Personality radio disappearing across the country

Chicago has long been the home of some of the country’s most renowned radio personalities on the AM and FM dials. But slowly, listeners are starting to see some of these household names disappear from the terrestrial airwaves.

For decades, radio personnel and listeners alike have blamed many factors for the slow death of personality-oriented programming. Chicago radio veteran Phil Duncan, best known for his stint at WLS-AM, believes that the beginning of personality radio’s death dates back to the ‘80s.

“It started with the deregulation of radio,” Duncan said. “Before that time, you had a lot more independent radio stations and a lot more locally owned stations. It was easy for people to talk about the community.”

Steve Macek, professor of communication at North Central College, agrees with Duncan, citing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a reason for personality and local programming going away. The issue of media ownership combined with the rise of digital alternatives like Spotify and satellite radio is enough to cause listeners to spend their time elsewhere, Macek said.

Longtime Chicago radio programmer Ron Smith has a different explanation for the downfall of radio personalities.

“One of the big causes that everyone overlooks is the fact that ratings are now done with people meters rather than paper diaries,” Smith said. “When paper diaries were used, nobody filled them out as they went along. They weren’t accurate. A day or two after the week was over, you sat down and, if you listened on Tuesday between 8:11 and 8:54, you just wrote down that you listened between 8 and 9.”

Smith said that the inaccurate recordings in paper diaries led to inaccurate ratings. When people meters were introduced, certain personalities took a hit in the ratings, encouraging stations to leave that programming behind.

“When the people meter started, (there was) an enormous drop in some of the biggest names not just in Chicago, but across the entire country,” Smith said. “Steve Dahl didn’t have nearly the listenership in the morning that he was being given credit for in the paper diaries.”

Another Chicago personality who has fallen victim to the slashing of personality programming is Kevin Matthews. Matthews thinks censorship has played a large role in disabling personalities from being entertaining on the air.

“I was listening to a tape from when I was on AM 1000,” Matthews said. “If I ran that tape today (on the) same station, I’d get fined by the FCC. Take a look at what we could do just 15 years ago compared to now.”