Good Lord (to coin a phrase). I go to Europe for a vacation and everything back home goes haywire. When in the Netherlands and in that little Italian-speaking corner of Switzerland, I had access to the BBC World Service on DAB+ but now, deep in the Alps, I don’t have that. In fact, it looks like that no DAB+ “clusters” (if that is what they are called) in Switzerland carry the World Service. So I have heard or seen no American broadcast coverage of recent events, so I’m not going to comment on them. But those events clearly have affected RD, too.
As for RD, let me express my appreciation to Lance for keeping the site going and for trying to keep the nastiness out of discussions. Likewise, for worldradiohistory, my appreciation to David for a one-of-a-kind resource.
My own particular bugbear about online discussions relates to the use of pseudonyms. Awful as Facebook can be, one thing they got right was requiring the use of real names. That way, there’s at least some accountability for what people say or do. I give a lot more credibility to posts from someone willing to put their name behind them (or if their identity is readily apparent). If personal insults and online vandalism are becoming an issue here, the elimination of pseudonyms is something to consider.
Aside from that, something once said to me in my days as a radio news director comes to mind. Normally, I didn’t think much of what our sales manager came up with. She had the idea of selling a particular newscast to a local bank. One of the strings that came attached was to quote the stock price for the bank’s holding company at the end of the newscast, along with quotes of the most-active quotes that day on the NYSE. I resisted and ultimately I lost that argument. The sales manager said to me, “You can stand on principle but you can’t stomp on it.” I bristled at the time. But I decided she was right. The bank had no other say in coverage; it was just about a stock quote. And the extra newscast time gave us a good presence in PM drive.
One more thing: where do you people find the time ?
As for RD, let me express my appreciation to Lance for keeping the site going and for trying to keep the nastiness out of discussions. Likewise, for worldradiohistory, my appreciation to David for a one-of-a-kind resource.
My own particular bugbear about online discussions relates to the use of pseudonyms. Awful as Facebook can be, one thing they got right was requiring the use of real names. That way, there’s at least some accountability for what people say or do. I give a lot more credibility to posts from someone willing to put their name behind them (or if their identity is readily apparent). If personal insults and online vandalism are becoming an issue here, the elimination of pseudonyms is something to consider.
Aside from that, something once said to me in my days as a radio news director comes to mind. Normally, I didn’t think much of what our sales manager came up with. She had the idea of selling a particular newscast to a local bank. One of the strings that came attached was to quote the stock price for the bank’s holding company at the end of the newscast, along with quotes of the most-active quotes that day on the NYSE. I resisted and ultimately I lost that argument. The sales manager said to me, “You can stand on principle but you can’t stomp on it.” I bristled at the time. But I decided she was right. The bank had no other say in coverage; it was just about a stock quote. And the extra newscast time gave us a good presence in PM drive.
One more thing: where do you people find the time ?
