Year in Review in 360 Seconds. Broadcast News & Commentary.
Hosts: Philip Grossman, host and co-producer at Visionaries; Mary Ann Seidler, owner of First Light Media and consultant for multiCAM Systems and Telos Alliance; and Maria Kholodova.
Maria: We were originally meant to do a year-in-review show, but before that, there’s some big news in the audio world as broadcaster Audacy files for bankruptcy. So Mary, can you take us through that?
Mary: It’s sad news. I don’t think there’s anyone in radio who would say otherwise. Audacy was originally CBS radio, and those of us who grew up listening to it. I was a radio broadcaster and a radio journalist, and CBS radio news just was iconic and still is. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. One of the things that Audacy has been doing to cut costs is they’ve been getting rid of some of their really high-end expensive real estate and moving into smaller facilities. Now when you’ve got a monster player like Audacy making this move, it’s definitely going to have an effect on the rest of radio, and I was thinking this morning, “Is the era of the big radio consoles coming to an end?” and this ties in with what we’re going to talk about a little later with remote production. Because as broadcasters like Audacy move into these smaller studios, they’re finding, well, we’re going to have to do more with less, and we’re probably not going to be able to afford the big consoles. So it’ll be interesting to see how that shifts. I’ve been preaching for a long time to radio broadcasters of “cheap and cheerful,” and that’s, in a way, where we came from. In the 1980s, we didn’t have a lot of money, radio stations in smaller markets to spend on equipment, and I think we’re probably going back a little bit to those roots.
Philip: If I’m not mistaken, over the last 10 to 15 years, virtually all industries have experienced a certain level of consolidation, and radio has undergone significant consolidation as well. Mary, do you anticipate witnessing the development of more localized programming in this market?
Mary: Oh boy! I really hope so. The smaller-market stations, like the one I visited in Maine a few months ago near Harrington, are thriving with all-live and local content. Everyone in that town tunes in because they get something very current. These stations are still making it work, and there might be a possibility of spinning off some of these stations. Individual owners willing to take a chance, akin to what we saw in the 1970s and 80s, might emerge. I doubt another big group like EMF would be interested in acquiring any of The Audacy stations, as they probably already have stations in their markets.
On January 7, 2024, Audacy filed for bankruptcy with debts of $1.9 billion
Philip: Alright. Let’s shift gears and delve into what I consider one of the significant developments of the past year – remote production – and its impact on our industry. Mary, how does it look from an audio perspective? Audio seems to have an advantage in terms of technology and distribution. Are we observing a surge in remote production on the audio side?
Maria: We really saw this speed up during the pandemic, the whole thing with remote production. You know, for many years, we’ve had audio codecs that work, and you get a fairly decent audio feed when you’re doing remote, so it makes it easier. Again, this move away from these big consoles, yeah, I think in radio, you’ll start to see it’s easier to do remote production, not so much that they’re out doing the traditional remotes, but they’re probably doing it from much smaller facilities than we’ve ever imagined before. How about in video?
Philip: Yeah. I think on the broadcast side, like everything else, the pandemic sped everything up, which I don’t think was quite 100% prior to it. That was sort of the Holy Grail, remote productions. I mean, organizations were tired of spending millions of dollars on these production trucks and having them on the highway and trying to find a better way to do that. I think they learned a lot during the pandemic in terms of what infrastructure is available and what infrastructure needs to be there. I think it was a great learning experience for a lot of organizations, really trying to figure out how to do it, and I think it has sped up the industry and maybe given it a better vector to focus on and how to go about doing this because video is hard to do remotely because of latency and round tripping, and some things have to be local to the facility, and some things can be in the cloud. All those things together have sort of impacted how we’ve done it in the past, and they learned very quickly how to do it, you know? It’s one of those things where they say learn from others’ mistakes because you’ll never live long enough to make them all yourself. I think hopefully as an industry, we’ve learned from our mistakes, trials, and tribulations, but it’s helped us, I think, to get a better foothold on what we can do in the future, and I think it’s going to enable our industry to do a lot more remote productions. You’ll get more live specials, concerts, and sporting events, and we’re all living through that.
Maria: That’s all the time we have today. Thank you so much Philip and Mary. And don’t forget to comment on the news we’ve discussed. See you next Monday at the same time!
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360 Seconds. Broadcast News & Commentary
The weekly show, focusing on the latest products and solutions in the global TV and film industry, features insights and analysis from top experts. Released every Monday within the TKT1957 network, the program can be found on the YouTube channel, social media groups, and the tkt1957.com website. Engage with the content, view the episodes, and participate in the conversation by leaving your questions in the comments section!
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