Radio, Radio: A Loose Report on the State of the Format in 2024

For over a century, radio has been a cornerstone format in public broadcasting, and remains a vital lifeline of communication to this very day. 

But in the last couple of weeks, major cuts to the radio departments at labels like Atlantic and Universal have left many in the music industry wondering what the future holds for the age-old medium. There was a point when radio was the quintessential gateway into the music business, including for myself. My personal journey into the pros began at WDST-FM 100.1, famously known as Radio Woodstock, where I spent the Spring 1995 semester as the station’s public affairs intern. 

It was no doubt a great experience, working under the tutelage of such renowned local DJs as Dave Dowd, the late Freddie Bluefox and Nic Harcourt, who would leave WDST a year after my time there to become the host of the nationally acclaimed radio show Morning Becomes Eclectic. I worked in the promotions department and learned about advertising and public relations. 

When I started school at SUNY New Paltz, it wasn’t long before I found myself walking into the college radio station WFNP to get trained to become a DJ myself. After a semester on the school’s campus-exclusive AM frequency, I finally got on the FM channel, doing the graveyard shift with a rock show on Tuesday mornings 3-5 AM and a hip-hop show on Saturday mornings at the same time. I remember going right from the bars or a house party to the station for my shift, spinning Company Flow and Portishead to those souls staying up in the wee hours of darkness. 

Hell, even my first proper job in journalism out of college was radio-related, landing an editorial assistant position at the CMJ New Music Report, a now-defunct trade publication that catered to college and community radio. And even though its been nearly 25 years since I worked in radio in any capacity, it’s airwaves still play a key role in my personal wiring. Especially when you consider just how the format has expanded in the last two decades alone with the advent of streaming online and the rise of satellite radio.

However, the question remains: Can radio survive the generational shifts in the way people consume their media? Are folks still listening to radio the way they once did? Do they even know where and how to tune into a station that caters to their tastes? And what about long-running public stations like the mighty WFMU out here in North Jersey. Last week was their annual pledge drive. Are donations coming in like they once did?

The news of those industry layoffs I mentioned up top no doubt raised a lot of questions in my brain as it concerns the state of radio in 2024. So I did what I normally do in these instances, I took to Facebook to openly ask about where my fellow colleagues in the music industry stood in terms of where radio is at this moment and where it’s headed as we see our children pay little to no attention to the format. 

Is commercial radio on the rocks? Is it worth getting a Twitch account? Are college stations still a thing? 

We hope you find this freewheeling conversation as engaging and perceptive as it is rambling — a veritable junk shop of ideas and insights from some great minds from all over the biz. 

 

David Avery, Powderfinger Promotions: It’s important to distinguish that we’re talking about Commercial radio in terms of a demise, because community and college radio stations have been growing. I called it in the ’90s when corporate conglomerates bought up commercial rock stations and homogenized them, taking all decision making out of the hands of djs and killing what made each station “local.” That was catastrophically dumb. Local is what has always made radio successful. [Another commenter] mentioned a jazz resurgence and that’s partly due to some very smart programming and djs at stations like WBGO, WICN, WGMC, WWOZ and others. their local listenership continues growing and their djs are far more skillful than any playlist algorithm. plus, these stations have also been very smart about cultivating online listeners globally, which corporate commercial radio stations were unable to do because of the simple fact that they all sounded exactly the same. WWOZ told me that their online listenership increased by a third and their local listenership increased by about 14 percent when the pandemic started…and I’ll bet that hasn’t changed.

 

Regina Joskow, Senior Publicist for Rounder Records: David Avery 100%. The issue with a lot of those stations is that though listenership has increased, donations to stations that rely on listener contributions have fallen off in a big way. I get it: People’s budgets are stretched thin. But WBGO’s president and CEO has said repeatedly that only 5 percent of their listeners actually contribute to the station, and for a listener-supported station, that’s not sustainable. They don’t get money from the government: they rely on grants and listener contributions, and if people don’t pony up, there’s no guarantee those stations will be able to stay on-air. If every listener contributed even five or ten dollars a month to their local community or public radio station, they could run forever.

Robby Bridges, Vice President of Programming and Communications, The Boss 107.1 FM in NJ: What can be done to get younger people back into radio again, and what can radio be doing better to keep its built-in audience and expand upon it: First I’d say that the financial struggles radio faces at least among the biggest, public traded companies has little to do with increased competition or diminishing audience. First, these companies have/had extraordinary debt loads with ever growing interest that make their solvency difficult. The overwhelming factor in cuts to budgets has come from over leveraged business models not a decline in the use of terrestrial radio. Second, digital resources are much better thru clicks/downloads etc. to show extract tangible ROI (Return on Investment) numbers to advertisers and hence have intensified the marketplace. So far neither Nielsen or the radio companies have found a way to show over the air ad efficiency to consumers in the same way. Radio needs to reinvest in itself with aggressive sales organizations, marketing, a focus on local markets, an emphasis on spoken word content not a separate business model in digital and in great content creators. Audio content is hot, radio ought to seek to attract the best creators and the ears will be there. Further, I believe the future is larger into personality than music alone. How can it be cool to kids? Let creativity and innovation happen and it’ll attract em both as listeners and as future broadcasters.

I think college and hometown stations are far more likely to experiment and see what sticks. Most doesn’t, but when it does, something special is born. The rest of the dial ought to take notice. Modern commercial radio was born when radio was pronounced dead by the networks as they moved their focus and advertisers to television. Local stations, many scooped up by local and regional owners from network ashes, innovated. And we got sports radio, the call in talk show, of course top 40, AOR…and more

Twitch can be a way to reach a segment of the audience with a piece of audio from radio. Radio is the mothership and its content should be live and locally offered but also repurposed online and on digital platforms like Twitch. “The Tonight Show” only averages 2million live TV viewers these days (which isn’t nothing) but it is available on streaming, DVR, clips on Youtube and so on. Satellite? I think it operates at a continued disadvantage because its fees always catch up to it and listeners are willing to tolerate ads for outstanding free or cheap content. Sirius XM can’t compete with that with the majority of consumers. 

 

Cory Brown, owner Absolutely Kosher Records: “Radio, like record stores and the music press, has been left behind by an ever-myopic industry, with very little in the way of new technology developed for its benefit (and plenty to compete with it) since the internet itself ended its reign of regional flavor.  The music industry never seems to know what it has until it’s gone. College radio in particular became a threat to major label dominance 30 years ago, so they’ve made every effort to bury the culture that sprung from it, consolidating and abandoning again and again.  It’s far less expensive to flex market share on mass aggregated streaming platforms than promote regionally via terrestrial radio, yet we’ve not had this narrow a window of fame in music since the payola days of the 1950’s. Layoffs are no joke, but these layoffs are a footnote of a much longer story.  There are much more exciting things to do than working radio for a major, like working in radio itself. The only hope radio has is to throw away the playbook it’s been using since the 1990’s and deliver what streaming does not: artist development for independent labels.  Claim your crop of talent, because talent is starving more than salaried employees are.”

 

Kurt B. Reighley, on-air host KXCI: I love my weekly stint at KXCI Community Radio. It’s very different from my 10+ years at KEXP and, in certain regards, even more fulfilling. Tucson is a much smaller city than Seattle, and this really feels like I’m contributing to the overall health and wellness of my community. I’ve also had to make a mental pivot from thinking of radio as a career to radio as “volunteer work.” That’s been sobering in a good way.

 

Gary Higgins, IT Engineer: Linear broadcast overall is on ventilator and has been since the turn of the millennium. Commercial FM in the U.S. and elsewhere failed utterly in cultivating multiple generations. “What’s ‘radio’?” is the usual response from young people. 1996 hastened the descent courtesy of the Telecomm Act. Some with skin in the game beg to deny it but even trades like Radio Ink and Radio World concede the inevitable. 

Public radio remains a sacred trust, and Internet radio has endless variety and creative programming. I wish those avenues were allotted more wattage and frequencies, but fact is colleges are selling decades-old licenses. Transmitters are expensive and hard to support.

 

David Beckett, Rock & Roll Globe contributor: I’ve been doing a regularly scheduled Jazz (very broadly defined) radio show on a college station for many decades. 

I play mostly living artists (nobody needs my help to discover Miles Davis) and a lot of new releases. I go out of my way to play music that’s pleasant because I want to draw people in who aren’t already Jazz nerds. 

I start with a 30 minute set of music built on Brazilian rhythms, then I play a 30 minute Feature Set (featuring an unusual instrument or a musician who’s coming to play locally, or an upcoming festival.) Then I play two 30 minute sets of quiet music – solo piano, music on the ECM label, torch songs, ballads and music you might think was Chamber Music. The last two sets sound a bit more like Jazz Radio and I tend to air the more knotty tracks in the last half hour. 

There are several Jazz jocks at the station doing shows. 

As a listener I’m struck by how few stations there are left which aren’t formatted music stations or NPR affiliates. 

I listen to stations from other countries via streaming. And some radio shows I used to listen to live I now listen to as podcasts so I can time shift them. Fresh Air is an example of this. 

There’s a wonderful radio station nearby which is a non-formatted, non NPR non college station. They offer locally produced talk shows, live baseball, locally produced Jazz shows and all sorts of unique programming, the likes of which used to be common but just aren’t anymore. WDEV in Waterbury, Vermont.

 

Gary Higgins: I grew up around many universities whose stations all remain today. In the mid-late 70s discovering that transformed everything. Right around this time it was evident that the trusted advisor role of DJ who talked to you like a friend was in full force on public FM but the commercial variant ceded to rude jerks who insulted my intelligence. This oddly coincided with commercial DJs losing say over playlists which more or less vanished by the early 80s—becoming mouthpieces to spin what program directors defined. Especially during drive-time. Or else. The same decade consolidation hit overdrive, and ClearChannel would soon replace most functions (people) with hard drives. So the dominant model of radio has died by its own hand.

Radio has also vanished from the public soundscape, which would have been unimaginable through most of the last century.

 

AUDIO: R.E.M. interviewed by Tim Sommer on WNYU in 1983

Tim Sommer, Rock & Roll Globe contributor: College radio should serve one function: To offer a complete, 180 alternative to other available sources. Whether its’ classical, avant garde, EDM, classic rock, whatever, the music heard on college radio should  — to the utmost degree possible — be only music that cannot be heard on a satellite channel or an FM source. In addition — and this is where virtually all college stations fail miserably — the music should be presented professionally, that is, with clear identification and songs should be identified within 2/3 songs of being played (how many of us have been KILLED, stumped, addlepated, by 25, 25, 45 minute long sets on college radio stations?). Sal LoCurto, who invented modern college radio, taught me all this, and he’s still right.

 

James Porter, on-air host WLUW-FM and Rock & Roll Globe contributor: On my own radio show, I try not to let five songs go by without a back ID. Sometimes less than five, but never more than. I know most radio stations have a “now playing” feature on their websites, but not everybody is in a position to check the computer, and admittedly I play stuff so obscure that Spinitron can’t identify all of it. So I try to remind folks that the show is hosted by a human being, 

Every now and then, I’ll start a thread on my wall regarding radio, and somebody will chime in, boasting that they’ll play marathon half-hour sets without saying a mumbling word. What the hell’s the point in that?!? There’s gonna be that one amazing song in the middle that you’ll want information on, but you have to sit through 20 more songs to find out. Assuming they’ll tell you.

 

Josh Bloom, Fanatic Promotion: Tim Sommer I agree with you. I feel like as college radio programmers got sucked into the music business, the quid pro quo became insurmountable. Can some bajillionaire fund independent stations that can be free of that kind of influence and institute rules like a song can only be played so many times a day so that the listener is required to purchase from the artist to hear more?

 

Mark Lore, DJ Markinthedark: Twitch is the new radio. I should add—amazing selectors/DJs from all over the world. No rules as far as what to play. Immediate and interactive. A visual component. Brilliant communities.

 

Piotr Orlov, Dada Strain x The Lot Radio: I have scanned the comments and don’t quite understand how NTS and The Lot (and their like) are not mentioned. Or Dublab. (And those are just the ones I know about.) As independent radio goes, all these are deeply influential in regards to new music, and new-music directions.

They are the grassroots radio of club culture. This is where young DJs/producers are playing and showing off their craft between club gigs. And not so young. The whole Four Tet/Fred again../Skrillex thing was sewn together on NTS and The Lot.

 

VIDEO: Dada Strain with Piotr Orlov 

Gary Higgins: Well, they’re global. Not merely by having a web presence but in the case of NTS contributors from all over the world.

What Internet radio has that terrestrial does not is pinpoint metrics. Satellite is an odd mix being subscriber-based, and an enduring business model, but doesn’t replace “radio” in the 20th c cultural sense. Almost moot now since the smartphone is dominant and music is consumed in a vastly different manner today.

 

Piotr Orlov: Gary It’s interesting how they’re both global but also deeply local too. At its best, very indicative of what’s going on in their locations. IN NYC, add Halfmoon to that, which is central to the founding of Dweller festival and development of young Black producers making everything from hip-hop (JWords) to techno.

 

Gary Higgins: Attention spans are radically different now than they were when radio was a relevant cultural force. The remaining listeners (who hardly listen, but just hear) need reassurance and guiding every 10-15 minutes, like being reminded to take their medication and brush their teeth at regular intervals.

What dominated now-“classic” rock programming (an insipid 80s FM marketing term) was longform LP tracks, largely instrumental, often downtempo. Plenty of MOR flooded the airwaves to anesthetize the masses also, but DJs weren’t leading cattle by the nose in that way back then. People’s interest levels are far smaller today.

 

Brandy Wood, Real Estate Management: I left radio six months ago, but I do think its value is in serving a certain audience, a community. The streaming services might be all things to all people, but I haven’t seen them connecting communities.

 

Justin Rugnetta, Digital Archivist: iHeart and Audacy own the major radio stations. College radio and Triple A stations should play to their strengths and play new artists or old artists that aren’t welcome at rock/alt formats anymore. They should not be playing people like Taylor Swift or Beyonce, as it goes against the ethos of the format. Missing out on cultural phenomenons should be a point of pride, not a weakness.

 

Michele Amiable, on-air host 107.1 FM The Boss in NJ: Here is how I think we can get the younger generation to go into radio, which is no different than how we got the call. Let’s say we are talking about kids in high school – take them on a field trip to a radio station. We’ve had a girl scout troop come through here before. You never know what kid is gonna come in here and look at everything and think, “I can do this.” There’s always one kid who is really cool and pays attention to music and loves Billie Eilish or Olivia Rodrigo and has goals towards interviewing people like that. It’s tough to get into something that you don’t see. When you are downloading music or streaming it on Spotify or Apple, you’re not seeing the big board. You’re not looking behind the curtain. But when kids see it, they might think it’s neat. Not everybody wants to work in an office. Radio needs a voice, and adults need to know there’s young people out there who might be interested in the medium. 

I was a sophomore in college when I got my first radio internship. When I went to Rider University, the first thing I did when I got on campus was go right to that radio station and try to get myself a show. Then you find out who the advisor is for the communications department, because those professors will be your best friend. They know where all the internships are, and there’s tons of them. You can get an internship at Sirius XM, and the interns there are responsible for cutting up interviews. Because the way you learn how to be a good interviewer yourself is by listening to other people’s interviews. These are internships where you can learn serious hands-on skills. But in terrestrial radio, if you come in and learn to be a promotions kid and do it in the summer, you can gain a lot of valuable experience collaborating with the on-air staff and interacting with the public. 

Young people need to be shown that radio is a creative business, and you can grow in so many areas here. 

 

Brian Turner, Station Manager East Village Radio: It’s maybe a fallacy to overgeneralize young people here, my time at WFMU as Music and Program Director saw a wide spectrum of age groups tuning in, I think everyone in general is hungry for alternatives to what is being foisted on them in terms of short-range stimuli. Yeah, you have your people addicted to the flicker effect hypnosis of short-form Tik Tok or an algorithm making the path for you, but I’m optimisitic people eventually fade off that buzz and are hungry to deep dive into long-form content, AND have a trusty guide to show the way through discovery, and the roots of what music they are into. During the pandemic you saw a boom in radio really, everyone in the corporate realm was finding the challenge of how to personalize a listening experience and make people feel TOGETHER, part of a community, and with the failure of Amazon’s station and the mad rush by other big platforms to tie this thread together, it became glaringly obvious people want to feel part of something they have input, sharing. This is my hope for independent media. Plus, you see vinyl sales soaring because people are becoming deep listeners. So this is a good concept being handed down from older generations. 

Twitch seems to get the community concept better with interactivity, chat etc. Satellite’s selling point is to subdivide radio into compartmental experiences, you have the U2 channel, the reggae channel, and they really throw gazillions at legacy artists hoping their names will attract. But can they do radio? There’s a distinct divide between playlists and radio to me. Nikki Minaj was thrown millions by Amazon but I don’t think anyone sat down with her to teach her how to be a radio host, or maybe they think that’s an antiquated concept. But nothing replaces a thoughtful segue, a knowledgeable host as a guide through explaining the enthusiasm or merit for what they play, a DJ projecting a beam right from their soul to give you a tour of music through the course of a single set. It’s crucial to do that to connect with listeners on a personal level. Not just play a series of unconnected songs being lobbied for airplay by someone with bucks. Your iTunes shuffle can do that. The Atlantic layoffs, while unfortunate for those losing livelihood, underlines the concept that Atlantic and many majors don’t have music people at the helm, music fans, with encyclopedic knowledge of where music has been and where it’s going. No seeding of the fertile underground, just manufactured personalities with crack producers to create immediately consumable music that will fit the limited space that world allows to push like eight artists a year and saturate the market with them everywhere, so everyone thinks that’s all that’s out there. That’s not the case, but in both music distribution and major radio outlets you’re just seeing a pre-laid ground map for what’s going to get on. And  then a Kate Bush song gets on TV and it’s bigger than ever. They rely on pre-laid plans and flukes like that to succeed, where they should be looking for visionaries to run the show, like Ahmet Ertegun was with Atlantic, using deep knowledge to preserve legacy and figure out the unique things of those artists to make a place for new ones who add to music’s progression. Remember when FM radio started it was much more freeform than it is today – DJs could play sides of free jazz into soul, rock or even spoken word stuff. The post-Woodstock world saw FM become a place for commercial aspirations, which has carried into streaming today with even less personality injected. The labels need to invest in a future more than running to the bank with the now.

 

VIDEO: King Krule on East Village Radio