Regarding the translators; yes they were designed to make the AM station listenable. I understand the rules about feeding it from the AM source. I'm just suggesting that the rules be altered. The AM station would be authorized a translator and would broadcast on both frequencies for a finite time. Then after a period, the AM would go dark and the license would be for the translator to continue in its place. This might stop some of the buying and selling of translators by speculators. The AM signal seems unnecessary.
I understand the People Meters and how we program to them. That ignores the problem of making the product that people really want to listen to, even through the commercial sets. I can't imagine a local sponsor paying for the 6th position in the set. Yes, I know the national buy won't even know where they are placed, except that their spot aired at 3:34:50. It's a matter of how to make the product listenable, which it is not. I also understand where agency spots come from and how they are bought. My suggestion was that if the revenue generators were entertaining, people would sit through them and the advertiser would get a better bang for the buck. Local spots were never as good as the national spots, but the local product was better in the past, in my opinion. With today's digital toys, the spots today should be as good and better than the ones in the past, but I am not hearing it. I can remember taking an hour to loop part of a song for a needed effect in the past. That would take seconds to do today, so at least that part of the operation should and could be faster and cheaper in manpower hours. And no, I don't pretend to understand the current tastes, mostly because being in the higher, unnecessary demos, I just don't care. I know we can't talk over intros today, but I also know that if we read a liner card about the hottest hits and a chance to win tomorrow morning at 7:20, no one will pay attention because it is soooo very bland and boring. I don't understand how the shouting commercials are doing anyone any good. There has to be a survey about listener retention and how well a spot message is retained. I understand and agree with what you say, my only concern is why no one is trying harder to make it listenable as the diminishing returns make an investment in radio a risky and worthless investment. It's kind of like buying a pay phone company in 1990.
I was never one of the guys who preach "the public good" nonsense printed somewhere in the licenses. The public didn't invest a million bucks for a transmitter and tower. I am a guy who thinks you have to provide a product of value to be paid for it and I can think of few stations which do so in 2023. For now it's free and I can choose to listen or not. As a taxpayer I worry that I Heart and the others will come to the government with hat in hand for taxpayer dollars to keep their "importan public services" on the air when the ad dollars finally dry up. I never want to see that although I'm guessing it will happen in the future. No one asked, but I'll also suggest that PBS be turned off if it can't raise funds to continue operation without the government assistance.
It is expensive indeed to operate in today's environment. If you own nine stations in a market and provide several formats which could not survive alone, I'd suggest those formats should die. Part of the revenue problem has to be the pie being cut into tiny pieces. Yes, I understand that nine stations sharing a building and engineer saves money, but it really doesn't produce an interesting product. I don't pretend to have the answers for building something listenable which will attract an audience and revenue, but I know the current product doesn't, even with the sales touting the benefits of group buys for all those formats. I don't know the format of the future, but someone needs to discover it.
I very much enjoy your thoughts and I can't find much to disagree with. You are correct in what you say. It saddens me to hear what has become of some of the once great radio stations. Maybe it's nostalgia. Maybe it's sadness that no one today wants to be in that business. I know some of today's salaries are about what we were making in 1985 at a somewhat successful station. Not long ago, I met some talent of a very well know and popular station in the Hudson Valley. It is a market leader that few have not heard of. I met him at a local bar where he was serving drinks to make ends meet. I know you can't get blood from a stone and I don't know if the egg or the chicken comes first, but if we can't find a way to get some blood from that stone to pay talented people, and find interesting things to program, there is no reason for we old codgers or even the young whippersnappers to tune in. We're proving that every day.
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