Excellent point joebtsflk1. With all the rimshots now, there are many quite viable communities with a differing identity from the metro that would likely really appreciate a local station again. An FM translator is certainly a must but I suspect if local content was included, a stand alone AM would have a chance even if a daytimer.
On the LPFM front, a station moved from their town, going from a local to regional emphasis. The LPFM came in and has incredible support and enough local listening to make things work. They, while mostly automated, are purely local in non-entertainment programming. In fact, they lured high school sports away from a regional FM.
Talking Tourist Information Radio, as an earlier poster, I studied the format and spoke to several operators of such stations. The biggest problem was merchants signing up for the reduced annual rate only to cancel after the primary tourist season was over.
I pretty much learned that the station had to be more than a station. You need print and website to complete the package. Offering brochures with space sold for listings, coupled with website doing the same, perhaps a seasonal tabloid geared toward tourists and an over the air presence with a mix that can go up to 30 minutes an hour of advertising is not out of the norm. For the visitor, listening to the radio station should immerse them in the community making them aware of sites and merchants offering what the tourist will utilize, giving good directions for motorists. It was suggested using business owners on spots and local voices representing local attractions as the key to success.
On an advertising end, it was suggested an organization membership with annual fee to be a part of the marketing to visitors. One fellow charged $1,800 for membership annually or if you wanted just, say Memorial Day through Labor Day it was $1,500 with another $500 for the big Christmas thing the town did from Thanksgiving to Christmas. The idea was to get folks to kick in $300 more to be on all year. Merchants got a listing in the bi-annual tabloid and all related brochures plus a listing on the radio (and the website). There was a short write up on the business in the tabloid and the radio station did a minute long interview about the business that rotated on the radio station (and maybe stream). If a business wanted an ad, radio, online or in the tabloid, there was an additional charge. This guy went Sports Talk after 3 years but at the time he switched he had over $100,000 annually in advertising/memberships and had convinced the Visitors Bureau to funnel a portion of the room occupancy tax to the organization. He was carried by the cable TV system on a message channel as well. He figured he could have stayed with it and topped out at about $300,000 annually. He used only part time staff. The radio format was totally automated. He had rotations of certain information every 15 minutes and staggered rotations on features. The station was a daytimer that had a tunable signal for about 40 miles. Another thing he did was try for billboard space from advertisers with a small "Tune to..." amid the merchant's message. He had the state, county, city and even the feds erect signs on highways saying for tourist information tune...
Of the stations I looked at, one was almost all commercials. Another had no commercials but mentioned businesses that were members. For example, at exit 405, you'll find... with a bit of description of the businesses. These repeated every 15 minutes. Others used a 30, 60 or 120 minute rotation, mostly selling a spot an hour for about $250 to $300 a month. The most interesting was the use of trivia questions spaced within the hour, offering the answer a few minutes later to keep listeners tuned in. Some gave weather forecasts and others didn't. Some did traffic and parking reports but some didn't. In all instances, the use of local people from the police to the local museum and such was emphasized. The most clever use was a 'roving reporter' stopping in to businesses to ask the owner to tell them about the business. Many business owners were told the visitor came by because they heard them on the radio.
Most stations using the VIR "Visitors Information Radio" Format were short lived.
A very unique VIR station was a live daytimer. In each hour was a calendar of events every 15 minutes, complete weather every 30 minutes and two 5 minute interviews each hour. Advertising was 8 minutes an hour using a combination of 5 second and 30 second units. In a quarter hour there might be 3 5 second units and 3 30 second units with two of those being sponsorships of either the calendar of events, weather or interview. The filler was music but restricted to only musicians that played in the town's venues. At one point the station billed just under $50,000 a month. Quite frankly, it was a pretty much year-round tourist town. This, by the way, was almost 30 years ago. It should be noted their location meant FM signals were few and they were the only radio station locally.
Billing for VIR stations ranged from a high of almost $50,000 to about $30,000 for the almost all commercial VIR station to about $8,000+ to A couple in the $5,000 a month range to one non-comm FM doing the format that only cracked about $100 a month, but in perspective, they were funded by the local Visitors Bureau.
One of the most unique was Bob Meadows when he had KMBL in Junction, Texas. If you have ever driven I-10 across Texas, you know towns are few and far between in West Texas. Whether coming out of San Antonio, you had a couple of hours plus on the road by the time you hit Junction and if coming from the west, you had many hours of driving through some of the more sparsely populated area of the USA, so you were ready to stop. Bob took his station to a Visitors Information format from 7 to 10 in the evening. The deal was he would get $1,000 a month (if my memory is correct) in room tax money to do it. Clients could buy ads for $1 to reach visitors. Bob said he never made a dollar after 7 unless it was a high school football game, so it was sort of icing on the cake. My understanding was all parties were quite pleased but he got many complaints from business owners about the music being gone in the evening (the same businesses that refused to allow any of their spots to play after 6pm). KMBL had highways signs, was on billboards (included in the billboard image although the billboard might be for a gas station, motel or restaurant, it would say tune 1450 at the bottom).
