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Tucson 2026 - Public Perception of Local Radio
- Thread starter kwthom
- Start date
Fun read...
"Eastside Marlboro smokers" - quite the description to open the conversation....
I'd be intrigued but also scared how someone would describe our flagship AC here in Laramie using criteria and wording like his
Why?
I mean, this is unfiltered commentary about what a single person feels about a handful of radio stations in this mid-sized market.
Yeah, quite a number of others agreed in that thread, but is this simply another way the industry - once relevant to many folks on a daily basis - may not be that relevant?
This is why the recording industry hates AM/FM radio and is campaigning to add a new royalty for broadcasters. The people who make the music don't like that their brilliant work can be summarized into a sentence based around the marketing decisions of radio programmers. They also don't want their music to be available for free. I go to music conferences where I hear this all the time. They want to make their music too expensive for radio to play for free,
The fact of the matter is broadcast radio is not in the free music distribution business. The music is there simply to attract enough people to sell the audience to advertisers. Otherwise they wouldn't play it. In addition, radio companies are starting to realize there is money to be made in creating original content. That means content that doesn't play music.
My comment to the people who feel broadcast radio is irrelevant is: You're gonna miss us when we're gone. Because between the push by the music industry for a new royalty, combined with the interest in original content, the future for format radio as people today know it isn't very good. Combine that with the growth of religious radio, and a day will come when the only music you will hear on the radio is religious.
because someone once described our station as hard to listen to and not local enough..... both of which i greatly beg to differe about and our history says otherwise
Yeah, but if the ratings are good, that listener isn't really a listener, and their opinion matters little, no?
A hundred years ago, it was music provided by a musical group *in* a studio. Licensed music, union musicians...
Talk shows are cheap, but for some percentage of available listeners on any given day, it's not 'entertainment', so what does this original content look like?
AI-generated music?!
Even then, the people making the music would have to be paid a royalty. There's no way around it.
Even artists who run artist-hosted radio stations on Sirius have to pay music royalties, although they basically pay themselves.
So if the station or the owners created the AI music, they would pay the creator, which may be themselves.
we dont subscribe to ratings.. our TSL numbers from tapscan and our history suggest were doing fine
I can't find it now but back in the mid-2000s, somebody put up a similar snarky look at the AM and FM dials around the Akron, Ohio area. It later turned out that that somebody worked for Clear Channel Communications (which is now IHeart).
Look! Snarky comments like the ones at the posted link may be funny and may have some truth to them if shared by a lot of people (something which you don't know, at least not for certain) but @SomeRadioGuy is right. As a business owner or radio programmer, you really don't want to read such comments, even if they happen to be true. Why? Because, from an emotional standpoint, it means that all of the difficult labor you did to make your station a success has been found to be absolutely worthless (or close to it) by someone who had no idea how hard it was to make your station a success in the first place. For a lot of people doing the work, that *really* is a hard thing to swallow.
Look! Snarky comments like the ones at the posted link may be funny and may have some truth to them if shared by a lot of people (something which you don't know, at least not for certain) but @SomeRadioGuy is right. As a business owner or radio programmer, you really don't want to read such comments, even if they happen to be true. Why? Because, from an emotional standpoint, it means that all of the difficult labor you did to make your station a success has been found to be absolutely worthless (or close to it) by someone who had no idea how hard it was to make your station a success in the first place. For a lot of people doing the work, that *really* is a hard thing to swallow.
Which once again is why the artists who make the music hate it when their art ends up becoming someone else' s refried beans.
A few years back, HBO did a documentary on Yacht Rock. They wanted to interview Donald Fagen of Steely Dan. He told them to "f" off. He hated the perception that his music was being characterized this way.
The people who created the radio programming, the formats, and the syndicated programming don't mind the attention their work gets. They like being invited into the Radio Hall of Fame. But when someone else makes money from something they did, such as selling CDs of old American Top 40s or creating online tribute sites that use old jingles and DJs, they get pretty upset about it.
You can't survive in this business, especially now, if you don't have a really thick skin about stuff like this.
The fact that someone's paying enough attention to local radio to even create a Reddit post like that Tucson one is actually pretty cool.
But the reality is also that even in a mass medium, you aren't going to please everyone all the time. There's a skill to knowing which criticism is constructive and worth listening to, and which is better off ignored.
The fact that someone's paying enough attention to local radio to even create a Reddit post like that Tucson one is actually pretty cool.
But the reality is also that even in a mass medium, you aren't going to please everyone all the time. There's a skill to knowing which criticism is constructive and worth listening to, and which is better off ignored.
The person behind the Reddit post is more than a casual listener, as they correctly used call letters and frequency, instead of branding. This is just a radio geek making humour out of stereotyping the listeners of certain stations. Nothing more, nothing less. It gave me a few laughs...
Look...an award-winning someone in the biz with a sense of humor:
2011 ACM- and CMA-winning air personality and Program Director
As far as call letters vs. branding...I'd surmise more than a few radio geeks popped into that thread.
Look, there's even a Ted Tucker station in that thread - imagine that.
Nope, not me, wouldn't doxx myself like that - no Reddit account.
2011 ACM- and CMA-winning air personality and Program Director
As far as call letters vs. branding...I'd surmise more than a few radio geeks popped into that thread.
Look, there's even a Ted Tucker station in that thread - imagine that.
Nope, not me, wouldn't doxx myself like that - no Reddit account.
That thought did cross my mind. Lol