Dave Foulk Internet Flyer

My friend and fellow aging malcontent Bob Coxe sent me this piece from Forbes.

"I've been around the dial so many times, but you're not there. Somebody said that you'd been taken off the air. You were my favorite DJ, since I can't remember when..."

It was tough to know just how prophetic those words were when Ray Davies of the Kinks penned them in 1981 for a song called "Around the Dial," which pays tribute to an anonymous former disc jockey who seemed to have disappeared from the airwaves. Davies may have been about two decades early, but he was right on the money.

Times are tough for traditional live local disc jockeys, as satellite, online radio, pre-recorded voice tracking and syndication across markets have taken huge chunks of their audiences, especially among younger adults. Veterans struggle to hang on, while aspirants struggle with fewer openings and lower pay.

Karen Blake, who's been spinning tunes on Boston radio since the mid-1980s, most recently on oldies station WODS, says the new media outlets have brought big-time changes to her job.

"Radio personalities need to have a lot of local content and be more entertaining than ever," she says.

A favorite DJ? What a quaint notion. But now they may be on the cusp of a comeback.

"It's an interesting and scary time," says veteran New York City DJ Carol Miller of classic rock station WAXQ. "It's like a game of musical chairs where one chair keeps getting taken away."

The Connecticut School of Broadcasting, which places graduates into many facets of radio and television work, is seeing more students lean toward the production side of the business, given the technological advances that allow for computerized programming of content, according to Steve Williams, the school's Wellesley Hills, Mass., campus director.

But don't be surprised if things begin to change. Those who lament the "cookie cutter" radio being offered up by most FM music stations around the country--syndicated, plain vanilla programs with tightly fragmented play lists--could get their wish of seeing it go the way of the television variety show.

Some industry experts say radio's efforts to scale costs have failed, and that a return to developing local talent is key to the future success of what is largely a local medium.

And the recent announcement by Clear Channel Communications, about to go private in an $18.7 billion buyout by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners, which will look to sell off 448 of Clear Channel's 1,150 stations, could push the pendulum back again, to a time when DJs exuded a local flavor and educated their audience on the artists whose tunes they played. Clear Channel has lost a third of its market value over the past five years.

"Absolutely, for radio to be competitive it has to be local," says Tom Barnes, CEO of MediaThink, a business strategy consultant that works with several radio stations in various-sized markets. While syndication works for relatively generic shows like pop chart countdowns and some morning drive slots, everyday music radio isn't going to compete with MP3 players and online streaming by mimicking them. Differentiation is the key.

Barnes notes that while 95% of U.S. households still tune in to broadcast radio, the average time people spend listening has dropped steadily for years.

A renewed concentration on going local "is the only thing that can save the industry," he says.

Given the high costs of developing talent and the low costs of distribution, it's easy to see why radio executives turned to syndication and voice tracking to stretch its on-air talent across as much of the country as possible. But it's like former Continental Airlines CEO Gordon Berthune said about cost cutting when he compared selling customers on an airline to selling them pizza--once you take away the cheese, sauce and topping, you're left with nothing but a piece of dough. An airline can't differentiate without good service and unique features, and broadcast radio just isn't a compelling listen without live talent the locals can identify with.

"The stuff between the records is what's key, it's what separates radio from iPods," says Mark Ramsey, president of Hear 2.0, a media research firm in San Diego. He acknowledges that a lot of the syndicated programming out there sounds better than what most local stations could produce, given their managements' current reluctance to invest in new talent.

In other words, as Miller says, "You get what you pay for."

Miller, who's been entertaining and informing New York rock fans since the early 1970s, hails from an era when DJs mixed music with concert specials and artist interviews and mostly had the freedom to choose the music that went on the air.

Want to know what Bruce Springsteen has been working on lately? Tune in to Miller's show.

In a partial concession to the times, she has taken a second job cutting a daily program on Sirius Satellite Radio. She'd like to see the young up-and-comers in her industry have a chance to mix it up with listeners and artists on more local stations, but figures radio needs to seriously step up its marketing for them to have much of a chance.

"We're like the Maytag of media; you never see a story about a great refrigerator, but what keeps your food cool better?" she says.

Marketing itself is something the industry just never felt the need to do until music downloading and satellite radio hit like a sudden storm. Instead, the focus has been on cost cutting, an important component of any business but not a formula for helping an industry reinvent itself and stay relevant. And you never know when that reinvention catalyst could hit. Miller was struck by the reaction she got while strolling down the street listening to a 1963 Fleetwood transistor radio she'd pulled from the closet.

"At least five people asked me, 'Wow, what's that?' For all they knew it could have been the next big thing," she said.

A portable player carrying live radio. What a concept!

Recently, WGST Radio in Atlanta decided to let a couple of people go..Tom Hughes who had been with the station for 26 years, and Kim Peterson- a former colleague of mine at WSB Radio. Kim had been at WGST for more than a decade after leaving WSB. The WSB Old Timers is a loosely formed bunch of folks who worked at "The Voice Of The South" starting no later than 1980. Here is a message I posted with them: