I know why I don't listen to the radio any more and I discovered the reason after getting a cable modem and started listening to streaming radio: most of what is on the radio I don't like. Yet I'm never at a loss for new CDs to purchase or music to listen to. I find most of it at sites like emusic.com and by reading reviews in magazines and online. Of course my interests in twentieth century classical music, avant-garde jazz and punk rock were never really popular on the radio to begin with.
"Radio listeners are listening less. In 1993, they spent an average of 23 hours per week with the radio on; last year, it was down to 20 1/2 hours, according to Arbitron numbers.
Those most likely to turn off the radio: teen-agers, long among the medium's mainstays. Among girls age 12-17, the radio is on just 16 hours a week. For boys, it's just 12 1/2 hours. That's bad news for the country's 11,047 commercial radio stations.
Why the turn-off?
Some, like musicians Prince and Little Steven Van Zandt, blame playlists so strict they make the old Top 40 format seem extravagant.
Others blame a 1996 law that opened the door for corporate ownership of hundreds of radio stations, replacing often-eccentric local owners with a legion of sound-alike voices and formats....
Today, Infinity Broadcasting -- home to Stern and Imus -- owns 180 radio stations in 22 states. Emmis Communications' three New York stations control 14 percent of the revenue in the nation's No. 1 market; in other markets, that number can quadruple.
But the big daddy of the business is San Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications, which owns 1,200 stations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Clear Channel estimates that each day, it reaches 54 percent of people age 18-49 in the United States.
[
