Don Barrett’s lifelong obsession with broadcasting has become a must-see industry Web site

Don Barrett’s Web site isn’t much to look at a couple of simple graphics, some scanned-in photographs and a lot of black text on white background. But looks can be deceiving the site gets some 30,000 unique hits a day and is read by some of L.A.’s most influential executives.

LARadio.com has quietly become the watchdog of the local radio industry. It’s written mostly for local radio insiders the kind of people who might see Steve Harvey’s recent climb to No. 1 among L.A. morning show hosts as a big story or who might want to know that KNX-AM (1070) recently got a new transmitter.

But Barrett, an entertainment industry consultant who spent a decade working in radio, also breaks stories that are picked up by the broader media.

“Don stands alone,” says Mary Beth Garber, president of the Southern California Broadcasters Association. “There isn’t anyone else in the market with his connections and his knowledge of the business.”

Even critics of the site visit often and sometimes even contribute material.

Roy Laughlin, L.A. market president for Clear Channel Communications Inc., calls LARadio a “gossip column” but his quotes and letters frequently appear on the site. Pat Duffy, who oversees the local stations of Infinity Broadcasting Corp., says “it’s a lot of opinion and speculation and hearsay” but concedes that he visits the site almost daily.

“It’s industry news, kind of instant industry news,” Duffy says. “He’ll occasionally pick up a nugget.”

Shutdown considered

For all this attention, Barrett recently announced he was considering shutting down the site at the end of the year.

“RadioDigest.com folded less than a year ago. It is the reality of the dot-com world,” said a message buried deep inside a recent LARadio column. “What started out as a labor of love has become a full-time job. We are in the process of analyzing options on creating a revenue model that reflects the effort.”

Barrett admits that the current model a voluntary, annual fee of $3.95 has brought in little money. The site has attracted some 1,100 subscribers.

That’s better than nothing, which is what Barrett was asking until earlier this year. But his object wasn’t to make money.

“(The) $3.95 was just a token,” he says. “I got to thinking, ‘I’m putting a lot of work into this and maybe nobody cares,’ and it was to find out if people did.”

Barrett says he is considering three ways in which to keep his site going: increasing the voluntary subscription rate, turning LARadio into a “subscriber-only” service, or finding a partner.

When Barrett launched LARadio in 1997, he meant to use it only to update and promote his book, “Los Angeles Radio People,” a collection of biographies and stories about more than 3,000 local disc jockeys, reporters, talk show hosts and others. Once in a while, he would post a tidbit about some L.A. radio station or personality.

Four years later, Barrett finds himself putting eight to 10 hours a day, weekends included. The 60-year-old father of three wakes up at 5 a.m. to tape the L.A. morning radio shows on five tape recorders set up in an office in his Valencia home.

During the day, Barrett goes through the tapes “hopefully to get a pearl or a gem and picks out funny, interesting or quirky items. He also sifts through some 300 e-mails a day, five percent of which yields something he can use for his column.

“Am I sick?” Barrett jokes. “I do it because I love radio.”

Radio veteran

Barrett long has been a radio junkie. He began his radio career as a disc jockey in 1965 and went on to become general manager of two Detroit radio stations before he turned 30. In the 1970s, he helped launch a radio station in L.A. (KIQQ-FM). He later became a marketing executive in the movie industry but continued following L.A. radio.

“Ever since I was a kid growing up in Santa Monica all I wanted was to be in radio,” Barrett says. “I never lost the love and the passion for radio.”

For some people, LARadio is simply a way to stay in the loop.

Tom Bernstein, who recently retired from KNX after more than four decades spent in local radio sales, reads the site every day “to keep in touch with what’s going on.”

“I think the site is very worthwhile,” says Bernstein, who has befriended Barrett and become a contributor to LARadio. “It keeps me a part of it.”

Garber says Barrett tried to make LARadio a subscriber service three years ago, but said readers were unwilling to pay $20 a year. But she pointed out that the site has evolved since then and said that many people would probably be willing to pay such a fee today.

“I certainly would because (the site) really does provide a service and I don’t think we realized it until it started coming into our lives,” she says.-