XM and commercial radio

[Matthew Osborne <mattosborne1976@yahoo.com>]

On Tue, 20 Nov 2001 Cooper Fox wrote:
>  Even though i don't agree with
> large coporate radio the thing that scares me even
> more is the prospect of XM.  

As well it should scare anyone still working in
corporate commercial radio.  I'll never forget a
conversation I had with my old PD in Rochester about
this.  He told me that if radio is done right, then
satellite radio, mp3s and all of the like will not be
a factor in the overall equation and your radio
station will provide something for the listener that
all of those things can't -- a very intimate one to
one personal connection.  He also said that he wasn't
worried about the state of things today, and that the
"cheap" megacorporations out there would fade and die
off leaving only the good companies that still care. 
The second part of this conversation I'm not so sure
about -- because at the rate things are going now, if
one or more of these companies went under tomorrow,
that could  potentially shut down a very large
percentage of radio stations around the country
(barring sell offs before this happened, but even so
would the remaining companies be able to afford to buy
up all of these stations suddenly orpaned?).  And
something like that could create such a huge negative
ripple effect on the rest of the industry that I
wouldn't even wanna speculate on what the outcome of
that might be.  As far as the first part of the
conversation, he is SOOO right.  But today, that whole
concept is being tossed in the garbage can with this
cookie cutter, "profit profit profit at all costs"
mentality that has taken over the industry.  And
anyone remaining in commercial radio and expecting to
make any kind of living in commercial radio should be
scared out of their wits about this, because radio is
undermining its own biggest weapon in its arsenal to
prevent satellite radio, mp3s, etc from putting them
completely out of business.

                               Matt Osborne
                               Hyde Park, NY

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! GeoCities - quick and easy web site hosting, just $8.95/month.
http://geocities.yahoo.com/ps/info1