The following is a Ross On Radio guest article from David Gleason, consultant, former domestic and international programmer, manager and station owner, Executive Vice President of Univision Radio and operator of WorldRadioHistory.com.
There seems to be nothing but criticism of the recent broad moves to national origination of daypart programming for local radio stations. But would the conversation be different if more people understood that “one format on many transmitters” is the norm in much of the world? Or that those stations go far beyond the shift-by-shift networking or hub-and-spoke programming heard in North America?
Drive through Spain or Italy or Germany or Chile or Peru and the most important stations can be heard all across entire nations. Those operations usually consider themselves one station, not a network, offering programming in bits and pieces, but a single voice with national coverage with its positive connotations of unity and strength.
One of the early purposes of the RDS system was to electronically identify the strongest signal from national networks in Europe so that radios would switch to them automatically as listeners drove around a nation. BDS enhanced a listening experience that was already astoundingly popular.
When Metromedia tried, several decades ago, to do an independent news and information station in Berlin, they failed. It was, as commented by all, well done. But it only served one city. Listeners and advertisers did not prefer single transmitter operations; they preferred the scope of national stations.
American radio’s structure dates back 90 years to the 1930s when the FCC and influential legislators wanted to make sure that the growing Red, Blue and CBS networks did not totally dominate radio. So, they limited ownership in order that the webs could not own a national set of hundreds of stations. And they set very low power levels for even the biggest AM stations of the day.
In that era when America was recovering from the Great Depression and observing the growing turmoil in Europe, those in the government feared the influence and power of that young force called radio. So, they imposed controls. Radio became local because the rules, not the audience, demanded it, and those rules are ninety years old. Now after the relaxation of restrictions on ownership and studio location, radio finds itself neither successfully local retailer nor national superstore.
So why don’t we have national broadcast radio stations? The United States is very different among world nations in giving so much power to state and local government, making “localism” relevant, at least in news. But technology now allows perfect synchronization and integration of local elements into national voices. There are outstanding suppliers of software that will seamlessly assemble work parts from local, regional and national sources into a smooth and listenable format in each market.
We’ve been working toward national music and entertainment formats for 50 years. We’ve had it in small markets with tape syndication in the ‘70s and satellite radio networks in the ‘80s, but those systems never transformed to massive national single-identity formats when the technology arrived.
Now, with all the science and software we need, shows can be assembled with national talent and structure using localized or regional music lists, with variable stopset length, and all the local service elements we are used to. Whether it is Seacreast, Charlemagne da God, Bobby Bones, or Jubal, there are talents that are outstanding and who have great access to format-specific music and lifestyle guests.
Yet any step in this direction creates accusations of cookie-cutter radio. Often, those most bemoaning localism replace it in their own listening by subscribing to satellite radio, or replacing their local radio listening with national podcasts. Those objections miss the irony that national radio is most capable of competing with those platforms both in terms of content and usability.
A national over the air format is perfectly adapted to being simultaneously streamed on the web using whatever systems and techniques are popular in any given moment. Geography-independent programming is the staple of the web. Parallel national webcasting and local broadcast transmitter networks make a perfect fit. No matter what the device, you tap, talk or tune your way to a single favorite program that is available everywhere you go.
Is there something deeper in the American personality that requires local radio? The mental barriers appear to be with broadcasters, not with the listeners who are already shifting to national platforms. At this moment, U.S. radio is neither successfully the corner store nor national superstore. It took visionaries Todd Storz and Gordon McLendon to create a new radio model in the early 1950s to compete with what seemed like a knockout punch from TV. Who is going to be our agent of change today?
