Has radio consolidation led to reduce diversity of music in local markets? I have seen no competent study that proves this.

This may shock you. Don’t formats overlap? Aren’t station playlists shrinking?

Take a breath. Is consolidation the cause of any of the problem?

Radio is largely financed by the sale of local advertising. Within each local market, a multistation operator would have the apparent incentive to attract the most listeners in its potential audience. This would suggest that the operator should position its format offerings across the listener spectrum – country, Top 40, adult contemporary, urban, etc. – to widen its overall demographic appeal. Indeed, local stations that operate in the same format only cannibalize common audiences.

What about song overlap in different formats? Yes, it exists. But this may be result from the inherent ambiguity in classifying things into humanly conceived categories. Snakes and turtles are different enough, but have enough common attributes to be called reptiles. Overlap exists.

Moreover, song overlap can be as much a consequence
of competition as not. For example, Sears, J. C. Penney's, and Bradley's are heads-up competitors. Yet they offer a great number of common clothing labels. Why? Some brands are particularly popular to the buying public. If any store were to decline a popular designer, some customers would migrate to the competition. Don't need consolidation to explain this.

What about playlists? Radio playlists on commercial radio are designed to sell advertising. Playlists may indeed shrink – each station has an incentive to specialize its particular brand to better reach its particular audience. These target audiences may be happy enough with more focus. If not, they can change the channel. Or buy a car CD device.

Radio listeners have instant choices at their disposal. Want to measure exposure of music? Don’t count songs on playlists or the overlap between formats. Count the total number of plays in local markets.

With wider format selection, the total amount of music played in local market may have actually increased or decreased. Critics have not begun to ask the right question.