Welcome to Boom!, a look at this area’s popular culture and its lasting effect on our generation. I’m Mike Olszewski, and my wife, Janice, and I have been documenting this part of our history in a series of books aimed at preserving that part of our lives and bringing back plenty of memories.
I’m teaching college now, but before that I spent a long time in radio, most notably at WMMS when it was “The Buzzard.” People often ask me, “Whatever happened to radio?” Well, the programming is there and is growing, but the way it gets to us is changing rapidly.
RADIO DAYS
It wasn’t that long ago that radio was lifestyle. We lived and died with radio, but that was before a lot of other options such as cable TV, video games, computers and the internet. Ah, the internet. Video didn’t kill the radio star. Your laptop and cellphone might be to blame.
Sure, radio is still popular, but mostly for an aging generation.
The internet quickly changed the way we access information and music, and it’s not slowing down. Author Tim Murphy disagrees to a point in a recent article, “Millennials Love Radio. Wait, What?” Portability seems to be the advantage.
“Radio is mobile friendly for the ear bud generation, and it connects with those that want to be part of their community,” Murphy writes.
True, people listen primarily in their cars, and Wi-Fi is now being installed in some upper-end models.
NOW WHAT?
John Gorman has seen both sides of the coin. The well-respected programmer of WMMS and WMJI now heads oWOW Cleveland, a locally focused internet radio station.
A handful of huge corporations today control stations, and they paid big cash to get them. Investors want a return on their money, which has led to major cuts in staff, types of programming promotion and competition.
Internet radio is coming up fast, and Gorman was in fairly early. That opens the door for more local programming, news and personalities, right? There would be hundreds of opportunities, especially when Wi-Fi is standard in new cars. But keep this in mind: Money fuels every industry, and music royalties don’t come cheap.
Gorman says oWOW Cleveland progresses “because we wrote in the royalty payments as the cost of doing business. But it is expensive. And it cuts into promotion and marketing budgets.”
It’s tough to sell advertising for any medium, including the internet, but that will change as Wi-Fi becomes the standard. Change is coming fast. Here are your options: Accept it, enjoy it — or get out of the way.
MORE INFORMATION ON RADIO
Check out “The Buzzard: Inside the Glory Days of WMMS and Cleveland Rock Radio — A Memoir,” by John Gorman, and “This Is Larry Morrow … My Life On and Off the Air,” by Larry Morrow.
Plus, a shameless plug for my own books: “Radio Daze: Stories from the Front in Cleveland’s FM Air Wars,” and “WIXY 1260: Pixies, Six-Packs and Superman,” with Carlo Wolff and Richard Berg.
SOME TRIVIA
The Beatles were a cornerstone of radio in our generation. Two Beatles wrote separate songs as solo artists with the same title. What songs share that same title?
Look for the answer in the next issue.
