Ten years ago, I was working at a major market leader that only ran eight minutes of spots per hour and we made money hand over fist. Today, I doubt that same station is breaking even despite having sliced payroll more than in half.

Until someone finds a way to turn a reasonable number of spots per hour into profit, nothing will stop the death spiral radio is in. The issue isn't ownership anymore - It's advertisers - and I'm shocked by how few people seem to understand that.

Higher ratings won't wipe out corporate debt.
Higher ratings won't undo fifteen years of greed.
Corporate greed devastated the media business model.
To suggest otherwise is ignorant.

In the old days, you could flip a station, build ratings and sales could go out and sell it. Start with cume, then build TSL, blah blah blah, today's listeners turned into tomorrow's dollars. It was great because it was a fight people like me could win.

Win in the halls: make the staff believe!
Win on the air: make your listeners love it!
...and sales would take care of their end.

There's a lesson to be learned here, though I doubt many of the corporate brass at Clear Channel will learn it:

The way you run your business when times are good will have a direct impact on your business when times are bad.

Clear Channel is now owned by a private investment firm. The company will eventually be
broken up and sold off in chunks. Before that happens, its bottom line will be cut to the point where it costs next to nothing to run, thus giving perceived value to whoever buys whichever parts.

I used the term "perceived value" because I highly doubt there will be any real value in buying into the industry at that point. Today's private investors aren't buying into the industry though. They're just buying. And selling. For them, it's the selling that is the important part.

When I was in high school, my mother owned a local restaurant. It was more or less a neighborhood place for breakfast, but she also made dinners and her claim to fame (such as it were) was pies. She was a talkative woman, always chumming it with the people who dropped by. One day, one of her regulars figured out that he could make money by buying her restaurant, renting out the space to someone else and then selling her equipment. At the time, I thought "he wants the place for the ovens you make pies and doughnuts in?" I didn't get it.

Years later, I realized that what the buyer did made perfect sense from a monetary view. I thought it was a failure because the restaurant closed shortly after the sale, but I later learned than the buyer tore the place apart. He sold the huge ovens, sold the shake machines, sold half of her over-sized parking lot to a neighboring salon and he then he sold the restaurant and remaining parking space to someone else.

It took him a few months, but he walked away with twenty thousand dollars for his efforts, and my mother got to pay off her bills (management was never her thing... so for her to get out from under debt seemed like a great deal at the time... and, in truth, it was).

Fast forward............. A dear friend of mine designs children's clothes. She works for a company that has a thriving catalog business, plus maybe 25 stores nationwide. In early 2008, the company was sold to a private investment firm. The private investment firm is in the process of doing the exact same thing. They're buying apparel companies they can either sell at a premium or break up and sell in pieces for a premium.

Clear Channel is no different.

They're now owned by number crunchers who intend to pick the company apart for profit under the assumption that the parts are worth more than their sum.

My mother's restaurant was worth more for the value of its building, its ovens and parking than it was as a business. I was sad to see the place close, but everyone involved walked away with money.

...everyone except for her employees, that is.

My friend at the children's apparel company is watching her friends lose their jobs as the bottom line gets slashed. Her hope is that she can hang on until after the company is sold. Assuming they can maintain the quality of clothes they produce as well as the customer base they've built... they'll be sold in one chunk and survive this private investment group phase.

Who knows.

What's next for Clear Channel is anyone's guess. Surely the company will be ripped apart and sold off in pieces to maximize investor profit. The only relevant questions are:

Clear Channel built an empire by forcing sales of countless radio stations and entire radio companies. Simply put: they forced owners to sell by drastically overpaying.

Let's say you own a car that's worth roughly $27,000. It's an SUV, actually. A 2003 Lexus Gx 470. Regardless of how much you like your Lexus, if someone comes along and offers you a quarter of a million dollars for it... hell yes you're selling.

Let's say you've got a junker sitting on blocks on your front lawn. A 1972 Cevy Nova that's worth maybe 200 bucks if the right buyer came along and stripped it for parts... but the same guy who just paid $250,000 for your Lexus sees it and says "I'll give you $5,000 for that one too if you'll sell it to me by the end of the day."

DONE!

So... the mystery buyer now has a piece of junk but he's also got a damn good vehicle too, just as Clear Channel bought some out of market signals along with some pretty sweet grandfathered-in 100,000 watt boomers. Regardless of the prices paid, that's what they own.

One could argue that the only reason Clear Channel is still in the game is because they overpaid for the signals they bought. I worked for Secret Communications the day Frank Wood sold the company to SFX, who then sold to somebody who then sold to somebody, blah blah Capstar, blah blah Chancellor, hello Clear Channel.

Yes Clear Channel built a mountain of debt, but they managed to stay in the game whereas countless other owners folded their hands and walked away.

As Kenny Rogers once said:
You got to know when to hold em,
know when to fold em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.

PPM is teaching programmers how to create programming that isn't an interruption. Air talent are becoming audio wallpaper as talk breaks become anything but. For radio, these micro breaks are death in tiny increments.

Just this week, a friend of mine was telling me about a great break he did. He's a jock in NYC. The break was under ten seconds long, and in it, he tied in the dismay over the Giant's ended season with a song and maybe a promotion too... I don't remember. I should remember, because that was the point of him telling me about the break. He was explaining how the PPM was making him such a better jock, but I was left speechless.

How do you tell a friend "it's not making you a better jock. It's making you disposable." In and out, tight and bright, on and gone.

Gone.

The hosts are, for the most part, real people.

For years, TV fell into the same trap radio fell into: the trap of smooth talking slogan sayers. People who were all shine and no substance. The radio DJ talked about how great every record was as he nailed the post of a stiff. And TV had people like Dick Clark and Ed McMahon.

Remember how every performance on Starsearch was amazing? That's what Ed would tell us as each singer left the stage, anyway... but here's the thing. A lot of them sucked.

And here's the thing about Idol: they've got their share of performances that suck too. Plenty of them sucked last year and plenty more will suck this year.

Never forget: it was American Idol that brought us William Hung. And Sanjaya, who is currently trying to stretch his 15 minutes of whatever it was into a book deal.

But on Idol, the hosts do what real people do. If a performance was great, they say so, and if one sucked, they say so... and if they can't agree, they sometimes fight about it.

...and so do the viewers.

31 years ago? It was a Tuesday. I was most likely savoring the last moments of summer because I knew my very first day of school was just a few weeks away.

I was nervous, excited and scared.

I'd heard a lot about what school would be like, and I had high hopes. Though my family was very poor, my mom bought me a brand new box of crayons.

Seriously - I had a brand new crayons! And I was going to SCHOOL - just like the big kids. Kindergarten was gonna rock!

Sadly, it did not. Those f#cking crayons were a bribe.

Many years would pass before I'd realize there were lessons to be learned on that fateful day.

Lesson #1: Beware Any Gifts You Have Not Earned.
Lesson #2: Never Trust Old People.

And with that comment, we return to where this post began. I suspect we've reached the point where it gets either interesting or offensive depending on your point of view.

"What were you doing 31 years ago today?"

The question was intended to be about what I was doing when I got the news that Elvis had died (August 16th, 1977). Instead, it served as a dividing line between generations: his and mine.

...no.

I've worked at plenty of stations where the majority of promotions interns and promotions staff were women. I've worked at plenty of stations where traffic and accounting were almost entirely women.

...but a mostly female air staff? Not once.
...what about management? Not once.

Out of all of the PDs I've worked for, only one was a woman. Out of all of the GMs I've worked for, only one was a woman.

IT MUS BE SEXIST!

...no. I don't believe that to be the case. Granted, there is some sexism in radio, but the greater issue is human nature.

A friend of mine taught a broadcasting class at a local community college, and I lectured there one day. The moment I stepped to the front of the class, I noticed two things:

#1: the class was almost entirely made up of men.
#2: the few women in the class were all sitting together.

I'm willing to bet that if the class had been theatre instead of radio, it would have had the exact opposite proportion of students. They'd have been mostly women, and the few men would almost certainly have been sitting together in a group. I'll address that second point in a bit - but first, let's just consider the problem inherent in the numbers.

Since we start with fewer women interested in pursuing radio as a career, we end up with fewer women in entry level programming positions, leading to fewer women in higher level programming positions, not to mention a smaller talent pool of women period. The smaller the talent pool, the fewer exceptional candidates there will be within it. That's just basic math.

As radio becomes more and more impersonal, I believe even fewer women will be attracted to the medium as a career. By impersonal, I'm referring to radio becoming less local and less live.

I also had "The Missing Link." Remember that one? What about the pyramid-shaped thingamabob? There were others, and I owned every one of 'em.

I never solved these puzzles, mind you. I only bought them because they were fun.

Dominoes were another all time favorite of mine during childhood. My father owned a pool table which he rarely used, so I had plenty of space to set those little buggers up and knock 'em down.

I must have had thousands of dominoes.

It got to the point where I had a domino taped to string which was taped to the ceiling. When knocked down, that domino would fall off the table and swing across the room to trigger another set of dominos.

All of this equipment is functioning perfectly. 100% A-OK. Trust me. I checked.

Sure, the medium has more challenges and challengers today than ever before, but the fundamentals of radio are sound. Listeners may be less passionate about radio today than in years past, but that's because we're giving them less to be passionate about. These are issues of content. Issues easily overcome through creativity, passion and hard work, and I don't see any lack of talent dying to provide that.

I'll say it again: There is absolutely nothing wrong with radio.

What's broken is the business of radio.

Once upon a time not so long ago, your typical radio station was a balancing act: a seesaw of programming and sales. Programming created entertainment to build an audience. Sales used that audience to generate revenue. Want more money? Create better programming. Build a bigger audience.

It doesn't work that way anymore because the business of radio is broken. There is no balance of programing and sales when there's a pig on the seesaw.

The downfall of radio can be blamed on:

#1. Freaking Flanking.

Remember the LMA? The Local Marketing Agreement was never about marketing. It was about turning frequencies into pawns, and it was the beginning of the end.

Imagine if car companies started running other car companies as shells to produce cars NOT for consumers but instead to HURT other car companies.

That's what the LMA was all about. Station A more or less owned Station B and used it NOT to entertain, but instead, the primary goal was to take audience away from Station C. If they couldn't beat 'em, they got a flanker to hurt 'em.

In the days of the LMA, I lived in a small market where the local rock station LMA'ed another frequency and flipped it Hot AC to take audience away from the adult-leaning CHR that owned the market. They used the flanker to take out the market leader, but not by better programming. The Hot AC never had to be any good. It just had to hurt the CHR as much as possible on as little budget as possible.

It all sounds like harmless strategy until you consider that it meant a lowering of the standard of quality for radio stations, which was bad for radio as a whole.

When Mix couldn't play certain songs because they'd take audience away from B107, the real loser was the Mix listener who couldn't hear her favorite song on her favorite station.

Sounds trivial, eh? Well, it might have been trivial if it had been the exception to the rule of radio. Instead, it become the norm thanks to deregulation. Deregulation was really the LMA times a thousand. It's hard to win in a market when you first have to fight within your own building. Then again, winning isn't even about listeners anymore, is it? It's about stock.

The downfall of radio can also be blamed on:

#2. The FCC.

When did the FCC become a government version of a take out window? "You want how many stations? That'll be XXX dollars. Please pull up to the next window to receive your order."

Far too many stations were added to the dial, not to mention how many were shuffled from city to city - which, by the way, completely contradicted the reason those licenses were granted in the first place!

And then there's the sheer comedy that is FCC fines.

Opie And Anthony held an on-air contest where people had to fuck in St. Patrick's Cathedral to win a prize. When that stunt didn't cost WNEW its license it became pretty obvious that the FCC was a joke without a punchline. Oh, sure, people were fired, blah blah, but the owner didn't lose the license. In fact, they were fined less than half a million dollars, which is what to a company the size of CBS?

...please...

The FCC is a joke.

And speaking of initials we can blame for the downfall of radio...

#3. The NAB.

Broadcasters have no advocate in the legal or regulatory process. If the FCC is a joke, the NAB is a face-painted clown. The NAB is the National Association Of Broadcasters - yes, BROADCASTERS - yet their organization does little but harm broadcasters and harm broadcasting. Instead, their ambition is to benefit owners at the expense of broadcasting.

"Hang on" you say. "Aren't owners also broadcasters?"

No.

Most of today's broadcasting owners are no more broadcasters than plantation owners were farmers. Let's talk about the man busting his back in the fields during the early 1800s. He deserves the recognition because he was a farmer, and probably a damn good one. He knew the land. He knew the crop. He tilled the soil. The guy sitting in his mansion drinking wine was just a farm owner.

There is a difference.

Even in the days of 7 AMs and 7 FMs in 7 markets, many of the station owners weren't really broadcasters. Not really. But they were so closely connected to the point where sales and programming met that they understood the symbiotic relationship required for each to prosper. Also, there were so many owners back then that you at least had the opportunity to use your talents to find a better station with better ownership. It's true that there were plenty of bad owners back then, but there were exceptional owners too. Don't like Wilkes? OK, that's fair. How about a gig with Nationwide? Or Secret. Or Susquehanna, or Chancellor... or JACOR (the noise you can't ignore), if it suited your personality. Grin.

And that brings me to the fourth thing the downfall of radio can be blamed on.

Grade School Math.

Let me see if I've got this right... some genius thought it was a good idea to buy radio stations at ten or twenty times what each frequency was worth while also dropping the price of ads being run on said frequencies so he could undercut the competition... and then a whole bunch of other geniuses - seeing the brilliance of such a strategy - decided to do the same.

They increased cumulative debt while decreasing individual revenue.
"BRILLIANT!!!"

...no. Not so brilliant, as it turns out.

"OK THEN! Let's cut costs."
You mean fire people?
"Yeah. That."

...but those people create the product that IS your radio station. They give your listeners a reason to listen.

"Well they're not doing a good job, are they? Ratings are down!"

...that's because you took away their tools in your last few rounds of cost cutting. Remember the research they used? You slashed that part of the budget already. Oh, and remember the songs you wouldn't let them play because you were trying to protect your other stations? And remember the guests you wouldn't let the morning show book for the same reason? Oh, and remember the air talent you already fired during the last round of cost cutting... when you replaced live shows with voicetracking? Oh yeah... and remember when you...

...right.

Which brings me to the fifth thing the downfall of radio can be blamed on.

Your Local Planetarium.

Let's talk about time and space.

First, there were carvings in stone. Then came ink and paper, followed by the telegraph. And then AM radio. Then TV. Then FM radio. And Satellite. Etc. One might go so far as to claim that the media universe is ever expanding.

...or is it?

It's worth looking into how the Japanese treat their auto factory workers, and how their actions from decades past are still shaking the U.S. auto industry today.

They paid their workers ten cents a day and forced them into submission, right?

No.

The Japanese empowered their workers and created a business culture that was (and all too often still is) the opposite of ours.

It's a long story, but the short version is this - and it directly applies to radio:

The Japanese wanted a piece of the worldwide auto market, and their initial attempt was typical. They tried to win on cost. They implemented a system of "lean production" where they stripped the cost of production to the bone. Gee, doesn't that sound familiar?

What they got for their effort was a very affordable car that wasn't worth the metal it was made of. Garbage. But, let's be honest... cheap sells. And their cars did sell. And they broke down. As George Bush once said, "Fool me once, shame.... shame on you. Fool me twice, I won't get fooled again." (...Grin)

The Japanese realized the strategy of cheap would lose in the end as competitors built more reliable cars.

This is one area where I believe radio is dead wrong today. Cutting costs to the bone is a short term strategy that will lead to long term failure as competing forms of media become either more entertaining, or equally entertaining with fewer commercials.

Radio can't win by cost cutting. But radio can win by outperforming... and that's exactly what the Japanese auto industry realized they needed to do to compete with the U.S.

TV viewership on the major networks is down, but that doesn't stop American Idol from grabbing an average of 30 million pair of eyeballs before the contest even heats up.

These are tough times for radio, but I wonder what Seacrest's numbers are like on Kiss in LA, or Kraddick's on Kiss in Dallas. Look what happened to K-Rock when Stern left.

Content is king, but since people can get music anywhere, radio needs its content to be about a lot more than just playing the hits.

The suits controlling radio have been allowing the quality of its content to plummet thanks to cost-cutting, piss-poor sales strategy, corporate dictated programming and lazy gimmickry. All of that garbage needs to stop, but I doubt it will since the business of radio has been so wrecked that it can hardly afford to create the content needed for its own survival.

It's time to enter into a new age of superstar air talent, where program directors are creative geniuses rather than fixtures in board room meetings. It's time for radio to become fun again, before it's too late.

Personally, I think satellite radio is doomed. And I think HD radio as a compelling medium is doomed.

Terrestrial radio, on the other hand, has a relatively easy fix for it's problems. No, really.

Put the keys back in the hands of the person driving the car. Then demand, and reward, results.

I'll use Movin' in Dallas as an example. The gimmick landed with a thud in the fall, and the rest of the market kicked it in the winter. This makes sense, being that the format is radio's version of a poor man's get rich quick scheme. I'm sure glad they didn't wipe out a heritage station to put that thing on the air!

It needed: Must. Have. Content.

Ah, but that's precisely what satellite radio didn't have.

Using cable TV as an example: in the old days, fuzzy TV via UHF/VHF was good enough. Sure, it was annoying to adjust the rabbit ears to catch an episode of Three's Company, but whatever. It worked.

Then, one day, MTV came along, and the only place to get it was on cable. Hello subscribers!

Remember the first commercials for MTV? They were advertising something brand new - a channel of non-stop music videos. I bet you still remember the ad's slogan over a quarter century later ("I want my MTV!", as if I even had to remind you).

For far too long, satellite radio was like cable before the birth of MTV. There wasn't a compelling reason to pay for it.

Do you even remember any of the early commercials for satellite radio? The commercials were about as compelling as the product itself. The only commercial I remember talked about a guy driving coast to coast without ever losing the signal. Great, so satellite radio is cool to have once every few years. True, satellite radio is mostly commercial free, but a lack of commercials does not equate to compelling content. It just means less interruption of the same old content people were already getting for free.