Poll: Live & Local Making A Comeback?

[stewie]

What is an MCP?

Thought it was just me.

 

[firepoint525]

Evidently, I am late to this thread, but my vote would have been the one that got the plurality of votes anyway. I believe that "live and local" SOUNDING stations are indeed making a comeback. I listen to some stations, and even to my trained ear, they do indeed sound "live and local." Compare that to a station that I used to work for back in the early '90s, which voice-tracked, at least while I was working there. The FM station still played reel-to-reel tapes, and we recorded "liners" that played about once every 15 minutes. The rest of the time was interspersed with jingles, quickie-liners, etc. It just SOUNDED "canned," even to the casual everyday listener. The liners had no mention of the song that we had just played (how could it? "we" didn't play it; the automation did!), and made no real reference whatsoever to the music, only referred to the music in a general sense. I always wondered how we explained that away when local scout groups came in to tour the station. (They were, and still are, a small-town station.)

I actually preferred being a board-op to being "just" a dj, anyway. Less harassment from bosses, less harassment from listeners, and a lot less being "chained" to the chair while a three-minute song played. Usually, I had much longer programming, thus could take bathroom breaks at will, and even had more time to do voiceover work for the station. I even did some cleaning around the station for a couple extra hours of pay per week while I was still monitoring the programming.

 

[firepoint525]

As I'm sitting here in the small market on the Washington Coast, listening to the thunder, watching the lightning, getting the power outage reports, listening to my several stations, with live disk jockeys talking about downed trees, flood warnings, etc, and our talk show host discussing the pros and cons of a Federal Government land grab in a nearby area, I'd say that radio today does have "socially redeeming quality", other than "grinding out music". This weekend, while we were grinding out music, we were also keeping our many thousands of listeners informed as to the wind, flood, power outages, etc. And today, if it gets worse, we'll be dealing with school closures, business interruptions... you get the drift. I hope what we do here is done in other small markets across the country, but I guess it's possible that we are the only ones.

Even that would be passé now. Here, most stations simulcast emergency weather coverage from their "partner" (not necessarily co-owned) TV station, usually the same one whose meteorologists do their weather forecasts for them, anyway. And it gives the station more credibility when a meteorologist is covering the emergency weather for them. About the only drawback (mainly for the TV station) is that they must occasionally make reference to the radio station(s) that are simulcasting with them. Also beneficial for the listener to be able to have this information available on a radio station in the event that they are not able to watch TV due to a power outage.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Even that would be passé now. Here, most stations simulcast emergency weather coverage from their "partner" (not necessarily co-owned) TV station, usually the same one whose meteorologists do their weather forecasts for them, anyway.

Where you live and where Bossbill hangs his hat are two different market places. Last time I looked up his stations, I recall that he had at least one that leaned up against a metro market where there are TV stations, etc.... but the markets and stations of his that I remember are just a little bit isolated. I can't picture a TV meteorologist being available to hook onto.

Thus, the listeners in his area may not see him as so passé.

 

[firepoint525]

Not so fast there. I am aware of stations that have meteorologists, and, so far as I know, no agreement with any TV stations. So it can be done. Question is, can they pay him, and if so, how much?

I grew up in rural northwest TN, and I do indeed recall some live and local coverage of one particular storm during my senior year of high school. We had a power outage, so listening to the radio for storm coverage was all that we had. As far as I know, that station is still live and local (although now with a simulcasting station an hour away), but I don't know how they would handle similar weather coverage now.

We had an added bonus there. We were an hour away from Paducah, KY, and we could listen to WPSD-TV channel 6 at 87.7 on our FM dial. We did not listen to that frequency during that particular storm, because with our local station, we did not need to.

Years later, while working for that automated FM that I mentioned earlier, I came across a weather warning that included a county within our FM station's coverage area, but not within the AM station's listening area. So I made mention of it when recording liners for the FM station that evening. (But obviously, for better coverage, they would have had to tune in a more local station.) Where I was, we were not directly affected by that particular storm.