Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 20, Number 12, 1 Kekemapa 2003 — The Breeze [ARTICLE]

The Breeze

Nancy Bey Little's November letter concerning the demise of 99.5 "The Breeze" and the recent rash of similar responses lamenting the decline of traditional Hawaiian music and culture on loeal radio screams for answers. Well, it lends itself to the inane term "a Hawaiian sense of plaee," whieh would suggest that we have lost our plaee. While the power merchants and their "blue ribbon" panels consume endless time and taxpayer resources searching for the golden goose of tourism, the answer, like the endless roll of the surf, continues to stare back in disbelief: It's the culture, stupid! From the '60s through the '80s radio delivered what people wanted to hear and Honolulu had, say, a dozen stations with as many owners. The formula was quite simple. Ask Kevin Costner (although it took him awhile). "If you build it, they will eome." Radio is all about ratings. If people listen, your ratings increase and so does your advertising dollar. Everybody is hau'oli. Today, mega-corporations own dozens, hundreds, even a thousand radio stations. Their bottom line is all that matters. How do you manage such a huge inventory spread all across the country? Answer: homogenized radio. Programming from the mainland offices by corporate "bean-counters" is NOT unique to the media alone. Keaumiki Akui Honolulu