The Sounds of Commercial Radio

Contemporary radio sounds very different from its predecessor. In contrast to the few stations per market in the 1930s, most large markets today include more than forty stations that vie for listener loyalty. With the exception of national network–sponsored news segments and nationally syndicated programs, most programming is locally produced and heavily dependent on the music industry for content. Although a few radio personalities, such as Glenn Beck, Ryan Seacrest, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Joyner, Tavis Smiley, and Jim Rome, are nationally prominent, local deejays and their music are the stars at most radio stations.

However, listeners today are unlike radio’s first audiences in several ways. First, listeners in the 1930s tuned in to their favorite shows at set times. Listeners today do not say, “Gee, my favorite song is coming on at 8 P.M., so I’d better be home to listen.” Instead, radio has become a secondary, or background, medium that follows the rhythms of daily life. Radio programmers today worry about channel cruising—listeners’ tendency to search the dial until they find a song they like.

Second, in the 1930s, peak listening time occurred during the evening hours—dubbed prime time in the TV era—when people were home from work and school. Now, the heaviest radio listening occurs during drive time, between 6 and 9 A.M. and between 4 and 7 P.M., when people are commuting to and from work or school.

Third, stations today are more specialized. Listeners are loyal to favorite stations, music formats, and even radio personalities, rather than to specific shows. People generally listen to only four or five stations that target them. More than fifteen thousand radio stations now operate in the United States, customizing their sounds to reach niche audiences through format specialization and alternative programming.

Format Specialization

Stations today use a variety of formats based on managed program logs and day parts. All told, more than forty different radio formats, plus variations, serve diverse groups of listeners (see Figure 5.4). To please advertisers, who want to know exactly who is listening, formats usually target audiences according to their age, income, gender, or race/ethnicity. Radio’s specialization enables advertisers to reach smaller target audiences at costs that are much lower than those for television.

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FIGURE 5.4 THE MOST POPULAR RADIO FORMATS IN THE UNITED STATES AMONG PERSONS AGE TWELVE AND OLDER Data from: Nielsen report: “State of the Media: Audio Today 2014, How America Listens,” February 6, 2014, www.nielsen.com/us/en/reports/2014/state-of-the-media-audio-today-2014.html. Note: Based on listener shares for primary AM and FM stations, plus HD stations and Internet streams of radio stations.

Targeting listeners has become extremely competitive, however, because forty or fifty stations may be available in a large radio market. About 10 percent of all stations across the country switch formats each year in an effort to find a formula that generates more advertising money. Some stations, particularly those in large cities, even rent blocks of time to various local ethnic or civic groups; this enables the groups to dictate their own formats and sell ads.

News, Talk, and Information Radio

The nation’s fastest-growing format throughout much of the 1990s was the news/talk/information format (see “Case Study: Host: The Origins of Talk Radio” on page 171). In 1987, only 170 radio stations operated formats dominated by either news programs or talk shows, which tend to appeal to adults over age thirty-five (except for sports talk programs, which draw mostly male sports fans of all ages). By 2014, more than 2,183 stations carried the format—more stations than any other format. It is the most dominant format on AM radio and the second most popular format (by number of listeners) in the nation (see Figure 5.4 and Table 5.2). A news/talk/information format, though more expensive to produce than a music format, appeals to advertisers looking to target working- and middle-class adult consumers. Nevertheless, most radio stations continue to be driven by a variety of less expensive music formats.

Talk Show Host 2003 2008 2014
Rush Limbaugh (Conservative) 14.5 14.25 13
Sean Hannity (Conservative) 11.75 13.25 12.25
Dave Ramsey (Financial Advice) * 4.5 7.5
Glenn Beck (Conservative) * 6.75 7
Mark Levin (Conservative) N/A 5.5 7
Michael Savage (Conservative) 7 8.25 5.5
Jim Bohannon (Moderate) 4 3.5 3
Table 5.2: TABLE 5.2 TALK RADIO WEEKLY AUDIENCE (IN MILLIONS) Data from: Talkers magazine, “The Top Talk Radio Audiences,” June 2014. Note: * = Information unavailable; N/A = Talk host not nationally broadcast.

CASE STUDY

Host: The Origins of Talk Radio

by David Foster Wallace

The origins of contemporary political talk radio can be traced to three phenomena of the 1980s. The first of these involved AM music stations getting absolutely murdered by FM, which could broadcast music in stereo and allowed for much better fidelity on high and low notes. The human voice, on the other hand, is midrange and doesn’t require high fidelity. The eighties’ proliferation of talk formats on the AM band also provided new careers for some music deejays—e.g., Don Imus, Morton Downey Jr.—whose chatty personas didn’t fit well with FM’s all-about-the-music ethos.

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GLENN BECK is the conservative host of The Glenn Beck Program, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that also promulgates the MMLB idea. WireImage/Getty Images

The second big factor was the repeal, late in Ronald Reagan’s second term, of what was known as the Fairness Doctrine. This was a 1949 FCC rule designed to minimize any possible restrictions on free speech caused by limited access to broadcasting outlets. The idea was that, as one of the conditions for receiving an FCC broadcast license, a station had to “devote reasonable attention to the coverage of controversial issues of public importance,” and consequently had to provide “reasonable, although not necessarily equal,” opportunities for opposing sides to express their views. Because of the Fairness Doctrine, talk stations had to hire and program symmetrically: If you had a three-hour program whose host’s politics were on one side of the ideological spectrum, you had to have another long-form program whose host more or less spoke for the other side. Weirdly enough, up through the mid-eighties it was usually the U.S. right that benefited most from the Doctrine. Pioneer talk syndicator Ed McLaughlin, who managed San Francisco’s KGO in the 1960s, recalls that “I had more liberals on the air than I had conservatives or even moderates for that matter, and I had a hell of a time finding the other voice.”

The Fairness Doctrine’s repeal was part of the sweeping deregulations of the Reagan era, which aimed to liberate all sorts of industries from government interference and allow them to compete freely in the marketplace. The old, Rooseveltian logic of the Doctrine had been that since the airwaves belonged to everyone, a license to profit from those airwaves conferred on the broadcast industry some special obligation to serve the public interest. Commercial radio broadcasting was not, in other words, originally conceived as just another for-profit industry; it was supposed to meet a higher standard of social responsibility. After 1987, though, just another industry is pretty much what radio became, and its only real responsibility now is to attract and retain listeners in order to generate revenue. In other words, the sort of distinction explicitly drawn by FCC Chairman Newton Minow in the 1960s—namely, that between “the public interest” and “merely what interests the public”—no longer exists.

More or less on the heels of the Fairness Doctrine’s repeal came the West Coast and then national syndication of The Rush Limbaugh Show through Mr. McLaughlin’s EFM Media. Limbaugh is the third great progenitor of today’s political talk radio partly because he’s a host of extraordinary, once-in-a-generation talent and charisma—bright, loquacious, witty, complexly authoritative—whose show’s blend of news, entertainment, and partisan analysis became the model for legions of imitators. But he was also the first great promulgator of the Mainstream Media’s Liberal Bias (MMLB) idea. This turned out to be a brilliantly effective rhetorical move, since the MMLB concept functioned simultaneously as a standard around which Rush’s audience could rally, as an articulation of the need for right-wing (i.e., unbiased) media, and as a mechanism by which any criticism or refutation of conservative ideas could be dismissed (either as biased or as the product of indoctrination by biased media). Boiled way down, the MMLB thesis is able both to exploit and to perpetuate many conservatives’ dissatisfaction with extant media sources—and it’s this dissatisfaction that cements political talk radio’s large and loyal audience.

Source: Excerpted from David Foster Wallace, “Host: The Origins of Talk Radio,” Atlantic, April 2005, pp. 66–68.

Music Formats

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WENDY WILLIAMS refers to herself as the “Queen of All Media,” but before her daytime TV talk show, she got her start with a nearly two-decade career in radio. She began as a substitute deejay on an urban contemporary station in New York before gaining notoriety with her celebrity interviews and gossip. AP Photo/Julie Jacobson

The adult contemporary (AC) format, also known as middle-of-the-road, or MOR, is among radio’s oldest and most popular formats, reaching about 7.3 percent of all listeners, most of them over age forty, with an eclectic mix of news, talk, oldies, and soft rock music—what Broadcasting magazine describes as “not too soft, not too loud, not too fast, not too slow, not too hard, not too lush, not too old, not too new.” Variations on the AC format include urban AC, hot AC, rhythmic AC, modern AC, and smooth AC. Now encompassing everything from rap to pop punk songs, Top 40 radio—also called contemporary hit radio (CHR)—still appeals to many teens and young adults. A renewed focus on producing pop singles in the sound recording industry has recently boosted listenership of this format.

Country is the most popular format in the nation (except during morning drive time, when news/talk/information is number one). Many stations are in tiny markets where country is traditionally the default format for communities with only one radio station. Country music has old roots in radio, starting in 1925 with the influential Grand Ole Opry program on WSM in Nashville. Although Top 40 drove country music out of many radio markets in the 1950s, the growth of FM in the 1960s brought it back, as station managers looked for market niches not served by rock music.

Many formats appeal to particular ethnic or racial groups. In 1947, WDIA in Memphis was the first station to program exclusively for black listeners. Now called urban contemporary, this format targets a wide variety of African American listeners, primarily in large cities. Urban contemporary, which typically plays popular dance, rap, R&B, and hip-hop music (featuring performers like Wiz Khalifa and Tyler the Creator), also subdivides by age, featuring an urban AC category with performers like Maxwell, Alicia Keys, and Robin Thicke.

Spanish-language radio, one of radio’s fastest-growing formats, is concentrated mostly in large Hispanic markets such as Miami, New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas (where KCOR, the first all-Spanish-language station, originated in San Antonio in 1947). Besides talk shows and news segments in Spanish, this format features a variety of Spanish, Caribbean, and Latin American musical styles, including calypso, flamenco, mariachi, merengue, reggae, samba, salsa, and Tejano.

In addition, today there are other formats that are spin-offs from album-oriented rock. Classic rock serves up rock favorites from the mid-1960s through the 1980s to the baby-boom generation and other listeners who have outgrown Top 40. The oldies format originally served adults who grew up on 1950s and early-1960s rock and roll. As that audience has aged, oldies formats now target younger audiences with the classic-hits format, featuring songs from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The alternative format recaptures some of the experimental approach of the FM stations of the 1960s, although with much more controlled playlists, and has helped introduce artists such as the Dead Weather and Cage the Elephant.

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EL ZOL 106.7 is a top Spanish-language radio station in the Miami market, visited here by Puerto Rican–American singer Ivy Queen. El Zol is home to Betzy “La Gatita” Vázquez, named the “Best Spanish-Language Radio Personality” by Miami New Times. John Parra/Getty Images

Research indicates that most people identify closely with the music they listened to as adolescents and young adults. This tendency partially explains why classic hits and classic rock stations combined have surpassed CHR stations today. It also helps explain the recent nostalgia for music from the 1980s and 1990s.

Nonprofit Radio and NPR

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PUBLIC RADIO STATIONS in rural areas, like WMMT—which services eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, and southern West Virginia—connect people in far-flung and remote areas by broadcasting local programming that speaks to their listeners’ needs and tastes. Rural stations like this one rely heavily on federal funding and are thus more likely to go under if budgets are cut. AP Photo/David Goldman

Although commercial radio (particularly those stations owned by huge radio conglomerates) dominates the radio spectrum, nonprofit radio maintains a voice. But the road to viability for nonprofit radio in the United States has not been easy. In the 1930s, the Wagner-Hatfield Amendment to the 1934 Communications Act intended to set aside 25 percent of radio for a wide variety of nonprofit stations. When the amendment was defeated in 1935, the future of educational and noncommercial radio looked bleak. Many nonprofits had sold out to for-profit owners during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The stations that remained were often banished from the air during the evening hours or assigned weak signals by federal regulators who favored commercial owners and their lobbying agents. Still, nonprofit public radio survived. Today, more than three thousand nonprofit stations operate, most of them on the FM band.

The Early Years of Nonprofit Radio

Two government rulings, both in 1948, aided nonprofit radio. First, the government began authorizing noncommercial licenses to stations not affiliated with labor, religious, education, or civic groups. The first license went to Lewis Kimball Hill, a radio reporter and pacifist during World War II who started the Pacifica Foundation to run experimental public stations. Pacifica stations, like Hill, have often challenged the status quo in radio as well as in government. Most notably, in the 1950s they aired the poetry, prose, and music of performers considered radical, left-wing, or communist who were blacklisted by television and seldom acknowledged by AM stations. Over the years, Pacifica has been fined and reprimanded by the FCC and Congress for airing programs that critics considered inappropriate for public airwaves. Today, Pacifica has more than one hundred affiliate stations.

Second, the FCC approved 10-watt FM stations. Prior to this time, radio stations had to have at least 250 watts to get licensed. A 10-watt station with a broadcast range of only about seven miles took very little capital to operate, allowing more people to participate, and such stations became training sites for students interested in broadcasting. Although the FCC stopped licensing new 10-watt stations in 1978, about one hundred longtime 10-watters are still in operation.

Creation of the First Noncommercial Networks

During the 1960s, nonprofit broadcasting found a Congress sympathetic to an old idea: using radio and television as educational tools. As a result, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) were created as the first noncommercial networks. Under the provisions of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), NPR and PBS were mandated to provide alternatives to commercial broadcasting. Now, NPR’s popular news and interview programs, such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered, are thriving, and they contribute to the network’s audience of thirty-two million listeners per week.

Over the years, however, public radio has faced waning government support and the threat of losing its federal funding. In 1994, a conservative majority in Congress cut financial support and threatened to scrap the CPB, the funding authority for public broadcasting. In 2011, the House voted to end financing for the CPB, but the Senate voted against the measure. Consequently, stations have become more reliant on private donations and corporate sponsorship, which could cause some public broadcasters to steer clear of controversial subjects, especially those that critically examine corporations. (See “Media Literacy and the Critical Process: Comparing Commercial and Noncommercial Radio.”)

Like commercial stations, nonprofit radio has adopted the format style. However, the dominant style in public radio is a loose variety format whereby a station may actually switch from jazz, classical music, and alternative rock to news and talk during different parts of the day. Noncommercial radio remains the place for both tradition and experimentation, as well as for programs that do not draw enough listeners for commercial success. (See “Global Village: Radio Mogadishu” on page 176 for more on public radio internationally.)

Media Literacy and the Critical Process

Comparing Commercial and Noncommercial Radio

After the arrival and growth of commercial TV, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was created in 1967 as the funding agent for public broadcasting—an alternative to commercial TV and radio featuring educational and cultural programming that could not be easily sustained by commercial broadcasters in search of large general audiences. As a result, National Public Radio (NPR) developed to provide national programming to public stations to supplement local programming efforts. Today, NPR affiliates get just 2 percent of their funding from the federal government. Most money for public radio comes instead from corporate sponsorships, individual grants, and private donations.

1 DESCRIPTION. Listen to a typical morning or late-afternoon hour of a popular local commercial talk-news radio station and a typical hour of your local NPR station from the same time period over a two- to three-day period. Keep a log of what topics are covered and what news stories are reported. For the commercial station, log what commercials are carried and how much time in an hour is devoted to ads. For the noncommercial station, note how much time is devoted to recognizing the station’s sources of funding support and who the supporters are.

2 ANALYSIS. Look for patterns. What kinds of stories are covered? What kinds of topics are discussed? Create a chart to categorize the stories. To cover events and issues, do the stations use actual reporters at the scene? How much time is given to reporting compared to time devoted to opinion? How many sources are cited in each story? What kinds of interview sources are used? Are they expert sources or regular person-on-the-street interviews? How many sources are men, and how many are women?

3 INTERPRETATION. What do these patterns mean? Is there a balance between reporting and opinion? Do you detect any bias, and if so, how did you determine this? Are the stations serving as watchdogs to ensure that democracy’s best interests are being served? What effect, if any, do you think the advertisers/supporters have on the programming? What arguments might you make about commercial and noncommercial radio based on your findings?

4 EVALUATION. Which station seems to be doing a better job serving its local audience? Why? Do you buy the 1930s argument that noncommercial stations serve narrow, special interests while commercial stations serve capitalism and the public interest? Why or why not? From which station did you learn the most, and which station did you find most entertaining? Explain. What did you like and dislike about each station?

5 ENGAGEMENT. Join your college radio station. Talk to the station manager about the goals for a typical hour of programming and what audience the station is trying to reach. Finally, pitch program or topic ideas that would improve your college station’s programming.

New Radio Technologies Offer More Stations

LaunchPad

Going Visual: Video, Radio, and the Web

This video looks at how radio stations adapted to the Internet by providing multimedia on their Web sites to attract online listeners.

Discussion: If video is now important to radio, what might that mean for journalism and broadcasting students who are considering a job in radio?

Over the past decade or so, two alternative radio technologies have helped expand radio beyond its traditional AM and FM bands and bring more diverse sounds to listeners: satellite and HD (digital) radio.

Satellite Radio

A series of satellites launched to cover the continental United States created a subscription-based national satellite radio service. Two companies, XM and Sirius, completed their national introduction by 2002 and merged into a single provider in 2008. The merger was precipitated by their struggles to make a profit after building competing satellite systems and battling for listeners. SiriusXM offers about 165 digital music, news, and talk channels to the continental United States, with monthly prices starting at $14.49 and satellite radio receivers costing from $50 to $110. SiriusXM access is also available to mobile devices via an app.

Programming includes a range of music channels, from rock and reggae to Spanish Top 40 and opera, as well as channels dedicated to NASCAR, NPR, cooking, and comedy. Another feature of satellite radio’s programming is popular personalities who host their own shows or have their own channels, including Howard Stern, Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey, and Bruce Springsteen. U.S. automakers (investors in the satellite radio companies) now equip most new cars with a satellite band, in addition to AM and FM, in order to promote further adoption of satellite radio. SiriusXM had more than twenty-five million subscribers by 2014.

HD Radio

Available to the public since 2004, HD radio is a digital technology that enables AM and FM radio broadcasters to multicast up to three additional compressed digital signals within their traditional analog frequency. For example, KNOW, a public radio station at 91.1 FM in Minneapolis–St. Paul, runs its National Public Radio news/talk/information format on 91.1 HD1, runs Radio Heartland (acoustic and Americana music) on 91.1 HD2, and runs the BBC News service on 91.1 HD3. About 2,200 radio stations now broadcast in HD. To tune in, listeners need a radio with the HD band, which brings in CD-quality digital signals. Digital HD radio also provides program data, such as artist name and song title, and enables listeners to tag songs for playlists that can later be downloaded to an iPod and purchased on iTunes. The rollout of HD has been slow, but by 2014, a new car was being sold with HD radio technology every 4.5 seconds.

Radio and Convergence

Like every other mass medium, radio is moving into the future by converging with the Internet. Interestingly, this convergence is taking radio back to its roots in some aspects. Internet radio allows for much more variety in radio, which is reminiscent of radio’s earliest years, when nearly any individual or group with some technical skill could start a radio station. Moreover, podcasts bring back such content as storytelling, instructional programs, and local topics of interest, which have largely been missing in corporate radio. And portable listening devices like the iPod and radio apps for the iPad and smartphones hark back to the compact portability that first came with the popularization of transistor radios in the 1950s.

Internet Radio

Internet radio emerged in the 1990s with the popularity of the Web. Internet radio stations come in two types. The first involves an existing AM, FM, satellite, or HD station “streaming” a simulcast version of its on-air signal over the Web. More than 10,500 radio stations stream their programming over the Web today.12 IHeartRadio is one of the major streaming sites for broadcast and custom digital stations. The second kind of online radio station is one that has been created exclusively for the Internet. Pandora, 8tracks, Slacker, and Last.fm are some of the leading Internet radio services. In fact, services like Pandora allow users to have more control over their listening experience and the selections that are played. Listeners can create individualized stations based on a specific artist or song that they request. Pandora also enables users to share their musical choices on Facebook. AM/FM radio is used by nearly eight out of ten people who like to learn about new music, but YouTube, Facebook, Pandora, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Spotify, and blogs are among the competing sources for new music fans.13

Beginning in 2002, a Copyright Royalty Board established by the Library of Congress began to assess royalty fees for streaming copyrighted songs over the Internet based on a percentage of each station’s revenue. Webcasters complained that royalty rates set by the board were too high and threatened their financial viability, particularly compared to satellite radio, which pays a lower royalty rate, and broadcasters, who pay no royalty rates at all. For decades, radio broadcasters have paid mechanical royalties to songwriters and music publishers but no royalties to the performing artists or record companies. Broadcasters have argued that the promotional value of getting songs played is sufficient compensation.

In 2009, Congress passed the Webcaster Settlement Act, which was considered a lifeline for Internet radio. The act enabled Internet stations to negotiate royalty fees directly with the music industry, at rates presumably more reasonable than what the Copyright Royalty Board had proposed. In 2012, Clear Channel became the first company to strike a deal directly with the recording industry. Clear Channel (now iHeartMedia) pledged to pay royalties to Big Machine Label Group—one of the country’s largest independent labels—for broadcasting the songs of Taylor Swift and its other artists in exchange for a limit on royalties it must pay for streaming those artists’ music on its iHeartRadio.com site.

Clear Channel’s deal with the music industry opened up new dialogue about equalizing the royalty rates paid by broadcast radio, satellite radio, and Internet radio. Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, argued before Congress in 2012 that the rates were most unfair to companies like his. In the previous year, Westergren said, Pandora paid 50 percent of its revenue for performance royalties, whereas satellite radio service SiriusXM paid 7.5 percent of its revenue for performance royalties, and broadcast radio paid nothing. He noted that a car equipped with an AM/FM radio, satellite radio, and streaming Internet radio could deliver the same song to a listener through all three technologies, but the various radio services would pay markedly different levels of performance royalties to the artist and recording company.14

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INTERNET RADIO SITES like RadioTunes typically offer a variety of ways to listen: free streaming supported by ads, or a pay model that charges more for higher-quality audio or an ad-free stream. Courtesy RadioTunes.com

GLOBAL VILLAGE

Radio Mogadishu

For more than two decades, Somalia has been without a properly functioning government. The nation of about nine million people on the eastern coast of Africa has been embroiled in a civil war since 1991 in which competing clans and militias have fought in seesaw battles for control of the country. During this time, more than a half-million Somalis have died from famine and war. Although Somalia was once a great economic and cultural center, its biggest contribution to global culture in recent years has been modern-day seagoing pirates.

A more moderate transitional government has tried to take leadership of the war-weary nation, but radical Islamist militias, including one called Al-Shabaab with ties to Al-Qaeda, have been its biggest adversaries. Al-Shabaab has terrorized African Union peacekeepers and humanitarian aid workers with assassinations and suicide bombings, and it has used amputations, stonings, and beatings to enforce its harsh rules against civilians.

Journalists in Somalia (the National Union of Somali Journalists estimates there are seven hundred of them) have not been immune from the terror. More than fifty-two journalists have been killed there since 1992, earning Somalia the world’s No. 2 ranking (behind only Iraq) as a nation “where journalist murders go unpunished.”1 The media workers under attack include radio workers, who were threatened by militias in April 2010 to stop playing foreign programs from the BBC and Voice of America, and then to stop playing all music (which was deemed un-Islamic), or face “serious consequences.”2 Although most radio stations in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, have succumbed to the threats, they have found creative (and ironic) ways to jab back at the militants, like playing sound effects instead of music to introduce programs. A newscast, for example, might be introduced by recorded gunshots, animal noises, or car sounds.

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Jehad Nga/The New York Times/Redux

One station, Radio Mogadishu, is still bravely broadcasting music and independent newscasts. The station is supported by the transitional government as a critical tool in bringing democracy back to the country, but radio work in the name of democracy has never been more dangerous than it is in Somalia today. “Radio Mogadishu’s 100 or so employees are marked men and women, because the insurgents associate them with the government,” the New York Times reported.3 Many of the journalists, sound engineers, and deejays eat and sleep at the station for fear of being killed; some have not left the radio station compound to visit their families for months, even though they live in the same city. Their fears are well founded: Another veteran reporter was gunned down by assassins as he returned to his house in April 2013.4

Radio Mogadishu (in English, Somali, and Arabic on the Web at http://radiomuqdisho.net/) speaks to the enduring power of independent radio around the globe and its particular connection to Somali citizens, for whom it is a cultural lifeline. The BBC reports that Somali citizens love pop music (like that of popular Somali artists Abdi Shire Jama [Jooqle] and K’naan, who record abroad), and they resent being told that they cannot listen to it on the radio. Somali bus drivers reportedly sneak music radio for their passengers, turning the music on and off depending on whether they are in a safe, government-controlled district or a dangerous, militia-controlled area. The news portion of radio broadcasts is also important, especially in a country where only about 1 percent of the population has Internet access. “In a fractured state like Somalia, radio remains the most influential medium,” the BBC noted.5

For radio stations in the United States, the most momentous decision is what kind of music to play—maybe CHR, country, or hot AC. For Radio Mogadishu, simply deciding to play music and broadcast independent news is a far more serious, and life-threatening, matter.

Podcasting and Portable Listening

Developed in 2004, podcasting (the term marries iPod and broadcasting) refers to the practice of making audio files available on the Internet so listeners can download them onto their computers and either transfer them to portable MP3 players or listen to the files on the computer. This distribution method quickly became mainstream, as mass media companies created commercial podcasts to promote and extend existing content, such as news and reality TV, while independent producers developed new programs, such as public radio’s Serial, a popular weekly audio nonfiction narrative.

LaunchPad

Radio: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Scholars and radio producers explain how radio adapts to and influences other media.

Discussion: Do you expect that the Internet will be the end of radio, or will radio stations still be around decades from now?

Podcasts have led the way for people to listen to radio on mobile devices like smartphones. Satellite radio, Internet-only stations like Pandora and Slacker, sites that stream traditional broadcast radio like iHeartRadio, and public radio like NPR all offer apps for smartphones and touchscreen devices like the iPad, which has also led to a resurgence in portable listening. Traditional broadcast radio stations are becoming increasingly mindful that they need to reach younger listeners on the Internet, and that Internet radio is no longer tethered to a computer.

For the broadcast radio industry, portability used to mean listening on a transistor or car radio. But with the digital turn to iPods and mobile phones, broadcasters haven’t been as easily available on today’s primary portable audio devices. Hoping to change that, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has been lobbying the FCC and the mobile phone industry to include FM radio capability in all mobile phones. New mobile phones in the United States now have FM radio chips, but Sprint is the only major cell phone company to enable the chips with the NextRadio app.15 Although the NAB argues that the enabled radio chip would be most important for enabling listeners to access local broadcast radio in times of emergencies and disasters, the chip would also be commercially beneficial for radio broadcasters, putting them on the same digital devices as their nonbroadcast radio competitors, like Pandora.