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.
A lot of people think that a new decade began in 2020, but the reality is, it’s the last year of the current decade. 2021 begins the next decade.
If your job can be replaced by a mathematical equation, a logarithm if you will, consider your future employment to be at risk.
I often wonder if today’s youth would gravitate to the style of radio that attracted me to make radio broadcasting my career for five decades. Would they be attracted to a Dan Ingram, Robert W. Morgan, Dave Maynard, Ron Lundy, The Real Don Steele, Big Ron O’Brien, Larry Lujack or any of the countless other personalities that so influenced me as I was growing up?
AM radio. Mine was a Zenith Royal 50 that came with an ear phone, that allowed me to listen to the Red Sox while in elementary school or to radio stations from far, far away after it was ‘lights out’ and I was supposed to be asleep.
That got me to thinking that maybe a new radio format could be created bringing back deceased personalities like Robert W. Morgan, Dan Ingram, The Real Don Steele, Big Ron O’Brien, Ron Lundy, Larry Lujack among other greats by using the power of artificial intelligence. These incomparable radio personalities would “live again” via talented writers and programmers who would tell them what to say. Can you imagine how it might sound?
In a lot of ways, the future is here, now.
Last week I told you about how our world is exploding with media to the point of over-saturation. Not only are we drowning in a plethora of media, the rate of new ways to communicate keeps accelerating at an unfathomable pace.
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