Category — Radio

Sam Kopper is bringing back the Rock of Boston from an "electric green school bus" parked outside his home, reports Elizabeth Jensen in the New York Times (4/16/12). It’s a safe distance from Sam’s heyday as program director and on-air personality at free-form rock radio station WBCN-FM, a favorite of college students, among others, from 1968 until the late ’80s. Sam, himself, left the station in 1991, disillusioned as the radio business "became more corporate and consolidated." CBS acquired BCN in 1996, and killed it "in 2009 in a complicated switch to make room for a sports station." Now, CBS wants to revive the format on HD radio and has enlisted Sam and his "biodiesel-burning bus."

HD is a digital radio format, introduced in 2006 to compete against "the static-free signals of satellite radio." It is set up so that existing FM radio stations can "broadcast their original analog station on HD1, with additional space for differently formatted substations, known as HD2 and HD3." The challenge has been that listeners need to invest in "expensive new radios" to access HD, although the cost of the radios has come down and "most automakers" now offer them. "It’s the frontier-land of our industry right now," says Mark Hannon, svp of CBS Radio Boston. He’s betting that good programming will "drive the new technology, just as the 1968 WBCN prompted students to buy FM receivers."

The new BCN has some "1,500 songs as various as classic rock, reggae and country in rotation and 4,5000 in its library, far more than most commercial competitors." Sam Kopper says the station "is not a nostalgia trip," calling the approach "radio theater, the human voice put together with every other element that you can use for sound" — not only the music but "ambient street sound." He says that "radio is all about the human connection." He’s mostly promoting the station on Facebook and he’s not entirely alone: Former BCN deejay Carolyn Fox has invested $10,000 in equipment so she can transmit from her Manhattan apartment, picking up on a career she left behind ten years ago. "I saw some possibility to connect with the listener," she says.

Pandora is predicting that it can compete for ad dollars by pinpointing listeners with greater precision than traditional radio, report Ben Sisario and Tanzina Vega in the New York Times (4/16/12). "A dollar spent on Pandora is better than a dollar spent on terrestrial radio," says Tim Westergren, Pandora’s founder. His point is that, unlike traditional radio, Pandora’s internet-based service "can pinpoint listeners by age and (gender), zip code or even musical taste." Tim sees a day when "Pandora will be the top station in many cities."

The service has indeed grown rapidly. Launched in 2005, "it has gone from 45 million to 125 million registered users" over the past two years. Pandora’s revenues have also grown "from $55 million to $274 million" and last month it "streamed a billion hours of music." The one thing it doesn’t have is profitability — in no small part because Pandora’s music license requires it to pay "54 percent of its revenue" in royalties, far more than terrestrial radio must pay.

But William Feinstein of Planet Honda, a car dealership in Union, NJ, is sold on Pandora’s ability to target listeners. He says that iPhone traffic to his website has "more than tripled" since he started advertising on Pandora. "A light bulb went off," says William. "We don’t need to buy five radio stations. We can buy one." He has doubled his Pandora buy to $20,000 per month since January. Tim Castelli of Clear Channel still doesn’t see Pandora as a threat, however , mainly because it can’t provide local news, traffic, weather and chatter. "It’s a playlist generator," he says. "It does not really deliver what radio does, which is that rich, personal experience."

One of the best movies of all time owes much of its creative genius to radio, reports Tom Nolan in the Wall Street Journal (9/13/11). The movie is Citizen Kane, "which perennially tops critics’ polls of the best films ever made." Its maker, Orson Welles, developed many of the film’s "signature devices" while producing adaptations of "famous stories by great authors" for radio. The productions featured "expressive voices and evocative sound effects," creating "marvelous films inside a listener’s mind." Most in/famous was Welles’ "audacious 1938 radio presentation of H.G. Wells’s ‘The War of the Worlds."

It was so effective that some thought Martians had actually invaded, and resulted in Welles, then 23, receiving an RKO contract to make movies. Citizen Kane, his first effort, was a "generations-spanning biography of a powerful press baron with political ambitions." Welles’s radio roots were evident in number of ways: "The rapid-fire overlapping dialogue of near-simultaneous speakers … Musical stings, such as a snicker of notes from a muted brass section, punctuate certain bon mots." And the relentless pace, like a radio play "rushing to fit a complex saga into a single hour without once losing a listener’s attention."

Then there was "the deployment of marvelous voices — especially Welles’s, one of the supreme instruments to emerge from a medium where the greatest emotion emanated from a single narrator, whether delivering a nuanced monologue or a single word: Rosebud …" As William Alland, who played a reporter in the movie, observed: "Sound in radio is like lights in a theatre … With sound you can do so much colorization; it’s more than just a background. So that sound becomes a very creative part." The result, for Citizen Kane, was "a vitality that was rare for movies in those days," says Norman Corwin, who worked with Welles in the ’30s. "He got that from radio."

Video, as it turns out, is revitalizing the radio star, reports Pia Catton in the Wall Street Journal (6/20/11). "While 75-year-olds may be tweeting and 55-year-olds may be online, the video experience is something younger people are embracing in a bigger way," says Cephas Bowles, president and ceo of WBGO, an all-jazz radio station. The internet is also proving to be a boon to radio, Cephas says. "Digital technology and program delivery is ushering in what could be called the second golden age of radio by making radio content more accessible to more people wherever they are."

That’s why WGBO’s performance series, The Checkout is not only heard on the radio, but also streamed live via its website or seen live at 200 Hudson Street. "Everything we do is centered around broadcast, but then we branch off into these other distribution platforms because people are going there," says Cephas. "You want to reach people where they are." Or , as Checkout host Josh Jackson puts it: "What good radio does is provide context — and that’s no different if you transfer it to another platform." At WQXR, a classical music station, chief digital officer Thomas Hjelm is on a similar track.

"We see ourselves increasingly as a trans-media company," says Thomas. "We want to create a hyper on-demand experience so you can customize your radio listening experience and optimize it for your mobile device," he adds, while also noting that the radio opportunity for classical music is especially ripe because "classical music doesn’t really lend itself to the download iPod culture." But classical is a perfect fit for "streaming Mozart on your computer all day." Thomas says he sees "a day when our online audience eclipses the on-air audience." As it is, Arbitron says that 22 percent of the American population, ages 12 and up, listens to radio online, up from just five percent in 2001.

"Radio is dying because it’s inconvenient and limiting," says Michael Robertson in a Bloomberg Businessweek article by Brad Stone (2/28/11). "The content is not interactive, and it’s available on only a limited number of devices." Michael’s solution is DAR.fm, a site that allows you to "search through the programming schedules of about 600 music and talk-radio stations and … record up to four hours of any broadcast." You can mix and match any combination of talk radio, music, sports or whatever you want.

You can also access your selected programming "from any PC, smartphone or internet-connected radio," and you can zap the commercials, too. In many ways this is nothing new, in that people have recorded live radio broadcasts for years, and some stations make their programs available as podcasts. The twist is this: "DAR.fm identifies individual songs in a broadcast and allows users to download them to mobile phones of iTunes music libraries." Of course, the audio quality isn’t as good as iTunes, but it’s likely that the music industry will fight DAR.fm anyway.

Michael thinks he’ll prevail, though, citing legal precedent in Cartoon Network v. Cablevision, which ruled that it was okay for cable operators to store copies of television programs on their own servers and make them accessible, via streaming, to their customers. Joshua S. Wattles, who has represented Michael in the past concurs that the law is probably on his former client’s side, while acknowledging that he’s likely in for a fight. "He is a discombobulator," says Joshua. "He does things that are upsetting, which are radical changes." Michael doesn’t disagree: "There is no new technology that these guys don’t look at as the end of the world," he says.

Low-power FM radio — LPFM — is changing communities, if not the world, suggests Brian Stelter in the New York Times (1/25/11). For example, KOCZ-FM, a 100-watt, non-commercial station in Opelousas, Louisiana, "has become an unlikely lifeline in this town of 22,000, helping to promote local artists and church events in ways that commercial stations either cannot or will not." John Freeman, KOCZ’s executive director, says that among other things, the station has also brought zydeco music back to radio, and believes that it has prompted commercial stations to start playing the genre again.

"It helps promote that culture — and that’s something that’s very significant for the African-American community here," says John. The station also hosts local candidate forums that otherwise would not be broadcast. "Politically, some people don’t talk to other people, but we talk to everybody," says Lena Charles, chairwoman of the Southern Development Foundation, which operates the station. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski agrees: "Low-power FM stations are small, but they make a giant contribution to the local community programming."

Some see LPFMs as a "corrective" to commercial radio, although there are relatively few LPFMs. This is expected to change, however, with the Local Community Radio Act, which President Obama signed during the lame-duck Congress. The bill follows a decade of lobbying to enable the FCC to grant more 100-watt licenses for non-commercial, community use. Funding typically comes from local businesses, like funeral homes and beauty parlors. The stations have little idea how many listeners they attract, but they do have one metric: the number of volunteers to host shows. Right now, KOCZ has "more than 20 on the list … enough to start a second station."

A non-profit theater company is melding old-fashioned radio plays with newfangled technologies to nurture the next generation of playwrights, reports Pia Catton in the Wall Street Journal (12/30/10). The company is called Naked Angels (after John Tytell’s book about the beat generation) and its members get together Thursdays over pizza and beer to write 15-20 minute radio plays that are podcast via Naked Radio. Each project “takes about three weeks to create — a fraction of the time it takes to write, develop, fund, cast, rehearse and open a stage play.”

Members are paid, but Pippin Parker, a Naked Angels board member says the lack of big money is a plus: “It allows them to have their work produced in an economical way,” he says. Members are mostly in their 20s, must commit to a two-year term and be willing to work together. “The group combats the solitary nature of writing,” says Andy Donald, artistic director. Typically, “they brainstorm on one-word themes such as ‘success,’ or ‘sensationalism.’ The ideas are then doled out to individuals to write vignettes and arrange them into scripts.”

Bekah Brunstetter, 28, likes the collaborative aspect: “To me, it’s a totally different process. It’s not all on me to come up with something amazing.” Josh Koenigsberg, 26, says radio plays take him back to his childhood, because his father and grandfather used to play tapes of old radio shows. “It’s a different medium,” he says. “It stretches muscles I hadn’t used before.” Their membership can lead to bigger things, too: Naked Angels will present one of Bekah’s plays, “A Long And Happy Life,” in live theater this spring. “They may go into film or TV land,” says Andy, “but they’ll always have a commitment to live theater.”

If Google ran a radio station, Michael Dougherty thinks it would be just like the kind he is launching, reports Jefferson Graham in USA Today (3/3/10). Michael, a former Microsoft exec, co-founded Jelli, "a website and syndicated radio format. It’s a new twist on all-request radio — except these requests are logged online, on the Jelli dot-net website. The songs that get the most votes get played on the air."

Gartner analyst Mike McGuire thinks this is a great idea: "It’s a way to display your affection for a band. It’s for someone who wants to tell everybody and anybody, ‘By the way, AC/DC is the most awesome classic rock band ever.’" However, Kurt Hanson, editor of a radio industry newsletter, dismisses Jelli as "a high-tech gimmick" that’s really no different than traditional radio request lines. He also thinks only a "tiny subset" of listeners would participate in it.

The model involves syndicating the all-request format to stations around the country at no charge, "in exchange for two minutes of commercial airtime each day that Jelli gets to sell." So far, Jelli is working with stations in San Francisco, Philadelphia and Las Vegas. Donovan Short plans to add Jelli to three stations in Montana and Wyoming, and sees the format as "the power of the group." However, Aaron Axelson, who’s been testing Jelli on Live 105 in San Francisco, says the crowds pretty much pick the hits, although the result is perhaps a bit more eclectic than traditional top 40.

Kids these days don’t listen to music on the radio anymore, but there is a market for sports-talk radio, report Joseph P. Kahn and James Reed in the Boston Globe (7/20/09). It’s a trend that’s not new, but is accelerating, apparently — most recently in Boston with "announcement that WBCN-FM, once the agenda setter for an entire region of hip rock fans and record buyers, is switching to a sports-talk format." Bradley Searles, a blogger, thinks the problem is that "the sense of community once fostered by stations like ‘BCN has been diluted."

He comments: "I can’t remember the last massive culturally pervasive album." Instead, young listeners have become their own tastemakers. "I’m into local bands and record labels, and they don’t get played on the radio much," says Chet Mohr, 23, who "relies on bloggers, internet message boards, web publications, friends and social-networking sites" to find new music. Even some older guys, like Jay Day, 39, are on the same track. "Real music is underground, man," he says. Jay says he buys his music on street corners, directly from local musicians.

And yet, some think the death of radio is greatly exaggerated. Sean Ross of Edison Research, which tracks radio industry trends, is among those who think radio’s power is underestimated. "Radio still has the largest piece of music discovery, at least for all listeners," he says. "It’s like network television: It’s diminished, but it’s still bigger than anything else." Scott Flybush, editor of NorthEast Radio Watch agrees: "There’s a middle ground between what the doomsayers are saying and the reality … If you give people in their teens and 20s a reason to listen, I think they will still tune in," he says.

“College radio is more of a real barometer of what people like and what people are listening to than blogs,” says Mac McCaughan, in a New York Times piece by Ben Sisario (12/7/08). Mac owns Merge Records, whose artists include Arcade Fire — whose breakthrough success is often attributed to the internet, but Mac doesn’t think so. “The internet has gotten too much credit for the success of Arcade Fire,” he says. And yet, most others in the music business don’t see it that way, because these days, most college radio stations attract only a fraction of the number of students eyeballing blogs.

“For today’s college students radio listenership is down considerably,” says Norman Prusslin, a Stony Brook media professor. Arbitron reports that, between 1998 and 2007, “the amount of time 18- 24-year-olds spend listening dropped 18 percent, while for people 35 to 64 it slipped nine percent.” Even some of the students who work at the stations say they don’t listen when they’re not on the air themselves. “Even when I’m in the car, I’m usually listening to my iPod and not that much to the station,” says Blair Neal, the music director at WRPI at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

“I think the station is less about the people who listen to it and more about the people who are involved in it,” suggests Lyzi Diamond of KWVA at the University of Oregon. She says she became enchanted with radio’s “sense of mischief and power” when a local station interrupted its commercial rock programming and “started playing cartoon noises for the day, just cartoon noises.” She comments: “At the end of the day, your friends might not be there, your job might not be there … but radio will always be there. And it’s really cool to have something you can depend on.” ~ Tim Manners, editor