https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...book-didnt-kill-newspapers-internet-did.shtml
Sorry -- revenues crashed and then the industry consolidated. I know this is for newspapers, but I would imagine radio was a very similar trend.
Industries do not consolidate and then have their revenues crash. Revenues crash and then mergers and consolidation are the last measures to stay alive.
I do not disagree with you that that consolidation has been messy and rife with short-sighted decisions made by firms desperate to cut costs and stay afloat, but looking at the trend above, I am amazed any of them really survived. There were also plenty of owners smart enough to sell high or before the worst of the crash and plenty of large investors dumb enough to buy on the downturn, thinking it would rebound or they could manage it better. Well, oops. Those investors are currently losing their shirts.
And you are right that competition, like Craigslist for classifieds, has greatly hurt the industry as well. So even if that is not because of the media preferences of consumers, it is still the Internet smacking them where it hurts in the wallet.
The Google line there is informative -- it is a proxy measurement of how much the Internet started to dominate daily life and our need for data, information, and communications. It is not a coincidence that as Google goes up, newspaper revenues go down.