Clear Channel Coming To The Very Halting Realization That It Pretty Much Screwed Up Radio

noah | April 17, 2009 5:24 pm

Clear Channel has announced that it is going to try and “improve program quality” at all the radio stations that it owns in the country through–gasp–allowing station managers to program their charges in a way that’s relevant to their local audience. Yes, “hyperlocalization”–a buzzword that, since it’s being employed by a bunch of Internet startups these days, must be worth something, right?–is the new name of the game at the radio behemoth. Sort of!

The plan involves improving quality at each station’s day parts — the blocks of time stations use to sell broadcast advertising. Day parts are typically broken up into the 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. morning drive-time segment, the 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. mid-day segment, the 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. afternoon drive-time segment, the 7 p.m. to midnight segment and midnight to 6 a.m. late-night segment.

Managers will have the latitude to choose content and talent for their stations as a way to generate more audience and ultimately advertising dollars.

“Our programming objective is to increase audience size and engagement across all day parts and all platforms,” says John Hogan, president and CEO of Clear Channel Radio. “At the same time, we face a particularly difficult economy that makes it extremely challenging for some local stations to invest in developing the highest-quality programming and talent. Despite the difficult economy, we see enormous long-term opportunity in investing in things that immediately improve the competitive situation of our stations.”

Of course, any goodwill that those buzzwords garnered is torpedoed by Hogan talking about how it’s great that Ryan Seacrest and his invasion of pretty much every radio market in America are “part of the company’s long-term strategy to strengthen its competitive position,” thus solidifying his position as the most overemployed man in the country (if not the world). So basically CC’s position is “pick your talent, but just make sure you pick our talent.” It’s so… Mafiosish!

Clear Channel works to improve music, on-air talent [Dallas Business Journal]

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