily money-makers. The handful of people who actually pay for Amazon Music Unlimited, for example, are probably a rounding error in the revenues of the greater Amazon company. Maybe that was the case with, say, Lincoln Financial in the 80's, I don't know. But if it was, it probably worked to the stations' advantage as far as programming and sales freedom.
Radio is as relevant now as anything else. It was easier then because radio had no competition. Now it does. No reason to give up. What happens when there's a major emergency? You call the boss on the phone, and they bring people in to work. That's what they did during the hurricanes. You don't staff for emergencies. Even the government doesn't do that.
Well yeah, actually the government does. FEMA doesn't magically grow in size when a hurricane threatens. Neither does the local county EMA. But the greater point is that if there is no one to "call in" in an emergency, how do you get the information out in the first place? Or if the emergency happens at 3 am when everyone's asleep, who is going to be there to answer the call from the EMA to get the word out to the listeners who might be up?
Sure, Cumulus can summon a few people in Mobile for hurricane coverage, out of all their stations they can probably wrangle 5 people to bed down for storm coverage. But in Podunk, the owner/morning host/janitor/lead sales guy can't do it all himself for 72 hours straight.
I remember the last major tornado outbreak I lived through in Birmingham, when all the radio stations rolled over and played dead. They either kept up regular programming or just fed TV weather audio over the air. Because TV on the radio always works so good. (AFAIK James Spann is the only weather guy there who goes through the trouble to describe maps and video information for radio listeners.)
Fringe formats could be supported by a cluster of stations. Stations could share resources. New ideas had the financial backing to be tried. One big complaint is consolidation means fewer format options and fewer chances taken but I have noticed the opposite. Nobody talks about Lone Star 92.5 in Dallas/Fort Worth trying a risky format (a blend of Classic Rock, Americana and Texana) and selling branding sponsorships limiting commercials to just one spot an hour. Each category of sponsor was limited to one (one beer advertiser, etc.) iHeart did that. It failed but it was tried and notes were taken.
As someone who isn't in this business of show and exists solely on the outside listening in, I can say that this has not been my experience at all across multiple markets in the deep south. The only format diversification has come through flanking, where a similar format is launched on a sister station to protect a heritage format. I have never once heard any kind of fringe format run by a corporate radio group prior to the AM/translator thing beyond that Lone Star experiment.
What I hear in each market is the same programming, with the same syndicated shows, in the same handful of formats: country, pop, classic rock, classic hits, urban, urban AC. Neither Birmingham nor Mobile, both with
significant African American populations, got an FM gospel station until the 21st Century. Neither has had a long-lasting classic country format that I am aware of. Standards was relegated to Crawford's AM in Birmingham in the late 90's, and continues to exist in Mobile on an AM owned by a succession of small time operators. AAA exists through another local owner in Mobile, and only via and HD/translator combo in Birmingham that's leased from a corporate player. What has corporate radio brought to Birmingham today? Sports sports and more sports. Urban urban and more urban. Country versus country station with no clear winners long-term.
It hasn't been until the second translator invasion that we've started seeing a slight diversification in formats, like what's happened in Montgomery and Columbus, GA. And as far as I can tell, iHeart's translator exploits in Birmingham are the exception in this state rather than the rule.
The same could be said about WalMart, Macys, Home Depot, CVS, Walgreens, Pizza Hut, Hair Cuttery, McDonalds, Taco Bell, and all the other corporate stores that have destroyed the local retail advertising base in small towns across the country. If you look at the overall picture, and how everything has changed in the last 30 or so years, the problems in radio seem very small. If you think radio is having a tough time, take a look at the newspaper business. Local business fed local media, and there really is no local retail as we once knew it. And when you add Amazon, eBay, and all the internet retailers to the picture, you start to see where the problem really lies.
At least Walmart, Macys and the like employ dozens and dozens of locals with each store they open. That's more than can be said for most radio groups. There are probably more full time employees at any Walmart or Home Depot than at an entire radio cluster these days. Their checks are money put back into the local economy.
Consolidation and Docket 80-90 started the slide to oblivion; the internet is accelerating the speed. It's unfortunate that radio took the Walmart approach for so many years. Look at what Walmart is having to do now: they cut costs so much that eventually the shelves started to go bare, which angered shoppers and lowered employee morale. They cut so many full time staff and began relying on part time help, and got exposed signing up all their part timers for welfare programs to make up for what they don't pay per hour. Sales stagnated and then fell. It's been a massive effort to turn that company around. This seems to echo what I've heard from corporate radio. They expanded their portfolios, borrowed money endlessly, cut personnel to the bone. Now with the added pressures of 21st Century reality, they're struggling to escape the debt and the reality that radio is no longer relevant, a perception they did little to counter by being nothing more than jockless, information-free jukeboxes with commercials.
The saddest thing of all is that this corporate-led nosedive is going to take so many mom and pop owners with them as they crash and burn.
