Any day now -- and certainly within weeks -- don't be surprised to see your number one radio group, Clear Channel, give radio a glimpse of the consolidated future.
Again.
Clear Channel has led the way -- or should I say, bullied its way into recreating radio in its own image that harkens back to the old moniker "Cheap Channel" back in the Mays days.
I don't know about you, but way back when consolidation was getting started I was somewhat surprised to see Lowry Mays and his Texas Sue-Boys wind up as the industry's top consolidator. Not that it matters now, but had it been almost anyone else, radio might not have come to current precipice -- the make it or break it year for radio.
You might think I'm talking about make it or break on the bottom line.
I'm not.
Green ink is a long way off -- analysts agree that radio would be lucky to break even anytime soon. Nationwide we could see an almost ten percent drop in revenues by the time Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve gets fired up. Next year, it promises to be even worse. Hey, in the Phoenix market, radio is off a whopping 36%. This is major.
No, the make it or break it in 2009 will be whether anyone of major influence in the radio industry can figure out how to preserve, if not create, saleable brands that someday may be worth something.
As CBS is finding out, there isn't a big market for suckers -- I mean, buyers -- for some of their smaller market properties at the customary inflated multiples. And if you think that CBS is the only group that would like to unload radio stations, think again. Fagreed Suleman at Citadel has a bunch of stations that would drive his company's 17 cent stock way up over, say -- 50 cents!
You hear about all the people out there keeping their powder dry like former Citadel chief Larry Wilson, but so far all of this is pure speculation. They have been smarter than the rumor mongers will give them credit for.
Look, the wallet is willing but even people who love radio are too smart to buy now. Why make that misstep -- station prices are likely to go even lower, much lower after what radio CEOs have in store for their industry in the year ahead. And, let's not forget the recession - a double whammy.
My friend George Johns, the very able programmer, reminds me that with all the mistakes large consolidated companies are making by gutting their stations, they are vulnerable to anyone with the guts to step up and do radio right. An interesting thought.
But time is running out.
And 2009 will be perhaps the most significant year because at the present rate of destruction, radio stations are nothing more than spot carriers jammed into regional, group syndication or network programming.
Some have even likened this to the age of radio networks -- you know, NBC's Monitor, and the like. But I see it a different way. Then, networks spent money on putting content together. They had news bureaus. It wasn't done on the cheap. And most affiliate stations were local with local assets, local news. Network news and programming gave them more. More was more back then, I guess.
Now, see the future.
Fagreed signed MSNBC's Joe Scarborough to do a show on his WABC, New York and it fits his model -- throw anything up in the air and syndicate it to the rest of your stations. Fire local talent, save their salaries. Make the show available for other damn fools who are willing to take his two-hour version or customized one-hour and forty five minute version. (Sometimes, I wonder about my old friend Rick Sklar, the legendary programmer of WABC when it was a "local" New York Top 40 station with a "national" reputation. He must be turning over in his grave. Today many stations are "national" with a local reputation to live down).
Fagreed is a serial syndicator.
Imus saves him money in New York only if he can put the cranky, has-been on other Citadel stations -- then off to those damn fools I mentioned earlier.
Forget that Imus is an east coast acquired taste -- and I do mean acquired.
KABC just dumped talk show host Larry Elder and it could be that Curtis Sliwa, the totally New York personality, may be his replacement in La La Land. I can tell you LA isn't going to buy Curtis Sliwa, but Fagreed doesn't care. Fagreed buys him and that's what saves money.
Clear Channel may have made its name on Less Is More, but Fagreed's Citadel has built its reputation on Cheap Is Chic.
CBS has been cutting back in management. Duplicating responsibilities. Plus axing big name morning shows (although I am told that was not the reason for John Lander's demise in Boston).
For CBS it isn't about Less Is More or Cheap is Chic, it's Two For The Price of One 0r where you see one, you get two (or three) -- jobs! (As an ex-Metromedia man this reminds me of the old inside joke about Metromedia's outdoor company then known as Foster & Kleiser. The joke goes, "where you see F you see K". Think about it).
So Christmas is coming in a little over a week. More firings are ahead -- with or without severance pay. And, don't even mention Sam Zell to Tribune employees. When he went Chapter 11 he stopped paying compensation to the folks Tribune talked into buying out their contracts through early retirement. Screwed. And this guy is strapped right now, but as you know, I think the play he was looking for was in radio before he screwed up in newspapers and local TV. After all, he's got 20 odd ex-Jacor employees playing newspaper for now. Interesting that he's opted to continue to pay their salaries -- the salaries of all those radio people with nothing to do in his dying newspaper empire.
What's so insane about all of this shrink wrapping of radio is that after the consolidators get finished with screwing their talented employees, they're ready to screw themselves. (Don't worry, they already screwed their stockholders).
That's right.
The old saw "be careful what you wish for" will most certainly come back to haunt this bunch of not ready for prime time players -- who sit around and pleasure themselves by syndicating.
I can say that because this final indignity is the worst of all.
If radio was anything, it was a group of local stations that had a clear and marketable "brand". What would Fagreed's predecessor, the WABC Top 40 station, for example, have been without Dan Ingram, Cousin Brucie, Chuck Leonard -- you could go on and on -- and the rest of its brand leaders.
Nothing.
And that's what these desperado's who call themselves radio CEOs are going to wind up with after they finish their strategy of gutting local radio.
Nothing to sell to suckers who might have been willing to pay a lower multiple and give it a try the right way.
Nothing to stream on the Internet -- you're kidding, right? With what radio CEOs are forcing their stations to do, who is going to want to hear Curtis Sliwa on the Internet -- or Joe Scarborough or Don Imus?
No one from the all important next generation, that's for damn sure.
Nothing upon which to build local podcasts, mobile content or extended branded programming.
Nothing.
So as radio as we and our listeners know it comes to the end of its long nightmare, what radio will amount to -- I'm so sorry to say -- is nothing.
During the year ahead, the only hope I have is that some brave board of directors somewhere in this industry grounds its private jet and replaces its CEO with a swashbuckler from today who is reminiscent of the pioneers who built radio into the business that Wall Street coveted 12 years ago.
One last chance -- that will probably never come in this critical year of 2009 -- unless or until the overseers of radio's destruction are stopped in their tracks.
The clock is ticking.
As they say in the old "Beat The Bomb" radio contest, say "stop" before the whole thing blows up.
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