Stern's shift signals radio's decline by Russell Smith

Radio host Howard Stern's departure from conventional radio airwaves has caused a fallout among the stations that used to carry his talk show, and provoked a wave of discussion about the future of the medium.

Stern has taken his famously funny, juvenile and offensive show to Sirius, the satellite radio network which operates beyond the jurisdiction of the famously prudish U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The FCC has fined Stern millions of dollars over the years for various infractions (variously racism, obscenity, sheer appalling nastiness); Stern's move simultaneously avoids future censorship and abandons millions of listeners. (Sirius doesn't release its audience numbers, but for the time being Stern has signed off on thousands if not millions of listeners.) Interestingly, the FM stations that used to air The Howard Stern Show now find that they have almost nothing else to offer listeners. Rock radio has been in decline for years, as young people turn towards hip-hop and dance, and as people of all demographics learn to gather their music from the Internet. Several of the rock stations that carried Stern's rambling circus -- including his long-time home base, New York's K-Rock -- will now transform themselves into all-talk channels. This in turn will likely affect sales of rock CDs.

This might simply reflect the fact that "rock" is now a meaningless category, unless used as a historical term (denoting, I guess, a 30-year span between Elvis Presley and Puff Daddy). But it also reflects a wider trend in radio, which is gradually erasing its traditional connection with music. People with specific tastes in music, such as those who want to listen to jazz or classical or folk or electronica, long ago realized that radio -- even public radio -- was no longer going to be able to cater to those niches. And we have turned to the Internet, satellite services and podcasting for our music. In the United States, the only music stations likely to attract enough listeners to attract enough advertisers that will ensure them a profit are those which play an extremely narrow range of mainstream pop, or those which mix dancey pop and golden oldies (a little Elton John with your Madonna). Many former "classic rock" stations have been colonized by the "Jack FM" format, a vast centralized empire of prepackaged radio entertainment, playing mostly light pop music interspersed with recorded entertainment "bits," but relying very little on local DJs. Several of the stations that broadcast Stern's show have replaced him with Jack FM broadcasts. (The notable exceptions to this homogenizing trend in the United States are the stations that play Hispanic pop music, and those that play solely "urban" or black music, both of which are enjoying a surge of popularity.) Interestingly, the Sirius satellite network provides 18 different channels of some variant on "rock."

The one thing that radio still does better than your iPod -- or your satellite -- is talk. Political analysis, sports and humour are still what people are consistently tuning in to on the radio. People in the commercial radio industry are predicting that broadcast radio (radio that is free to everybody with a radio receiver) will shift almost entirely to talk, and people will find their music from more specialized sources.

The CBC, with two English-language radio networks, doesn't seem to be at all affected by this received wisdom. Radio One seems to be focusing more and more on pop music -- and particularly that middle-of-the-road kind of guitar-based music which, for want of a better word, one might call rock. (This is because there has apparently been some kind of secret edict issued that all Radio One programming now has to have a "Vote For Your Top 10 Not Too Threatening Pop Songs" component.) So Radio One is making itself one of the last refuges for fans of David Bowie and Johnny Cash. Meanwhile Radio Two, a station once devoted to music, now has more friendly banter and interviews than ever before. It seems to me that they could simplify things by allowing Radio One to concentrate on what it does best, which is fascinating interviews and intelligent analysis, and leave the Flaming Lips and Arcade Fire to MuchMusic (but I suggest this with the utmost respect, as I know that CBC people are extremely sensitive to criticism and I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings). I'm not going to miss Howard Stern's brutalizing presence on free radio, as I never listened to it anyway, and I'm not going to miss hearing the Eagles and Boston in the back seats of small-town taxis either, but it does seem sad that radio generally is abandoning a mostly-music format. I'm going to have to give up on trying to find any music that I like on the radio dial, and shell out for yet another subscription to some specialized entertainment stream. The end of rock radio itself may not be cause for lamentation, but it signals a wider shift: New culture is not only divided into ever narrower niches, but also, increasingly, something you're going to have to look for -- research, seek out and pay for -- rather than something that comes to you free when you switch on a dial in the morning.

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