BCE Inc. is selling off 45 of its 103 regional radio stations as it cuts nine per cent of its workforce, including journalists and other workers at its Bell Media subsidiary.
The radio company playbook:
- Realize that radio is not profitable because nobody is listening to it
- Run more ads in order to get more revenue
- More people stop listening to radio since there are too many ads
- Return to step 1. repeat until the business is viable.
Invisible airwaves crackle with life, bright antenna bristle with the energy. Emotional feedback on a timeless wavelength. Bearing a gift beyond price almost free.
- Rush, The Spirit of Radio
How did we take such an amazing thing as having music beamed into the air around us for free and enshittify it to the point that nobody believes it has value?
Thank God there’s still the CBC. For now at least
When I go to France, I’m amazed at how many clear TV channels you can get over the air for free. Same with radio stations. And every region has their local little thing going on alongside the big players like Virgin or whatever. I never met anyone there that had a cable subscription.
To me, this is one sign of a healthy democracy because information and entertainment isn’t blocked behind paid subscriptions and not all sources are manipulated by mega media corporations to provide biased information and opinions.
Are you sure the tv channels are free? I’m only familiar with Germany: you can get a ton of channels as well but you have to essentially pay a tax for having a tv.
Well it’s “free” in the same sense that healthcare is “free”. Everybody contributes a little bit.
Yes in France they have the same kind of tax.
Fuck man you are right and the scary thing is, are we going to say the same thing about the internet in 10 years?
As someone who’s been using the internet for decades, I’m saying this about the internet now.
Because streaming music, podcasts, and audio books exist, and basically everyone has a smart phone.
Radio is dead no matter what the stations do.
This is probably a factor as well but I know many tradesmen and the like still just listening to radio. New guy doesnt like the song? Too bad, its what the station played. I also like to listen to local stations while driving, camping or fishing to get weather or traffic updates.
Out in the tractor radio is pretty much the only option, cell service comes and goes over the hills but the radio is always there for you!
I mean you could get a bluetooth speaker and download some music but then you’ll have to decide what you want to listen to and thats a lot to ask some days.
I actually run my own streaming setup where I stream off my computer through VPN, local buffering on the phone, it works really well in the truck where service is usually not interrupted for that long.
However a lot of people don’t realize just how many hours of music you can burn through when you’re putting in 12hr+ days in the field or even the mental effort in picking what to play next when your eyes are up front (I don’t run autosteer on anything). So just turn on the radio and get the job done!
The main killer feature radio still has is geographically relevant news
If you’re listening to NPR maybe. Most FM stations in America just pump out pre-recorded programming from a centralized corporate source. There’s no “local” in corporate radio. No local DJ. No local programming. No local news.
In the states, broadcast TV will soon follow the same route as it’s no longer locally owned either.
This is a Canada instance.
That’s only going to be relevant for a few more years.
Radio is doomed. It’s not profitable to run without it being overloaded with ads, but even without ads the audience is going to steadily dwindle no matter what they do.
Doesn’t need to be a business. Give the air space back for public use. Pbs or real local public broadcasting, etc.
They would sell the spectrum before they did something like that. Prime real estate for longer range, medium speed ISM type communications.
It’s almost as if we shouldnt of allowed Bell to consolidate everything.
On one hand, the impact on the communities would be lower than it would have been 10 or 20 years ago. The Internet fills a lot of gaps. On the other hand the Internet today is Facebook for many folks so that’s probably worse. 🥹
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