What's up with Radio?

A few years ago, when deregulation in the broadcasting world opened the door for companies to buy lots and lots of radio stations, including several in the same market, radio and TV became an attractive investment vehicle.

We saw the loss of many small town stations as they were "moved to the bigger towns". Here in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we have 8 commercial stations that are licensed to Fort Wayne, along with another 9 or 10 that claim to be Fort Wayne stations that are actually licensed to smaller, neighboring towns.

Congress is currently looking at the concept of broadcast outlets serving the town they are licensed to, and there is also news regarding the future of radio because of stories like this one:


Size matters...and small is in The March 8% drop in radio revenues was by no means across the board. CL King analyst Jim Boyle notes that the average big market was down 10%, but the average small market was up 3%. "The best predictor for radio revenue is market size, not regional or group differences," he says.


(You can click on the headline to see the complete story.)

But when we get down to the basics of radio as a vehicle to invite people to do business with you, and take out the stock brokers, ad agencies and media buyers that rely on secondary indicators of the success such as ratings, we see why smaller market radio still works.

Maybe the Big Boys will come around and see radio for what it really is, and that is something much more local and personal than a stock ticker symbol.

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