[BC] LA Times: Does Radio Have A Future?

[charles hobbs]

Does radio have a future?
A new payola scandal. Disgruntled listeners. High-tech
rivals. But don't count industry out.
  
By Martin Miller, Times Staff Writer

Radio is testing anew the theory that there is no such
thing as bad publicity. The industry had better hope
so, because for the past couple years, media coverage
of it has been filled with about as much good cheer as
Asian bird flu.

The grim mood swirling around radio intensified
earlier this week when a new payola scandal hit.
Although a $10-million settlement was reached between
Sony BMG, the nation's second-largest music company,
and New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer, the
investigation continues and radio is bracing for more
revelations of wrongdoing.
  
"This scandal on its own isn't going to break them,
but it's another nail in their coffin," said Jerry Del
Colliano, a onetime DJ and program director, now a
professor of music industry and recording arts at the
University of Southern California. "Radio is under
fire. They need this like they need a hole in the
head."

It would be an understatement to say that history will
not remember this period as radio's salad days. The
trends are mostly down. Radio ad growth lags behind
other big media ? cable television, Internet, even
magazines and newspapers.

It continues to shed listeners, whose complaints about
soulless, corporatized stations that repeat the same
songs over and over again are reaching deafening
levels. (The fact that radio stations were caught
taking money and gifts from a music company to play
their songs only adds to that perception.) In 1993,
Americans tuned in to radios more than 23 hours a
week. In 2004, that figure had fallen to about 20
hours, according to the Arbitron ratings service.

http://www.calendarlive.com/tv/radio/cl-et-payola30jul30,0,3522761.story



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com