Critics complain that syndication, automation, and company consolidation have stripped the local life from the medium. But while many stations in Philadelphia have limited homegrown content, the city has a louder local voice than most - and that's important to survival.
"There are regional differences," says Fratrik, "and if a radio corporation is smart, they recognize them and cater to them. Something might work in Philly that won't work in Boston or Wausau, Wis."
What works for soft-rock WBEB (101.1) is audience research. Owned and run by Jerry Lee, who helped launch the station in 1963, WBEB is perennially top-ranked and considered by many the most successful locally owned single station in America. In 1968, the station became the first FM outlet in the country to bill $1 million a year in advertising.
Stories about Lee's marketing genius are legion. Born in New Castle, Pa., he "started to think up ways of making money before he left the baby carriage," according to a 1968 profile in the Philadelphia Daily News. He came to Philadelphia three years out of college, after getting some experience at stations in Ohio and Maryland.
Lee knows what his listeners want because he asks, paying special attention to the female audience. Energetic and confident, he has built his success on painstaking research and won nearly every honor his industry can bestow.
His mind spins off new ideas so quickly that he keeps a second computer on his desk just to catch them, he said in a 2006 Inquirer interview.
What comes out regularly stuns his industry colleagues. He once moved to boost his ratings by having radios made in Hong Kong that were permanently tuned to 101.1, then spreading them out, for free, in workplaces all over town.
Connecting with the audience, as Lee does better than most, is considered key to radio survival. Unlike the Internet, it also provides a money stream outside on-air spots and printed ads that other traditional media don't match.
Country station WXTU (92.5) recently marked its 25th birthday with a big party featuring a bevy of stars at the Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden. The party might have been free for the 34,000 listeners who showed up, but the station got plenty of money from advertisers. "We had over 30 vendors," says WXTU marketing and promotions director Mark Vizza.
Ever heard of Wing Bowl? WIP has established the annual eating fest as a monument to outside promotion and advertising.
"Today, radio gets people involved," says Gillespie, a former president of the Philadelphia Ad Club. "Events, concerts, all kinds of marketing things: They offer to advertisers, and then they customize. That's where their strength is."
The future of radio may turn not on financiers but on the creative energy of the industry's workforce, say media buyers, ad executives, and analysts.
Gillespie thinks so: "Radio generally has better salespeople than the other media. They understand what they can and cannot accomplish. Radio people are more creative."
"They are crazy people, entrepreneurs, opportunists," says BIA's Fratrik. "They're still battling every day."
Contact television critic Jonathan Storm at 215-854-5618 or jstorm@phillynews.com. Read his recent work at http://go.philly.com/jonathanstorm
Inquirer staff writers Michael Klein and John Timpane contributed to this article.
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