RADIO DAYS – NUMBERED, NUMBED OR NURTURED? A MUSIC QUESTION

“Some of my friends sit around every evening and they worry about the times ahead. But everybody else is overwhelmed by indifference and the promise of an early bed.” (Elvis Costello - Radio Radio)

IF THERE IS A PLACE FOR RADIO now or into the future – and as with any media, the jury is still out and not looking on coming back with a decision on that any time soon – does it have a place for you, the listener, the musician, the manager, the label, the critic, the broadcaster? And in the possibly unlikely circumstance that it does, how do you make it work for you?

The chances are no one has the answer to these questions, and neither Deb Grant nor Ariana Morgenstern would dare claim to. In fact these experienced on-air/on-turntable figures from either side of the Atlantic Ocean are as curious and a little bit fearful as the rest of us about (cue dramatic music) where this is all going.

But as they’re about to appear at the industry talkfest/networking heaven/music showcasing few days that is Big Sound – say hi if you see them in the Valley, they’re much nicer than your regular print journalist – and will be quizzed on how Australians can get in their doors/on their programs, they have drawn the junket short-straw for this interrogation.

Let’s start with an easy one: why is anyone still tuning in that dial? Dublin-born Grant, BBC Radio 6 host of the New Music Fix Daily show and long-time DJ (who used to work under the name Anne Frankenstein – at least until “I started to feel super ridiculous”), puts some of it down to something that wrecked so many other parts of our culture, Covid and lockdowns, and something many thought had gone away, guidance and curation.

“I do think Covid really helped to renew people’s appreciation of what radio is,” she says. “People tend to take it for granted, it rumbles along in the background, but during Covid, radio more than any other medium really did its job of keeping people company. But I think particularly for what I do now, on 6, which is the new music show, it’s intimidating the amount of music that people have access to. I find it intimidating, and it’s my job to listen to music. People need curators that they can trust to sort through that.”

Deb Grant

Of course there is truth in this, and I can attest to the fact that people thought, or at least hoped, that might be true for print as well. But, a few years down the line? Yeah, not so much. People do want some guidance on what is out there, do want some connection with people talking about music or art generally, but not in numbers that are sustainable for professional writers, why is radio different?

“Now my life is sweet like cinnamon, like a fucking dream I'm living in. Baby, love me 'cause I'm playing on the radio.” (Lana Del Rey - Radio)

“In terms of the music stuff, it’s ironic. Yeah, people can access whatever music they want – I think it’s funny when people get really insistent on making requests on the radio because it’s like, this isn’t like when I grew up and you were poised with your cassette recorder to record a song; you can go on YouTube or Spotify or whatever and listen to that song whenever you want.”

On this point, Morgenstern, executive producer, music, at Santa Monica’s famed KCRW, where the Morning Becomes Eclectic program has been a breaking/proving ground for new music for decades, is more equivocal than Grant. While she agrees on connection and will happily say “the reason I love KCRW and radio is it’s very intimate: I feel like I am being talked to, it makes the city less lonely,” there’s a hitch when I put it to her that the death of radio looks further away than ever.

“Because you are not in radio,” says Morgenstern pointedly. “Especially today where we, a non-profit radio station, are about to have more than million dollars cut [from federal government funding]. We are going to feel that. So I feel that the end is getting closer a lot faster. Unless people respond to our plea and start giving.”

If she sounds deflated, she isn’t without belief.

Ariana Morgenstern

“I feel like we really connect with other people and socials. They might not listen to the station as much but they are aware of it and they are engaging with social media,” Morgenstern says. “I also see, because we have a summer night’s program, thousands of people at our free events. So we are doing whatever we can to bring our community closer to us.”

Even if it’s true that people do still seem to listen to radio, still get some value from it, the medium hits a technology wall that has nothing to do with radio professionals like Morgenstern, and hurts much more in America’s four-wheel culture.

“New cars don’t have radios,” she says with a resigned air. “That’s a big problem because I live in LA where people are in traffic all day long. If you know about KCRW, then you might have the app and you can listen but if you don’t know about us you are not going to find out about it unless somebody turns you on to it because no one is exploring the range on the FM dial anymore.”

“Who listens to the radio? That’s what I’d like to know.” (The Sports - Who Listens To The Radio)

Then niche broadcasting is the inevitable result?

“There will always be a certain proportion of society to whom music means more than the sum of its parts. That’s how I like to think of it,” says Grant. “People who think of themselves as music people; people who go to gigs and are engaged and want to learn about new music.”

New music? Getouttahere. What does that even mean in 2025?

“It sounds very nebulous, because I suppose it is quite nebulous, but I know it when I hear it,” responds Grant. “I get sent a lot of music, I hear a lot of music, I seek out a lot of music, and it’s very thrilling when you find something.”

How does she and the station overall, avoid that thing of “I’ve heard all this before, and it was done better 20 years ago”?

“How do you avoid becoming jaded?,” she laughs. “There has to be a genuine love and appreciation for new music. I don’t think I would be in the right job if I was just sitting there thinking ‘well, this is very derivative’. And I think that comes from a place as well of coming up with peers who love music. Going into record stores and being around disgruntled musicians, and people who are jaded in that way, there is this tendency to treat liking music as a competitive sport. I think I have always made a mental note that I was not going to become like that.”

So the demand side still has life, but what’s the point on the supply side? Why would a label or manager think twice about radio when Tik Tok and whatever replaces it next year exist?

“We are really specific,” declares Morgenstern. “We do play a really big range of music and business people will see songs are being Shazamed, they are buying concert tickets, they buy merch. The people listening are consumers who are taking the product in so there is value to business people and managers and labels.

“I’ve been here for about 40 years and I feel like we’ve got a legacy, kind of like a stamp of approval, and they see the benefit of it.”

“And now in my heart I know I can say what I really feel, ‘cause they said it really loud, they said it on the air.” (Donna Summer - On The Radio)

With that experience, that legacy, and the enthusiasm that Grant talks about to hear new music in radio, for people who make their decisions on spreadsheets and projections, who might talk with heart to their clients but act with calculators to the business, is there anything to be learned from radio types about how to get on and get big, or is it still a case of guessing and hoping? Here Morgenstern is circumspect.

“I think that everything informs an educated decision. The basic thing is asking are people connecting with that artist? All the studying of numbers isn’t going to make a difference, it’s the hit and miss of that artist that just breaks through,” she says. “It’s not a formula, it’s what people react to.”

Then what is the point of all that research or media or radio if it all comes down to someone connecting with the right people in enough numbers at the right time? If it comes down to luck?

“I don’t know what the point is! I don’t know, I don’t know,” Morgenstern says with comic despair. “There are so many artists that I have seen through the years that I have thought, wow, this person is going to do it.”

Then what’s the point of us? What’s the point of who you pick on the radio or who I write a review of or who has written a great song? Why are we doing this?

“Because we love it, and that’s enough,” Morgenstern says. “I woke up this morning, still breathing, so what else am I going to do? I’m going to do what makes me happy and hopefully it brightens other people’s day just a little tiny bit. There must be somebody that is interested.”

Amen to that.

“Radio, my radio, I let myself be sucked into the ether. My ears become eyes, radio, my radio." (Rammstein - Radio)

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