Much of radio is leveraged up to the little red lights on the tippy-tops of its tall antennas.
The "market perception of radio is abysmal," says Mark Fratrik, financial vice president of BIA. "The people who own the debt don't want to acquire these stations because there's nobody out there to buy it."
In some cases, you can't even give a radio station away.
An investment firm donated a station playing inspirational music to a Georgia religious organization. A few weeks ago, the Augusta Radio Fellowship Institute, citing "the economy and other factors," gave it back.
The "market for broadcast stations has been almost nonexistent for more than a year," says the Radio Business Report, a trade journal whose RBR Radio Index, a measurement of stock values in the industry, lost about 80 percent of its value between March 31, 2007, and March 31, 2009.
"We used to not list penny stocks," says Jack Messmer, who maintains the radio index, "but we've had to leave them in because otherwise there wouldn't be enough companies in the index."
Changes in the way people listen to music have had only a small effect on traditional radio.
Sirius XM satellite radio, which has leveled off at about 20 million subscribers and narrowly avoided bankruptcy this year after accumulating more than $6 billion in losses; Web-based radio, such as Pandora; and digitally recorded music all siphon some listeners from traditional radio. But many of the new services and devices attract additional, rather than alternative, listening.
"Different ultimate delivery systems have increased the total number of listeners," Drury says.
Jonathan Steuer, media consultant and founder of Anonymous Media Research, says: "Lots of people are listening to radio, but the media they use to get it differ with age."
Steuer cites a study by OTX Research indicating that while 67 percent of all age groups listen to most of their radio in the car, only 54 percent of young teenagers (ages 13 to 17) do. A larger percentage of that group (21 percent vs. 9 percent of the general population) listens to music on digitally recorded formats such MP3. People between 13 and the mid-30s also use streaming audio and other computer sources much more than older people do.
"For use of new media," Steuer says, "ages 31 to 35 is probably the cutoff."
Just like TV and newspapers, radio is cutting staff and consolidating operations to try to keep going in a horrible advertising market.
A month ago, for instance, Clear Channel announced that John Rohm, who had been running the company's Pittsburgh stations for 10 years, would replace local vice president and market manager Manuel Rodriguez. Now Rohm will run things in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
KYW, one of the most-listened-to stations in the area, has done "nothing dramatic" in newsroom staffing during the last two years, says Marc Rayfield, the market manager for CBS. The station's newsroom employs 66 people, 35 of them full time, he says.
Stephen Leshinski, executive director of the Philadelphia office of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, says he has noticed that the hours of some KYW part-timers have been cut. "Our perception of things is that around the edges, there's been some trimming of coverage," he said.
But unlike TV and newspapers, radio has been consolidating for more than a decade, after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 made it possible for one company to own multiple stations in each market. And it has been dumping staff since the '70s, when so-called voice-check technology made it possible for disc jockeys to record shows days or even weeks in advance.
Can a listener detect the sound of hard times in radio's content? Probably. As WMGK disc jockey John DeBella explains, radio reflects the mood of the nation.
"Eighties radio was more upbeat. It changed with the times," he says. "Into the '90s, it became more in-your-face, crasser, as society did. And now, when you listen today, a lot of radio, especially talk radio, is angry. But so is the country. I don't know why. But a lot of radio is the same way."
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