[MarcMannetje]

Suits killing creativity out of fear to loose control. Bartering jingles to serve big network radio clones without connecting emotionally with local communities. Replacing local heroes/personalities by safe syndicated names.

It. Did. Not. Work.

While iHeart and Cumulus try to avoid bankruptcy, can we agree that radio was, is and always will be a locally based, emotional personality medium? In Europe free creative spirits still score mile high with original, suprising radio whilst making money. What went wrong at the big corporations? Why can’t they make enough money to be profitable? Because they are to big to manage? Or because their scale chokes the creative minds that do the real work?

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/georgia/articles/2017-11-30/radio-broadcaster-cumulus-files-for-bankruptcy-protection

[LenGroat]

An interesting topic that could open many observations about where radio ‘was’, and where it is ‘now’

.. there is also the fact that when people stopped buying vinyl singles, started having ‘mobile music’, (now 1000s of tracks, many not describable as ‘music’) radio lost its USP ?

+ in the UK there seems to be no problem with ‘profits’ as the ‘McDonalds type radio stations’ spread, as suggested in this article ….

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4970678/Classic-FM-owner-s-bid-knock-two-homes-one.html

[scotronMember]

Radio as we know it has changed..and not for the better. Internet stations like your own station Solid Gold Gem Am. and others like Fun Tower Radio, the soon to be, D-Lux Radio and so many more, are now giving listeners a broader choice of music. Much wider playlists, not restricted to the same repetitive, few dozen or so songs,repeated over and over..and over. If these tracks were still being played on vinyl, the grooves would have worn out a long time ago. Not highlighting any particular station, but if I hear Otis Reading, ‘Dock Of The Bay’ one more time or Gerry Rafferty, ‘Baker Street.’….. Anyway, I digress. Now I have DAB in my car, whatever you think of the technology, at least I can hear a good and varied choice of music from numerous stations, plus, I can listen to so many other stations at home via the internet. Good to hear proper DJs on air now and coming back to entertain us in the future.

[radiocitybillMember]

Well, the FCC seems to be in the pockets of the big corporate giants. With the elimination of the main studio rule I can imagine a couple of computers at each transmitter site spewing out their “programming” and commercials with nothing more than voice-tracked nonsense. I’m sure groups like K-LOVE are jumping for joy over this as they currently have -zero- local presence and only had “studios” for compliance sake. Assuming Cumulus and iHeart survive they will continue to spew all over the dial with homogenized programming for the masses to tune to … or for the knowledgeable to tune out from!

I ran a deep oldies stream back at the infancy of online radio and I was fortunate enough to have my stream be one of the first included on Apple’s iTunes radio tuner. With nearly 13,000 tracks enough mainstream hits were played to keep the casual fan tuned in but I played the Hot 100, album and more obscure tracks as well as a live Saturday night request show. It was the negative cash flow of feeding bandwidth and royalties that did it in eight years later. There’s definitely a market for this type of radio, but with all the choices in entertainment today did radio miss the boat? As far as millennials go I think radio’s ship has sailed.

[GrahamCollins]

Tabor used Daddy’s money, and others to be fair, to buy GCap….. Just like Branson, if you’ve got someone to bail you out, standing just behind you then taking risks in business is easy.

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