If you don’t live in North Texas, stick with me for a little bit. This will be hyper-local for a few grafs, but gets more pertinent as we go.
Today brings the news that iHeart Radio pulled the plug on 97.1 The Freak, a station that had assembled talk hosts from three different stations who left their previous gig when seeing their management wouldn’t / couldn’t make decisions that would allow their careers and audience to grow. The Freak had some powerhouse personalities and a lot of potential, but iHeart didn’t want to keep the experiment going after six straight books where the ratings didn’t support the talent level.
I’ve worked in radio three times across four decades. Each time, I was witnessing a changing industry, and now it’s more difficult than ever to see what, if any, vision broadcastings companies have for the future.
My last radio job was at CBS Radio Dallas. That company no longer exists. CBS divested their radio division, spinning it off into a company called Entercom. That company then rebranded as Audacy.
You’ll note there isn’t the word “radio” in either of those names.
My second gig was with at KDMX (Mix 102.9), a station under the Nationwide Communications banner. They became AM/FM Broadcasting, which became Jacor, which was bought by ClearChannel, who then rebranded as iHeart Radio. This was all in the span of 12 years.
When I was at Mix, the Web was just getting traction as a promotional tool and publishing platform. I had been building web sites for a couple of years, and made a pitch to build and maintain Mix’s web site (which barely existed other than a digital version of a flyer). The management didn’t bite, and I was gone a few months later. Their site launch the next year was buggy, way too reliant on plug-ins, and was almost unusable.
Oh, and you couldn’t stream the station’s audio… without paying a subscription fee.
Online streaming befuddled and enraged radio management. At first, they couldn’t fathom that anyone would want to listen to anything other than their radios - especially in the car. Then, when listener numbers declined year-over-year, they did what corporations do best: they gutted their talent pool, automated their on-air operations, and still added hurdles to listen to their stations online. Ad revenue continues to dry up, while people would rather listen to their massive libraries or streaming playlists.
None of this is news to anyone who pays even a modicum of attention to the business. However, the one thing radio still gets right, occasionally, is the thing ownership seems unwilling or unable to grasp: personal connection.
Whether it’s an on-air playlist curated by an actual human, or on-air talent that knows the community they’re broadcasting to, radio does something that playlists and algorithms still can’t equal. That connection between the hosts and audience is what made The Freak special. It’s why people like me still keeps radio presets active, regardless of whatever else I’m listening to in the car.
97.1 will reportedly move back to their previous format, rock radio. The ratings for the Eagle were not spectacular in the years leading up to flipping to The Freak, but it’s a lot cheaper to hire two or three people to voice-track a week of airbreaks than it is to have a dozen talk hosts on the air all week.
After all, the money’s the only thing that matters… right?