Amid all the hoopla about satellite television, high-definition television, digital cable television, and the Internet, radio has largely escaped public attention. Yet in the United States, it is now undergoing a boom. Station ownership has consolidated rapidly in the wake of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which removed restrictions on the number of stations any one company can own. Helped on by new technologies that make it possible to operate stations remotely—or even to automate them entirely for large portions of the day—big operators have been acquiring one another and cutting costs significantly.

Indeed, national media powerhouses such as Chancellor Media, the Columbia Broadcasting System, and Clear Channel Communications each now own as many as hundreds of local broadcast stations running the gamut of formats from country and western to talk radio, from rock and roll to nonstop news. All of these large companies have revenues of more than $1 billion. Unlike their smaller regional competitors, they offer advertisers national coverage, which has helped industry revenues grow by almost 70 percent since 1991, to $14.3 billion in 1998, from $8.5 billion.¹ Profit margins, especially among the larger companies, have soared, and radio stocks have greatly outperformed the Standard &...