Help the Needy -- Radio Consolidators

It's Christmas and time to help the neediest. And CBS, Citadel, Entercom and Clear Channel would have you believe that they are the neediest. These groups along with TV and newspaper execs are trying to get the FCC to repeal the "severe ownership restrictions" in a time when technological and marketplace developments have made competing more difficult. Are these people serious? The radio industry got everything they wanted in 1996 with passage of the Telecommunications Act. And all they've proven ten years later is that they couldn't run more than two stations in a market even with a virtual monopoly. Now they want another bite of the apple? This is not only insane but any elected official cooperating with this ploy should be held accountable at election time. The reason radio is on the ropes is not just the Internet. It's radio's arrogance and failure to program to the next generation. Need evidence? Check Arbitron's average quarter hour listening stats from the early 90's to now -- continually down. And the early 90's is before the Internet hit big, before email, before iPods and iTunes, before peer-to-peer downloading of music, before smart phones, YouTube....and on and on. Radio was blowing it before they had increased competition. Radio consolidators are acting like cry babies. If they eventually bamboozle Congress and win permission to relax ownership rules further, they will still fail. But more importantly, radio's big execs are wasting time while the next generation lives without them. What a case study for incompetence for Harvard Business School students.