Name one FM radio show or DJ you routinely listen to. Regularly and on purpose, not "because my car has no CD player" or "whenever I'm sick of my CDs". A show or DJ you look forward to hearing.
Talk shows? No, that's AM radio. Sports broadcasts? Nope. AM radio again. A good jazz station with few commercials? That's also probably AM radio. National Public Radio? It's true that NPR is on FM radio, but if you took a poll, most people would probably think it was an AM station.
My point is that FM radio is dead. Honestly, who would miss 95% of FM radio if it went away, besides the middle-aged ladies in your office who listen to the lunchtime request hour because they're too cheap to find "Funkytown" in a $2 bargain bin? Outside of a few good college radio stations, I doubt anyone would miss any of it. FM radio is well overdue for an unpleasant death and intriguing rebirth, and I think it will happen in the next 15 years.
Consider the facts. Almost all new cars have satellite radio and CD players included. Portable music players, all of which have attachments for a car radio or speakers, are widespread, and are even being built into some cars. Internet radio stations are huge, even with my boss, a man who usually shuns most types of technology. How long will it be before FM radio becomes unprofitable for the corporations running the stations?
Radio's quality has been declining for years, to the point where every issue of Rolling Stone magazine now has ads promoting the fact that radio is free. That's how little interest young people have in it. Sadly, the annoying commercials that take up the majority of airtime, and the complete lack of unique music and content continues regardless. Clear Channel and other large station owners just don't get it. It's the content, dummy. In the years to come, they'll learn this lesson the hard way.
Two years ago, my friend Aaron Brown wrote a great guest column for this website explaining why radio sucks, but he only touches on the beginning of radio's fall. Listen to a popular radio station around 8 pm, and take note of the commercials. Most of them are for nightclubs. That's because the majority of listeners are sitting around bored with the radio as background noise. They're not listening to it because they like it. You can't party with a radio playing the music, because there's commercials between every song.
If history repeats itself, and it usually does, radio stations owners won't get the message. They'll continue with "what's safe", despite changing tastes. I predict that in 15 years, FM radio stations will be losing so much money that they'll be forced to either adapt or bail out, clearing the airwaves for people with better visions. FM stations will start competing with satellite radio stations, because that's where most of their listeners will have gone. Kids will flock to this "new" format, saying to themselves, "It's like satellite, but free? What a great idea!"
Sometimes, the only way to improve something is to destroy it and start over. This style of rebirth, similar to a controlled brush fire clearing dead areas to bring new life, will rejuvenate radio. The only question is, how long until it gets ruined again?
