Is the country ready for change? Is the radio world ready for change? Some interesting posts this past week (all of which I, a middle-aged woman read online) bear on the future of classical music radio.
First is a post by Todd Feinburg, who despite his inane political blather has made some intelligent observations about the current dilemma radio finds itself in. He says radio is in a coma. In an article titled Is Radio Headed For Extinction? Feinburg writes
The radio industry is in shock. An absolute coma.
Radio sees the enemy bearing down and closing in, but it doesn’t know how to respond. It’s frozen in place, unable to move. No defense is being offered, no counter attack.
The foe that has radio folks terrified is the Internet. New technologies are encroaching on radio’s traditional domain with the same speed that the auto and airline industries once pounded the railroads into near extinction. And radio is mimicking the railroad industry’s response to its death knell — whether from arrogance, fear, or institutional inertia, radio is failing to see that it must embrace the future rather than resist it or run from it…
The radio industry needs to learn that it’s in the audio distribution business…But the fear that radio feels over the encroachment, and the revenues lost to the Internet, are causing radio to pull back rather than to be aggressive. In the short term, this means tighter budgets and fewer jobs. This is exactly the wrong response, of course.