Network Radio Gets Windfall in Conflict : Media: The outbreak of fighting in the gulf spurs many all-music stations to affiliate with sources that provide news.

Network radio, long regarded as a quaint relic from a bygone era, is enjoying something of a renaissance among local stations since the outbreak of the Gulf War.

Radio stations have not been required to broadcast news or public affairs programming since the industry was deregulated in the early 1980s. But the Gulf War has spurred many all-music stations to affiliate with a network that provides news.

“We’ve had over 250 stations requesting our news service,” said William Battison, president of Westwood One Inc., the Culver City-based company that owns the NBC Radio Network and Mutual Broadcasting System. “Our phone lines are jammed.”

During the past decade, news programming has dwindled in popularity at radio stations while all-music formats have proliferated. News-intensive radio stations have largely been relegated to the AM dial, where reception is poorer.

Bob Benson, vice president of news for ABC Radio, said he has received more than 50 requests from local stations seeking affiliation with one of ABC’s six radio networks.

Many of the requests, he explains, “are coming from rock stations around the country that seldom do any news. People who listen to rock music, especially classic rock, aren’t kids any longer. They are people in business who are affected by the war in the gulf.”

One of the biggest beneficiaries of this interest in radio news has been CNN, which has won wide acclaim for its Gulf War coverage. CNN produces two radio news networks that are distributed through Unistar Satellite Networks, based in Los Angeles.

Gary Fries, president of Unistar, said his phone has been ringing nonstop. “We’ve executed 62 contracts for CNN Radio News since last Wednesday. This is tremendous.”

New clients include all-news radio KFWB-AM in Los Angeles, which is taking CNN Radio as a supplemental source of news. But Fries said most of the stations seeking affiliations “are music stations that have ignored news in the past.”

WPIG-FM in Buffalo, N.Y., is such a station. Until last week, it played “contemporary/country” music and carried only local news.

“We did not have a network,” said Daniel Farr, president of WPIG-FM, who last week signed with ABC’s Direction radio network. “But with the United States going to war, we felt it was important to get information to the public as quickly as possible.” Farr now runs ABC’s news reports every half-hour.

A total of 21 national radio networks supply programming to 60% of the country’s approximately 9,400 commercial radio stations. Radio network advertising totaled $433 million last year and in recent years had grown 10% annually.

Most networks are distributed on a barter basis, meaning local stations give up a portion of their commercial time in exchange for programming. The only exceptions are powerful major-market stations that can demand payment from the networks to run the programming.

It’s uncertain whether the radio networks will be able to hold onto their resurgence in popularity over the long term.

A survey conducted for the industry publication Radio & Records showed that 98.5% of 410 top-rated music stations broke their format on Jan. 16, when the bombing of Iraq began. But only 8.3% of 2,087 people surveyed said they turned to the radio for news of the bombing attacks. Moreover, only 6.6% thought radio had the best information.