Thank you for such a well thought out response. I mean that. I will address this as a person in radio. I started as a high energy top 40 jock in 1978. I was pu in sales in 1987 but always did some on air work. In 1993 I was sales manager of a Houston station I managed over 20 years before settling back in a small town station.
Radio listening is acually increasing versus your statement of a vast watseland. You can find the data online from sources like the Radio Advertising Bureau and NAB. You are injecting your dislike of radio as it is today as fact across the board rather than your opinion. On a personal note, I have always wondered why someone who dislikes radio as much as you seem to wastes time posting here. I'd simply quit listening to radio and wash my hands of it.
Let me describe some 'glitches' I've experienced: Last week it was cloudy with pop-up showers all day. Our forecast software began saying skies were clear. Come to find out, the National Weather Service had a sensor down and defaulted to 'clear skies'. Our software was working fine. Their sensor was down about 6 hours. At another station we carried a news service and a weather service. Both sent files to our computer for playback. Sitting in the office one day, the forecast was off. Thinkng back, the computer aired the prior Thursday's forecast. Come to find out, the service had failed to send us the afternoon forecast for Thursday so the computer played the past Thursday's forecast. About a month ago, I noticed the very same wording on the 1 minute ABC News Summary. There is a computer dedicated to ABC News. For some unknown reason it quit recording the hourly report. After doing a re-boot, everyhing was fine.
I would think your energies would best be directed to the stations themselves. And I'd hound them until you have answers (because they're typically too busy to respond or they intend to but more work is awaiting and it just never comes a time for them to email you back. I used to say I wasn't a manager, I was a fireman because it seemed I was always addressing something (puting out fires as they pop up). They migh not even know.
With so many ad dollars radio once had going online and the number of national chains hurting the mom and pop businesses that are the bulk of radio's revenue, radio has had to retool to match available revenue. A group owner might have, say, 5 stations. There might be only one warm body in the station to watch all 5 while doing their own show. In short, the attention to detail is not what it had been. I read a figure somewhere that radio revenue was 35% of what it was in 2000 primarily due to a shift to online. Newspaper took an even greater hit and TV a bit less of a hit than radio but have you noticed how many 1-800 ads on TV (per inquiry ads) where the TV staion is paid a commission when someone in the zip codes in their coverage area buys their product. All those ads asking for $19 or $29 a monh are per inquiry as are many of the lawyer, warranty and medicare ads. Scary stuff when you add PI spots to fill out your breaks because you don't have enough paid spots. Case in point: at one station, one client was spending $1,200 a month in 1980 ($4,568 a month in 2024 dollars). Today, with my hard work, I have them up to $600.
