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Edison's Larry Rosin: 'What Nationalization Will Mean To American Radio'
March 13, 2014 at 4:01 PM (PT)
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EDISON RESEARCH President LARRY ROSIN TODAY (3/13) published a piece on his company website titled, “What Nationalization Will Mean to American Radio.”
Noting the growing practice of nationalizing programming, ROSIN commented, “Is this a bad thing? Well, I’ll say: ‘Not entirely.’ But…mostly.”
His reasoning?
“I’ve been doing research on the AMERICAN radio industry, but mostly on the consumers of radio for over a quarter century now, and I feel like I have a pretty good sense for what the ‘brand’ of radio is for people. And that brand is ‘local.’”
ROSIN points out that HOWARD STERN and RUSH LIMBAUGH originated as local radio personalities: “And they never could have been held in radio had they not been able to nationalize. Radio talents such as these deserve to have fans across the country. These two guys in particular were such major talents that they pretty much got great ratings everywhere they were aired.”
ROSIN goes on to say, “But that’s not necessarily what’s happening today. Politeness keeps me from commenting on specific shows, but some of the national options today are barely an improvement or in some cases no upgrade at all from what it is replacing locally.”
“I think we can expect the stations that do have ‘live and local DJs’ to find that emphasizing this point will resonate as never before," ROSIN continued. "We may readily see that ‘localness’ will supplant music images as the single most vital aspect of stations competing with the national programs. In this sense the ‘zag’ to the big boys’ strategy could possibly lead to more ‘net localness’ on radio than before.”
Read ROSIN’s entire piece here.

