Malkiel

The Radio and Recording Industries' Unnecessary Roughness

Your suggestion would seem good except for one problem: for reasons unclear and unexplained, stations owned by the Clearchannel media monopolists are more or less boycotting new music in favor of "oldies" formats. Nobody can convince me that this is what the public is looking for: either there's an unseen economic penalty to playing new music, or Clearchannel is working from some agenda. In either event, it will take more than your suggestion to get them to start playing new music again on their stations...

Note to Radio Companies: It's About Innovating More, Not Sucking Less

I can see you're a bright lad full of great ideas, but the radio industry is so bad right now that they just need to get back to their best marketing strategy of the last 90 years, which is to play "top 40" music playlists. Radio was long ago exempted from most royalties on their playlists because they were deemed as offering "free advertising" for the product, so they need to cash in on that advantage. We have entire markets today where not one station is playing current popular music so that music lovers can know what product to buy; instead the airwaves are a wasteland of "best hits of the 40's/50's/60's/70's/an... but today". We also need to recognize that media consolidation has put most of America's radio stations in the hands of Clearchannel, a Republican outfit that seems intent on reconstructing radio as a right-wing political outlet along the lines of Murdoch's News Corp. rather than as a for-profit business...

Clear Channel Misses On EPS, Sales

Clear Channel is the kind of outfit that will milk the cow until it drops and then carve it up into hamburger. Boring us to painful death by playing only music of the 70's on all its stations will only turn off an entire generation of young people to broadcast radio, guarantee the success of satellite radio, and ultimately kill their golden goose.

XMSR-Sirius Marriage Will Test Investor Patience

Let's expand here on why Clearchannel will lose listeners--they've turned broadcast radio into a totally inferior product. Their refusal to play current or new music--probably because they dont' want to pay the higher royalties--and turning to all "oldies" formats, as well as their bias toward right-wing talk radio, is turning off a generation of young people who can't even find out what the music of their own generation is. (I live in a northeastern market where all broadcast stations within reach are formatted for "oldies". Not a single "top 40" station to be found, period). Paying for Sirius and XM, especially when their hardware comes with your car, looks pretty good compared to a life of "best hits of the '70's"...