Poisoning The Well

Short term gain, long term harm. Here's a note I received from Mary Ellen earlier, regarding G-Rock Radio's abrupt departure:

I am a 90.5 The Night member, and fan of the Friday night Altrok show. I am a 44 year old mom who still listens to regular FM radio in my car, and I was a fairly regular G-Rock listener. I was a long time listener to the original WHTG in the days of Rich Robinson, Matt Pinfield, Rob Acampora, et al. G-rock was still a disappointment when compared with the orginal, but it finally had some excellent programs, including Michele Amabile's Sat. AM Breakfast Club, the Retro Request, and the Punkyard. They had some great in studio sessions too. My son tuned in 106.3 last night in our kitchen and we nearly choked. What a rotten thing to do the airstaff. They deserved better. So did the fans.

Most corporations, and certainly media corporations, abhor messy sendoffs; they much prefer that when they stop having to depend on people, that those people evaporate (which is among the corporate tendencies that have caused some corporations to be labeled as sociopathic.) Commercial radio, in particular, has been slow to realize that their treatment of their listenership, both in terms of the programming of their stations and in the termination of their programming, now can cause their listeners to leave the market entirely.

Back in 2000, I predicted that radio's worst enemy would be a ubiquitous portable digital music player of sufficient capacity that was set to "shuffle play" - that was before the noun changed from "portable digital music player" to "iPod". The fact of the market here in 2009 is that there are even more alternatives than that. Jilted DJs and their fans blog like crazy, and the more tenacious ones can set up alternate means to get to their listeners - and a dependable podcast gets them front-and-center placement on that much-feared iPod. Technology continues to democratize peoples' ability to not only get their message out, but to package it in a way that's indistinguishable from the high-gloss production values we're used to hearing from radio.

Simply put, bitter listeners find someplace else to go, and bitter professionals will find another way to reach them. The biggest beneficiary of G Rock's shutdown may well be the Apple Store in Freehold Raceway Mall.