CNN: Radio Is A Medium In Flux

Rachel Gordon, WWCD Columbus (CNN photo)

Quietly in some markets, loudly in others, music radio has been under siege. Like many media, CNN's Todd Leopold reports radio's battling demographics and technology to stay alive, at the same time losing the institutional memory and talent that made it distinctive.

"Radio creates such a powerful connection," says Randy Malloy, who as general manager of WWCD in Columbus, OH.

"You don't remember the newspaper article that you read when you had your first kiss or the TV show. It was a song. You remember that song. There's such a hard-wired connection in our brains to music."

Which is why people in the industry are worried that old-fashioned AM/FM radio may be drifting off into the ether, as it struggles to attract the young listeners who have been its bedrock for generations.

Sure, broadcast radio's been the redheaded stepchild of communications media for decades. TV, CDs, satellite, the Internet -- they were all supposed to kill it off.

"AM/FM radio will probably command a smaller slice of the pie," says Mark Lipsky, president and CEO of the Radio Agency. "But it's certainly not going to be replaced."

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Others are less optimistic. The business is in flux.

Rock music has fallen out of fashion. Format changes are common. The 12- to 24-year-olds who are the radio listeners (and employees) of the future are gravitating toward the Internet or iDevices. Three of the biggest hits of the last year -- "Call Me Maybe," "Gangnam Style" and "Harlem Shake" -- were driven by YouTube and social media.

Jerry Del Colliano

Billboard magazine, the chart bible, has added YouTube to its pop chart sources.  Clear Channel and Cumulus -- the two dominant radio broadcasters, each with hundreds of stations -- are struggling to pay off mountains of debt and have laid off thousands of workers, including many DJs.

And the heart of terrestrial radio -- its emphasis on the local -- has drifted. Hometown DJs, once the central voice of it all, increasingly find themselves marginalized in favor of syndicated voices and voice-tracked, formulaic presentations.

Industry analyst Jerry Del Colliano, publisher of "Inside Music Media," says he believes the future is dim.

Radio, he warns, is no longer appealing to young people. "They don't like it, don't use it that much, don't know the stations, and at the same time the radio companies are shooting themselves in the foot by cutting back and getting rid of personalities."

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