When I heard the news that All Access would be closing its doors after twenty-eight years in business, it came as a shock to my soul, and sent a chill down my spine that foretold of a media crisis much bigger than this publication’s demise.
It reminded me of the famous poem by John Donne, For Whom the Bell Tolls:
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
The Bell Tolls For Thee
The news of the coming death of All Access made each of us consider our own mortality. Fred Jacobs wrote in his blog on Monday:
“Funerals are a mandatory attendance experience where we mourn the departed, while also considering our own mortality. We think about the deceased and try to rationalize that he/she was older than us, in worse health, had questionable lifestyle habits, or had some undesirable traits and flaws. And we rationalize that their sorrowful outcome will surely not be ours.
But in fact, it is hard to disassociate All Access’ fate from our own. This isn’t just about what befell Joel and his staff – it is a referendum on radio and all of us who work in it.”
The Medium Is The Message
In his seminal 1964 book, “Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man” Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan’s first chapter was titled “The medium is the message;” by which McLuhan felt “that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived.” (University of Michigan – Digital Rhetoric Collaborative)
But did McLuhan foresee the state of media today?
The Medium Is A Mess
Bob Iger was reinstated as CEO of The Walt Disney Company in November 2022. Iger, who had been Disney’s CEO from 2005 to 2020, had retired at the age of 69. His replacement, Bob Chapek, created two years of tumult at the mouse house, and was fired.
It was in 2006, that Iger sold Disney’s 22 ABC branded radio stations and the ABC radio network to Citadel Broadcasts Corporation in a cash and stock deal valued at $2.7 billion.
Last week, CNBC reported that Bob Iger had “opened the door to selling the company’s linear TV assets as the business struggles during the media industry’s transition to streaming and digital offerings.”
On June 30th, Audacy, the radio company formerly known as Entercom, did a 1-for-30 reverse stock split to try and prevent being expelled from the NY Stock Exchange. Stock watchers called it a “stock market Hail Mary attempt to stave off financial ruin.” (elitesportsny.com)
Adding to these two company’s woes, the media industry is also dealing with both a writers strike and an actors strike, global climate change, the ongoing war in Ukraine, out-of-control wildfires that have burned over 26 million acres of Canada, polluting the world with no end in sight, and the mess we call our democracy; it’s hard not to wonder what our future holds for anyone, anywhere.
Is This Television’s Radio Moment?
That’s what the analysts are wondering at MoffettNathanson, because radio’s lackluster revenue recovery has forced that broadcasting industry to cut into its bone and consider if using artificial intelligence (A.I.) could be their savoir to keeping investors at bay.
Goodbye All Access
To Joel Denver, Perry Michael Simon and the rest of the dedicated All Access team we say “Thank You, for 28 incredible years of chronicling the business of radio, records, and the people who made it happen.”
Your work has always been at the cutting edge, maybe that’s why your publication’s death feels like a harbinger for us all…
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.
DickTaylorBlog 
Sad to see All Access go. RIP, All Access. You will be missed.
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We don’t need AI in films, radio, TV, or in cartoons and anime!
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Competition made radio compelling. Locality made radio compelling. Local live entertainment made radio compelling. Then came the deregulation and the power grab by corporations who saw stations as real estate investments(, not serving a community.) The independent Identifier of a local community was assimilated. Mergers( takeovers) eliminate jobs, and jobs are lost, because the “corporate suits” never opened a mic on the air to understand what it entails, just numbers on paper , and numbers evolved on a computer screen. Listeners left and look elsewhere for local information, a personality who would talk to them, not read a line to them. An era is passing and has picked up speed. All Access folding is a prime example of it. Talk radio with it’s indoctrination programming , failing to give all sides on an issure, as it once was required to do is no longer being held accountable for information. It’s opinion skewed to prey on emotions ,with a high element of fabricated fear. This is primarily aimed to the white male age 50 and older, who never went beyond high school, nor applied themselves during that time. Along with FOX they are told what to think and told how to react, where when a station presented all sides and allowed the listener to choose how they feel. It was called serving a community with facts. Now it has become an industry that is well suited for 1930’s Germany.
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Thank You for stopping by the blog today Ray and sharing your perspective.
-DT
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“…white male age 50 and older…” You may want to check the demographics. Try 65 and older. And the same goes for the cable news networks.
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Darryl’s so very right. Look at the ages of the people named in the fake electors scheme in Michigan. (All FOX viewers I’m sure)
LANSING – Today, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced felony charges against 16 Michigan residents for their role in the alleged false electors scheme following the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The charged defendants are:
Kathy Berden, 70, of Snover
William (Hank) Choate, 72, of Cement City
Amy Facchinello, 55, of Grand Blanc
Clifford Frost, 75, of Warren
Stanley Grot, 71, of Shelby Township
John Haggard, 82, of Charlevoix
Mari-Ann Henry, 65, of Brighton
Timothy King, 56, of Ypsilanti
Michele Lundgren, 73, of Detroit
Meshawn Maddock, 55, of Milford
James Renner, 76, of Lansing
Mayra Rodriguez, 64, of Grosse Pointe Farms
Rose Rook, 81, of Paw Paw
Marian Sheridan, 69, of West Bloomfield
Ken Thompson, 68, of Orleans
Kent Vanderwood, 69, of Wyoming
-DT
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Good point on the Talk radio lemming listeners. I did say “50 AND OLDER”. In that group of fake electors from Michigan shows a few “50’s”
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The death of All Access forces us to understand and acknowledge that Radio – at least as we know it – is not dying, but is already dead. Traditional television and cable is only a few steps behind.
I’ve been saying for a while that the major television networks will eventually drop over-the-air affiliates and move directly to cable and streaming apps – perhaps just streaming apps. When that happens, they are also likely to stop doing news because it’s just too expensive. And it all might happen sooner than many think. Already Bob Iger has brought up the possibility of selling ABC and there were rumors this week that Paramount might be selling off CBS News.
Back to Radio, the apparent imminent failure of Audacy is likely to take down all of the former 50kw CBS all-news O&Os – stations that are among the last valid reasons to listen to spoken-word programming on the radio.
More and more of my colleagues are choosing to retire early from broadcasting rather than continue working in the current environment of more work, lower pay and lower product quality. Many say we have to fight AI’s inroads into radio. But that’s just whistling past the graveyard. It may be the only way station owners can stay on the air, especially as the unions cede more power with each successive contract.
And with almost no reliable sources of news and information on radio or television, what happens to what’s left of our democracy when the ONLY sources of information are highly partisan and/or highly suspect social media sites? Ray is right: What we are seeing is a high-tech version of 1930s Germany.
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Steve, you make many pertinent points in what you wrote.
First, doing news is expensive. When CBS was called the “Tiffany Network,” its news division wasn’t designed to make money but to fulfill a social contract with its viewers and listeners. The money was made to support the news operation in the entertainment division.
Second, the death of All Access really is the obit of radio many of us grew up with, worked in and loved. That hasn’t existed for years as Wall Street took over and employed its “acquire, grow and sell” modus operandi. Radio ceased being about the listener, the advertiser or service to the community of license. Heck, the original community of license for many radio signals became a memory as city’s of license moved like pieces on a chess board.
Thomas Jefferson wrote from Paris to Edward Carrington, whom Jefferson sent as a delegate to the Continental Congress from 1786 to 1788, on the importance of a free press to keep government in check. He concludes that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” Failure to protect a free press, is failure to protect America’s democracy.
Thank You for stimulating everyone’s brain cells this morning.
-DT
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Time was humans programmed computers. Enter the reverse information age, insofar as people are informed by A-V media, when computers program people. And AI will come to mean After Intelligence.
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And we are very quickly learning, as A.I. teaches other A.I. programs, they get dumber and dumber.
-DT
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Great blog, Dick.
I’m not the smartest tool in the drawer, but one thing that just isn’t being brought up in all of this is the role of our government and the people who put us in this pickle. An organization called FMC says:
“FMC’s study concludes that allowing unlimited national consolidation has resulted in less competition, fewer viewpoints, and a decrease in diversity in radio programming – a trend in the opposite direction of Congress’s stated goals for the FCC’s media policy.”
Who allowed it? The FCC. A government organization that was formed to regulate the “public” airwaves. Of course now there’s more talk of consolidation and some agree that it’s beneficial to radio. Less competition? Less diversity? How can this be beneficial?
So, who’s looking at the government entities that allowed this to happen? No one, apparently. Congress seems to have turned its back on the original goals of the FCC, and there’s no signs that this won’t continue. We keep tossing rocks at iHeart, Audacy and Cumulus while they’re just following the rules. People shudder when it’s announced that EMF has bought 3 or 4 more frequencies when they’re just following the rules.
Broadcast radio does have advantages over the digital world-in most part because it’s FREE. Turn on the tuner, and that’s it. No subscription fees, no licensing fees (for the general public) and no fiddling with digital connections. I can still buy a radio for less than $20-and that’s it. My cell phone is valued at over $1000 -and that doesn’t include the internet/cell service/subscription/data costs.
But we need to look to the source of what’s happened to broadcasters and fix that. Truly intelligent people read your blogs, Dick – but who’s asking the real question? Does broadcast radio truly exists to serve the public interest, then who’s policing that?
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Thank You Dave for always being a thorough reader of my blogs and providing something more for me to chew on. The Future of Music Coalition (FMC) has been sounding these alarms since 2006 about how the 1996 Telcom Act disrupted over-the-air broadcasting in America.
Can the genie be put back in the bottle? This is an old phrase meaning that something has happened which has made a great and permanent change in people’s lives, especially a bad change.
It’s a question that’s truly open for debate, and have other forms of communication now made this question moot?
-DT
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The tone of your piece today was what our parents sounded like back in the day. They were certain that the End was near and pitied their children. But their kids, as kids are wont to do, figured things out and made another new world for themselves and their futures. So will today’s kids.
Clint Eastwood’s life mantra is “Don’t let the old man in.”
You sounded old today Dick.
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Well James, I am old. Guilty as charged.
The first Earth Day was held in 1970 as a way to bring the discussion of protecting our planet for future generations. (How did that work out for us?)
To be honest, I worry more about that for my children and grandchildren, than I do about the changes to the radio industry. Why? Because they never became hooked on radio, growing up in a world of music on demand via voice command technology.
The human condition is to grow old, and to love and care about future generations.
It’s also human to be concerned about an industry one has given their working life to.
-Grandpa Dick
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