THE THIRD WAVE

Simultaneously, the United States experienced a population explosion of mini-magazines—thousands of brand new magazines aimed at small, special-interest, regional, or even local markets. Pilots and aviation buffs today can choose among literally scores of periodicals edited just for them. Teen-agers, scuba divers, retired people, women athletes, collectors of antique cameras, tennis nuts, skiers, and skateboarders each have their own press. Regional magazines like New York, New West, D in Dallas, or Pittsburgher, are all multiplying. Some slice the market up even more finely by both region and special interest—the Kentucky Business Ledger, for example, or Western Farmer.

With new, fast, cheap short-run printing presses, every organization, community group,”politcal or religious cult and cultiet today can afford to print its own publication. Even smaller groups churn our periodicals on the copying machines that have become ubiquitous in American offices. The mass magazine has lost its once powerful influence in national life. The de-massified magazine—the mini-magazine—is rapidly taking its plage.

But the ifnpact of the Third Wave in communications is not confine’d’to the print media. Between iff^O and 1910 the nrrmber ot radio stations jn tne unuea Slates climbed from 2,336, to 5,359. In a period when population rose only 35 percent, radio stations increased by 129 percent. This means that instead of one station for every 65,000 Americans, there is now one for every 38,000, and it means the average listener has more programs to choose from. The mass audience is cut up among more stations.

The diversity of offerings, has also sharply increased, with different stations appealing to specialized audience segments instead of to the hitherto undifferentiated mass audience. All-news stations aim at educated middle-class adults. Hard rock, soft rock, punk rock, country rock, and folk rock stations each aim at a different sector of the youth audience. Soul music stations aim at Black Americans. Classical music stations cater to upper-income adults, foreign language stations to different ethnic groups, from the Portuguese in New England toItalians, Hispanics, Japanese, and Jews. Writes political columnist Richard Reeves, “In Newport, R.I., I cheeked the AM radio dial and found 38 stations, three of them religious, two programmed for blacks and one broadcasting in Portuguese.”

Relentlessly, newer forms of audio communication chip away at what remains of the mass audience. During the 1960’s tiny, cheap tape recorders and cassette players spread like prairie fire among the young. Despite popular misconceptions to the contrary, today’s teen-agers spend less, not more, time with their ears glued to the radio than was the case in the sixties. From an average of 4.8 hours a day in 1967, the amount ofradio listening time plummeted to 2.8 hours in 1977.

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