Indie 103.1: Has Radio Run Its Course?

Speaking of dying media, many Southern California residents were saddened to learn that Indie 103.1, a long-running radio station known for playing the edgy music that "corporate" stations wouldn't touch, is ceasing to broadcast today. Indie 103.1 had came under criticism for watering down its playlists in recent years to compete with rivals like KROQ, and it seems, based on a farewell message at the Indie 103.1 website, that the station's management did not like that direction either.

Former Indie 103.1 host Chris Morris writes on an LA Times blog about why this is a "very sad" day:

For most of its existence, Indie 103.1 advanced a style of radio in its specialty programming that hadn’t been seen in a major radio market for eons. What was heard on the air was a reflection of the individual jocks’ tastes and passions. The amount of liberty I enjoyed was unbelievable. It was a throwback to the free-form style I grew up with, which held sway briefly in pre-“album oriented” radio in the ’70s; the maverick early KROQ flashed the same gunslinging approach.

In reading that paragraph, I was struck by how much I used to hear that same sentiment over and over again. In the late 90s and the early part of this decade, it seemed like everyone was talking about how the evils of media consolidation were destroying the quality of radio. The message was perhaps best summed up in a 2002 album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Last DJ. In the title track, Petty's lyrics sound a lot like what Morris writes: "There goes the last DJ/Who plays what he wants to play/And says what he wants to say.../There goes your freedom of choice/There goes the last human voice..."

For many of these media activists, the solution was not to develop alternatives to this ailing format, but to bring in government regulation to save radio as we once knew it. The media conglomerate Clear Channel became the nemesis of activists like Ralph Nader, who tried to get the FCC to pull many of the licenses of the 1,200 radio stations Clear Channel owned, and also called for stricter rules on the number of media outlets one company can own in one media market.

So why don't we hear these complaints that much anymore? As much as I love ya Tom, you were wrong! We haven't lost our freedom of choice--it has grown immensely! There is probably no better day than today for someone interested in broadcasting. There's a simple reason: the market responded to the demand of dissatisfied radio listeners, and new technologies provided alternatives. Satellite radio gives you more dial choices than terrestrial radio in any city in the world.  But more significantly, podcasting has turned anyone into a DJ.

Sure enough, the people behind Indie 103.1 are hip to these trends. They will soon be relaunching as an Internet-only radio station, Indie Online. With new products that let you listen to podcasts in your car, it might not be long before you replace the babble of the morning DJ during your commute with an almost infinite number of choices of online broadcasts.

The death of Indie 103.1 is not necessarily unfortunate at all. If its new online presence is able to stick around, Indie Online might be a perfect example of how the entrepreneurial process of destruction and creation is changing media for the better.