Most people freely admit that they don't know how the radio industry works. And, unless they've been in the business for a while, the people who profess to really know how the biz works are usually those who are most lacking in actual information. So, for the civilians out there, here's a quick primer . . .

"Ten Things You Don't Know About Radio
(And Ten Things Radio Stations Don't Want You to Know)"
By Ace Armstrong

Everyone knows someone like Jordan. He's the guy who has something to say about everything, regardless of the subject. He's been there and he knows it all . . . or so he says. Computers? "Yeah, well, ya know, the processor has to be calibrated with the motherboard or else it will go too fast and it could burn out the serial ports." History? "Hitler really did have an atomic bomb, but American troops got to the launch site just as the ICBM was ready to launch." Radio? "Those DJs are all rich. They have agents and they go to parties all the time. And the stations work by the ratings; if they get higher ratings, then they get more money from the ratings people."

Jordan, of course, is an idiot.

He doesn't know more about radio than you, your best friend, or the guy down the street. Jordan has merely bought into the image of radio and filled in the rest with his imagination to make himself look smart. Don't believe him. In fact, next time he starts into one of his diatribes, you might want to clue him in to the real world of radio. To clear things up for him (and you!), here are then things you don't know about radio, and ten things that radio stations don't want you to know.

TEN THINGS YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT RADIO

1. Radio stations do not get paid by ratings. At least, not strictly speaking. See, a radio station's largest (usually only) source of revenue is advertising. Local companies pay the radio station to air their commercials. The ratings are only indirectly responsible for the station's revenue. Why? Because the numbers serve two purposes: they tell the programmers (the people who select the music, the talent, the entire approach of the station) who is listening, for how long, and at what times; and they let the sales people (or, "Account Executives," as they're known in radiospeak) have something to show potential advertisers when they make a sales call.

   And, actually, the ratings aren't really what's important. Most civilians don't understand what the term "ratings" means. "Ratings" are a percent of the people in the market (i.e., the city, country, or area being measured) listening to your station at a given moment. Let's say there are 100,000 people in the market. 1,000 are listening to your station. Your rating, then, would be a "1." The other stations might have a 2.7, a 3, or even a 4. That means that 2.7%, 3%, or 4% (respectively) of the people who live in the market are listening to those particular stations. And, believe it or not, that's a pretty good number. But it's not really that significant. What's important to people in radio is the "Average Quarter Hour Share." And that may take some explaining.

   A "share" is similar to a "rating," but it only applies to the people who live in the market and who are listening to their radios at a given time. Let's say there are 100,000 people in the market, and at 8:00 p.m. there are 10,000 people listening to the radio. 1,000 of those people are listening to your station. Your rating, then, would be a 1 (1% of the total people in the market), but your share would be a 10 (10% of the people in the market who have their radios on). See the difference? (Just remember that all of the "ratings" in the market added up will never add up to 100%, because not everyone has their radio on. The total of all the "shares" in the market, though, will always add up to 100%, because the only people who are being counted are the people who are listening to their radios.)

   So now you know what a "share" is. So what's this "Average Quarter Hour Share" business? Well, shares are measured in 15 minute increments. When a radio station gets the research analysis (i.e., "the book") from the company (in radio, it's usually Arbitron or AccuRatings), every hour of every day will be divided into 15 minute segments. The Average Quarter Hour Share (or "AQH") is the average of each of those segments for a given time. For instance, for a 7 p.m. to Midnight show, you would determine the AQH by adding up all of the shares between 7 p.m. and Midnight, then divide by 20 (4 15-minute segments for each of the five hours). This number is the important one, because it tells you how your station is doing against the other stations in the market for a given segment of time.

   So the Account Executives sell by the AQH, in most markets. But even a strong showing in the AQH doesn't guarantee that the station will make money. Having good numbers in the right demographic is more important than having good numbers overall. For instance, classical stations usually make quite a bit of money, although they may not do well overall in the book. Why is this? Because even though the overall number of listeners is lower (they may have a .5 AQH in Persons 12+), they reach a very valuable segment of the audience: older listeners who tend to be better educated and more wealthy. If you own a classical station, and only have a .5 AQH overall in the market, but you have a 50 AQH among people in the market who have doctorates and make over $100,000 a year, you'll probably do okay. Even though you'll have fewer advertisers, you'll have a different class of advertisers (like Mercedes dealerships, Gucci outlets, exclusive department stores, expensive jewelry stores, investment firms) that are willing to pay significantly more to reach that small number of wealthy people.

   The opposite is also true. You may be number two or three in the market in Persons 12+, but if you have a 70 share in Men 18-24 in a college town, you'll probably not make a whole lot of money. Why? Because college students (who would be a large segment of those males between 18 and 24 years old) don't have a lot of discretionary income. In other words, they're flat broke much of the time and won't spend a lot of money in stores. So, the store won't try to attract them by advertising on your station.

   So stations don't get paid by ratings. At least, not directly. While the research (including ratings and shares and something else entirely called "cume") have an effect on how the station does financially, it's a much smaller effect than most people believe.

2. Radio personalities do not, for the most part, make a lot of money. This is one of those myths that comes from the fact that radio is showbiz, and people tend to think of their favorite DJs as "famous." And famous people make a lot of money, right? Well, not in radio. According to Radio & Records, the average salary of a night disc jockey (in all markets) was just under $30,000 in 1995. That figure has increased slightly in the last couple of years, so that it's probably closer to $31,000 a year. But, you have to remember that this is the average of all markets, including the top 10, where the salaries skyrocket (in the top fifteen markets, the average salary for a night jock was $53,000). With over 1,000 radio markets in the United States, it's obvious that these number are skewed a little. Since most of the markets in the US are not in the top 100, you can expect the morning show host to make around $40,000 a year, the midday host around $26,000, the afternoon driver $30,000 annually and the night guy around $17,000 or $18,000 annually. In the major markets (i.e., the top 30), the morning guy can probably make over $100,000 a year, the midday talent around $60,000 a year, the afternoon driver around $60,000 a year, and the night guy(s) anywhere from $25,000 to $55,000 a year.

   Another thing to remember is that the format (i.e., Rock, Top 40, Country) also has a major impact on the salary. A night guy at the "Soft Adult Contemporary" station (i.e., lots of Carpenters and John Denver) might make $14,000 in market 110, but in the same market, the night guy at the rock station will probably make closer to $20,000. And, it varies from station to station. Obviously, if your station is making a lot of money, you'll probably have a higher salary.

   Another important factor is the cost of living. Sure, it looks good to say that a morning drive guy in Detroit makes $115,000 a year, but when compared to the cost of living, how does that really compare? Remember that in the major markets, the average rent for a two bedroom apartment may be more than $750 a month, whereas in some of the smaller markets, you can get a comparable apartment for $400 a month or less. Often, a jock in market 100 will actually be doing better on $18,000 a year than a jock in market 25 making $30,000 a year.

   If you want to be in radio, and you want to make money, there are two ways to go. The easiest is sales. It's hard to find an Account Exec with any expertise who makes less than $30,000 a year in even a small market. The other way is to become syndicated. The income of those personalities who have syndicated shows (Rick Dees, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, etc.) is substantially higher than their salary. Why? Because they get a chunk of income from each market in which they air. Syndication is really the only way for a radio personality to earn a seven-figure income, and even having a syndicated show is no guarantee of great wealth.

   In short, anyone who tells you that radio personalities are rich has no clue what they're talking about.

3. Radio is not a "liberal media." This is one of the most pervasive myths of all. (In fact, the "liberal media" cliche itself, of which this is a subset, is completely off-base.) Radio is, overall, one of the great strongholds of right-wing thinking. Name the famous radio personalities you know. On top of the list are probably folks like Casey Kasem, Rick Dees, Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Howard Stern, Shadoe Stevens and Mike Reagan. Of these, three are associated with the music side of the business, and are, therefore (rightly or wrongly) lumped into the "liberal" category. But, even these three are only heard nationally once a week. The rest--who are definitely not "liberals" by any stretch of the imagination--reach literally millions of people every day. Their influence, then, is much greater than their "liberal" counterparts.

   Want more proof? According to Radio & Records, nearly a third of the radio stations in the United States are religious stations. Outside of country radio (another conservative format), the most popular format for radio stations in the United States is News/Talk stations . . . nearly all of which promote right-wing ideas exclusively. Even air talent at most music stations are guided by management and owners (who also tend to be conservative) to play things conservative and to avoid "sounding liberal."

   In other words, radio is not a friendly place for liberal ideas. It's largely conservative--which is ironic, since it's the conservatives on radio who perpetuate the myth that the media (including radio) is part of a large-scale liberal conspiracy.

4. Radio jobs are very unstable. According to most research, the average length of employment for an air personality at a radio station is 9 to 18 months. The average length of unemployment between jobs is 6 to 9 months. In other words, the average radio personality may spend a third of his time unemployed. This means that radio people should save a third of their income for a time when they will be unemployed and need to pay their bills from savings. If they don't, they'll still spend a third of their paycheck paying off bills that accrued while they were unemployed. So, even though a jock may make $30,000 a year, he only gets to live a $20,000 lifestyle. (And for those who make under $20,000 a year, the strain is really hard.)

   Jocks may get fired for any of a number of reasons. They may pull a joke on the air that an advertiser doesn't like. They may not get decent numbers in one or two books. The station may be bought. The management might decide to flip formats, taking a rock station and turning it into an urban station. The station may go automated. Or the owner's son may get fired, and the owner may decide to make room for him by firing someone at the station. For this reason, most jocks have feelers out at all times, looking for potential jobs. This is why your favorite DJ may suddenly disappear without warning, leaving you to only scratch your head in disbelief.

5. DJ's don't just work for the four or five hours they're on the air. Actually, their shows are a very small part of their work. Most stations have six-day work weeks for the jocks, and most put in 44 to 50 hours a week. Most of that time is spent in behind-the-scenes work. Most jocks are responsible for producing commercials. Usually, the music director is also on the air, and in addition to his air shift, this person is responsible for coming up with the music logs (the list of songs that will be played by the jocks), keeping in contact with the record companies, reporting to the trade magazines, and working with the consultant and/or research director. Other positions that jocks frequently assume include production director (sorting through commercials, producing the bulk of those commercials, and assigning the rest to the other jocks while working as a liason with the sales department), the promotions director (who works with the sales department and the program director to come up with giveaways, appearances, concert promotions and other large-scale events), and sometimes the program director.

   The program director's job is that hardest. This person is responsible for everything goes over the air on the station, include the music, the talent, the jingles, the sweepers, the promotions, and to a certain extent, the commercials. In addition to all of the "glamorous" things, the PD also has to coordinate with the production, promotions and sales departments, as well as the general manager. (S)he also has to make budgets, deal with personnel issues, hire full- and part-time talent, oversee outside marketing and more. This, of course, in addition to a four to five hour air shift.

   Oh, and don't forget show prep. Only very lazy or very apathetic talent goes on the air without at least preparing for the show. This may take anywhere from an hour to two hours, and includes things like poring over newspapers and magazine for interesting news, bouncing ideas off other members of the staff, producing sound effects, arranging phone interviews and writing jokes. It also includes basic things like double-checking the weather forecast and pulling music. (Pulling music is sometimes the most laborious process; in a five-hour period, a jock will have to pull 60 CDs, most of which are scattered over a large area. There's a lot of bending, stretching, standing, squatting and stacking involved . . . and everything has to be put in exactly the right place.)

   Oh, and then there's that pesky six-day work week again. Jocks, on the average, get about one weekend a month off. Most of the time, they are scheduled for airshifts six days a week, in addition to appearances and promotions which may require their presence. It's not uncommon for a radio personality to go two or three months without a single day off.

6. DJ's don't get to pick their own music. Radio stations spend literally thousands of dollars testing music to find out which songs test well with specific groups, and which songs are a turn-off. They spend hours each week analyzing the competition, finding out which songs are being played at what intervals, where within the hour they are being played, where they are being played in relation to commercials and how that station is counterprogramming them. This data is all analyzed, and songs are very carefully placed in specific rotations (i.e., to play every 3 hours, or every six hours, or once every two weeks) at specific times within the hour (it's common to place one of your highest-testing songs directly opposite a rival's commercials, for instance), and in relation to specific elements (the station may always want to come out of commercials with a high-tempo, upbeat song). When the jocks start flipping songs, dropping songs and adding different songs, and playing songs that are not on the music log, this converts those thousands of dollars into a waste of money.

   To be honest, most jocks don't even like the music they play. It's not uncommon to find someone who is a real metalhead working at a country station, or to find someone who would much rather be playing mainstream pop ("Top 40", or "CHR") working at a light rock station. The people who are successful at radio, though--the real pros--are in radio to be in radio, and not to play their favorite songs. It's the media (not the genre) that fascinates them, and it's what keeps them coming back, no matter how bad the pay, hours and music might be.

7. Stations keep a record of who wins prizes. Stations want to spread the winning around. There are people who are professional "prize pigs," and who literally make a living by winning radio station contests. To avoid this, most stations have a "thirty day rule," which basically states that if you win a prize, you may not win again for another thirty days. To keep track of this, stations keep a list of people who have won prizes and are not hesitant to deny prizes to those who violate the rules. More importantly, winners are great for databases. In fact, some stations run contests prior to a book just to generate names for their mailing database. Then, when the book rolls around, the station sends out mass mailings to everyone on the database--and the winners make up a good portion of that list. Likewise, when you enter a drawing, your name, address, age, and any other information you give gets added to that database. Stations aren't trying to be nosy when they ask for this information; they're trying to promote the station.

8. When you hear a caller on the air, that caller is almost always on tape. It's interesting how many people think that the callers are all on the air live. This is most definitely not the case (except in news/talk formats, where they have a second or two delay). There are several reasons for this. The most obvious one is that it prevents people from saying those particular words which cannot be legally uttered on the air. But there are other reasons, too. A jock should be in total control of what's happening on the air. Therefore, he needs to know exactly what is going to be said, how long it will take (literally to the half-second), and how the bit will end. For this reason, almost everyone you hear (except the jock) is on tape. The tape may have been recorded three days ago, or it may have been recorded ten seconds ago. It just depends on what the jock needed.

9. For the most part, radio stations don't buy the prizes they give out. Especially in the larger markets, record companies supply radio stations with t-shirts, buttons, hats, and other promotional items with the station logo. In return, the record company wants good will and maybe a little influence on the music the station plays. Larger prizes--like cars and trips--are sometimes also supplied by the record company. If it's not, you can almost bet that the station traded advertising with someone to get the prize. For instance, they might supply fifty commercials to a travel agency that is willing to give the station a trip to Bermuda. A lot of things are traded out that way in radio. Billboards, web pages, even newspaper and television ads are traded out. In comparison to other businesses, radio stations actually spend very little on their own advertising.

10. Radio stations don't (for the most part) have albums in the studio. This goes back to that whole music research thing and that whole record company thing. When a radio person plays "Another Day in Paradise," (s)he doesn't grab a copy of Phil Collins' But Seriously . . . CD and cue it to cut number seven. Most likely, the song will be either a CD single shipped from the record company, or part of a compilation CD sent as part of a music library from a service. For instance, if your station flips from religious to Hot AC (ya know . . . all of those "Best of the '70s, '80s and '90s" stations), there probably won't be a whole lot of songs lying around ready to use. So, the PD calls up a service like TM Century and orders an entire library of songs. This will usually consist of 100 to 300 CD's with 15 to 20 songs per CD. For instance, the first CD might contain "All I Wanna Do" by Sheryl Crow, "Losing My Religion" by REM, "How Will I Know" by Whitney Houston, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" by Meatloaf and "Freshmen" by Verve Pipe. Each song on the CD will fit into that station's particular format. For this reason, it's pretty much pointless to call a radio station and ask for an album cut and say, "Well, I know you have that one because you played a song from that album earlier."

TEN THINGS RADIO STATIONS DON'T WANT YOU TO KNOW

1. Contests winners are not necessarily chosen at random. Radio stations are very aware of who listens and who doesn't, and who their advertisers want them to attract. Contest winners are usually chosen on the basis of being part of the target demographic or part of the demographic that a particular advertiser wants the station to attract. Even on call-in contests, winners are judged by their voices. If the station is a very female-oriented station and your voice sounds very male, you probably won't win. This also applies to listeners who sound too old, too young or just plain dumb. If you're not excited about winning the prize, don't call to play the contest! There's nothing more frustrating to a radio person than to have a winner act like (s)he couldn't care less about winning, and people who sound like they have the personality of a walnut will be passed over for prizes.

   This is perfectly legal, by the way, as long as the station doesn't say in its promotion that a "winner will be chosen at random." Not all stations are this picky, but probably half or more carefully monitor their winners this way.

2. Contest prizes are often over-valued or under-valued. Many stations give a cash value for their prizes (i.e., "You could win a trip worth ten thousand dollars!"). In most cases, these numbers are highly inflated. It has nothing to do with making the contest look more important; it has to do with the way in which prizes are acquired by the station. As previously mentioned, most stations get their prizes on "trade out." In other words, the advertiser gives the station something of value (such as a trip) in return for a specific amount of advertising. Because of this practice, advertisers will often inflate the price of what they are giving to the radio station. A travel agency may take a trip worth $9,000 and sell it to the station in return for $10,000 worth of advertising. Thus, the trip becomes a trip worth $10,000. For this reason, it's a good idea to have things appraised if you win a major prize from a radio station (or any other advertising-driven media); it could save you some money at tax-time. At the same time, it is common practice for radio stations to inflate the price of the advertising that they trade out, too. So, depending on the situation, you could win a prize that's worth a lot more or a lot less than stated.

3. There are guidelines for who the jocks are allowed to put on the air. If your voice sounds too young, the program director will give a good tongue-lashing to the jock who puts you on the air. The mantra around most stations is, "No kids and no old people." In some places, it's hard to do that, and there are all kinds of tricks that jocks use to put younger listeners on the air (like playing the tape at a slower speed). Still, if you're young (or sound young) you probably won't get on the air for dedications, contests, or anything else.

4. Many of the callers you hear on the radio are "ringers." There are many times when a jock needs a specific reaction to a bit, or needs someone to make a statement in order to generate calls from listeners. For this reason, a lot of jocks have a list of "ringers" who they call when they need to make it sound like there's someone on the telephone with them. To the casual listener, it sounds like this person just called the radio station. This is a very effective technique used by nearly every radio personality with a phone-intensive show. If you listen carefully, you can probably hear the same person several times over during the course of the week. You can almost bet that this person is a ringer.

5. Radio personalities are completely different on the air than they are in real life. There are reasons that most jocks don't use their real names on the air. One is security; like all local celebrities, radio personalities attract their share of psychostalkers. Another is recall. It's easier to remember "Zapman" than "Brad Wilson" when you make your entry in your Arbitron diary. Another reason is that, when jocks are on the air, most assume (to a certain extent, at least) a different persona. In real life, Brad Wilson may be 32 years old, married, with two kids and a dog. On the air, though, Zapman may be 25, single, looking for a party and a complete sucker for cats. Being a successful radio personality requires acting ability, and the ability to become what the audience wants. In fact, most jocks (consciously or not) assume their alter-egos as soon as they walk into the building. There are even some who intentionally avoid learning other jocks' real names. It's easier, that way, to keep up the personna on the air.

6. It's not uncommon for stations to literally play the same songs every two hours. Really active stations (usually CHR or Alternative) often rotate their songs every two to two and a half hours, and sometimes more often than that. These stations tend to have low TSL (Time Spent Listening); in other words, people tune them in for a few minutes (maybe while they're driving to work or taking a shower) and then turn the radio off. The station wants to make sure that they always hear one of their favourite songs when they turn on the radio. Therefore, they restrict the playlist to a few songs and play the most popular ones every two hours or so. So when you complain that a station plays the same songs over and over all the time, you're probably right. Then again, these stations aren't expecting you to listen to them for two hours straight.

7. Stations often play dirty tricks on each other. Radio is a cut-throat business, and there are those people in the industry who are substantially less than scrupulous. Dirty tricks can range from harmless pranks (like sticking a bumper sticker on the competitor's van) to plain mean (spreading untrue rumours and getting people to file false complaints about a rival air talent) to life-threatening and illegal (like toppling a competitor's tower). Most of these things happen behind the scenes, where the listeners and the public in general don't find out about them. For instance, it's not entirely uncommon for a station to recruit women who will call a competing radio station and start a sexually explicit conversation with the jock, which is then recorded and used as either blackmail or the basis for a frivolous sexual harassment suit. While on remotes, stations may try to jam competitor's signals so that they can't broadcast from that location. There are also cases where stations will send a contingent of loyal listeners to try and disrupt another station's promotion.

   Some stories are actually quite funny. One station had an annual Thanksgiving food drive, which generated tons of wonderful publicity. The station would take a Mayflower moving van and park it at a well-traveled corner. They would then have the morning show host broadcast live from that corner for however long it took to fill the truck with food (usually a couple of days). The TV stations all covered the promotion, which gave the station what amounted to substantial amounts of free advertising, and it generated "warm fuzzies." One year, an upstart competitor stole the spotlight and the promotion. Five minutes after the first station started its big food drive, the upstart showed up with an 18-wheeler loaded with food, which they then "donated" to the food drive. Of course, this more than filled up the Mayflower truck, effectively ending the promotion before it started. Moreover, the station had to accept the donation, and had to acknowledge its competitor on the air for the donation. The upstart got all of the favourable TV coverage, and left the heritage station with little more than a truckload of food and a lot of red faces.

   A few dirty tricks get even more personal. In one market, there was a new night personality who was stealing listeners from the heritage station across town. In response, his competitor snuck outside the window one night with a small transmitter. During one of the key segments of the newcomer's show, the trickster turned on his transmitter, which didn't affect the broadcast at all, but did succeed in jamming the personality's headphones, leading him to believe the station had gone off the air. With his mic still open, the personality let loose a stream of profanities which almost cost him his job and the station several thousand dollars worth of fines.

   Most of the time, though, dirty tricks are less ingenious and more subtle. For instance, account executives may tell hard-core right-wing advertisers that a personality on another station is a homosexual. Or they may insinuate that the station is getting ready to change formats or go up for sale. Or a program director might hire a talent from another station, get them to sign a non-compete (a legally binding agreement that forbids them from working for any other station within the market for a year or more), and then fire them. Such tricks are usually unethical (and sometimes illegal), but they happen every day.

8. Very few radio stations play any requests at all. This goes back to that whole concept of market research. If a station spent thirty thousand dollars researching the music, what good is it if they blow off all those thousands of dollars of research because some Goober from the fringes of the listening area wanted to hear a Jimmy Buffett song? Most of the time, the core listeners will be requesting songs that are coming up in the rotation fairly soon, anyway. (This is especially true of CHR and Alternative stations which have quick rotations and very current playlists.) Most requests are played when a jock needs an extra song or two to fill up the hour (which doesn't happen often in a properly programmed station), and then the song must be on the list of approved songs.

   So why do the jocks say, "Music from the request lines!" when they introduce songs? It's possible that someone did request the song, and that it was coming up anyway. Usually, though, it's a way of getting the telephones a bit more active. It's hard to do a good show without some kind of audience interaction, and the telephones are really the only way the audience and the jock have to interact.

9. Many (possibly most) of the really entertaining radio people you hear don't write their own material. There is a huge multi-million dollar industry geared at nothing but writing jokes, creating contests and setting up bits for radio personalities. It's not that the personalities aren't talented, or funny, or even motivated. Remember that the jocks have six airshifts a week, ranging from four to six hours apiece. If the personality just does one thing an hour (a joke, a contest, some kind of feature), (s)he has to come up with 25 original, entertaining bits a week. That's over 1,200 a year. Radio people are creative, but very few people are even close to being that creative. So, most morning shows and quite a few night jocks (and even some afternoon and midday jocks) subscribe to show prep services, which supply everything from jokes to one-liners to contests to stunts to great interview ideas. In fact, many jocks subscribe to three or four of these services. They don't want you to know this, of course, because it takes some of the magic away from the show, but putting together an entertaining radio program takes a lot of work. (Hey, Letterman and Leno have writers . . . and they only do five minutes of monologue a night.)

10. Radio stations are all secretly owned by the Illuminati, Space Aliens, Jewish Bankers and the New World Order. No, not really. Despite what the John Birch Society and the Michigan Militia might tell you, this is not the case. But it is frightening just how many stations are owned by so few companies. Since deregulation, the largest broadcasting companies (Infinity, CBS, Clear Channel) have bought nearly every station owned by a smaller company in the top 100 markets. As the number of potential employers drops, so do the wages of radio personalities. And, at the same time, the cost of advertising goes up. There's very little competition in the big markets anymore, and this trend is trickling down into the medium and small markets. Chances are, if there are ten or more stations in your market, there are only two or three companies that own those stations . . . and most likely, one of those companies is already negotiating to buy at least one of the others. This is bad for advertisers, it's bad for radio personalities, and it's bad for the listeners, who will have fewer and fewer choices about what station to pick. Reaganomics (well, Reaganomics instituted by the Bush FCC) really does work . . . as long as you're already a wealthy corporation.

So that's the real scoop on the radio biz. Not every statement is true of every radio station, but in general, these principles all apply to the radio industry as it stands today. So, the next time Jordan tries to tell you about Zapman and his $60,000 Porsche, set him straight. And tell him to get a life.