Thursday, May 21, 2009

Radio again proves it's irrelevant

The Cincinnati folks who read this blog might know about the format change today, and probably some of you are thinking, "Finally, an '80s-based music station!"

Well, let me put it this way: There's nothing to see here, folks.

The new '80s-based format on 94.9 seems to have a playlist of only about 8 songs, and its execution has been a comedy of errors so far. My record collection would have far more variety than 94.9 does, even just using '70s or '80s songs that were hits when they were new.

Besides, 94.9 switches formats so often now that I wouldn't be surprised if this format is gone by the end of the year.

And the radio industry wonders why its audience is declining.

Some of you are asking what happened to the country format that used to be on 94.9. Reportedly, it moved back to 97.3, though I haven't bothered to check. Apparently, the rock format that was on 97.3 is gone altogether.

Not like anyone cared about either one of those stations anymore, after radio made itself irrelevant.

Even the major FM stations are in worse shape than most AM stations were in 15 years ago. Radio was a medium that could have adapted, but it didn't. Instead it kept demanding government privileges like the 1996 Telecommunications Act and raids against competitors. Well, a hell of a lot of good that did, huh?

1 comment:

  1. Three things have contributed to the fall of terrestrial radio: Satellite (!) radio, large capacity MP3 players, and the abysmal quality of post-1996 radio.

    ReplyDelete