Blood Bath at ABC Radio (Citadel)

[gr8oldies]

And you are certain that every one of those stations have no provision for emergencies., and a high school kid manually spinning CDs is what it takes for emergency coverage?

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

And you are certain that every one of those stations have no provision for emergencies., and a high school kid manually spinning CDs is what it takes for emergency coverage?

If you have read the news over the last six months, this was a major issue at some Clear Channel stations that had weather emergencies. A high school kid who is locally in the station can be taught. I know this because I opted for putting some high school kids on the air. They can be taught. They do get better. This is not the 1960s. A high school kid can do as well as some experienced djs because the dj talent pool today is almost nonexistent. KEOM, a Mesquite, Texas, High School station, is a good example. The kids are learning and can do the basics, although not well, and they out rate many Dallas commercial stations. Localism in radio 24 hours a day is mandatory or the station's license to broadcast should be pulled.

 

[TheBigA]

A high school kid who is locally in the station can be taught.

If the purpose of a radio station is strictly to provide information in an emergency, that's fine. But that's not the only thing the public expects their station to do. Especially in a competitive situation, where you have dozens of radio stations in a town. They can't all do the same thing.

The bigger issue is: Who is responsible in an emergency. Since 9-11, the DHS has identified local emergency officials as the responsible party, not local radio. So a high school kid has to know that he must receive direction from a responsible authority before making any announcements on the air.

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

The bigger issue is: Who is responsible in an emergency. Since 9-11, the DHS has identified local emergency officials as the responsible party, not local radio. So a high school kid has to know that he must receive direction from a responsible authority before making any announcements on the air.

The bigger issue is that a broadcast facility is a public trust and that means serving the community of license. There was once
a strong FCC that enforced this. That strong FCC of yesteryear would pull the licenses of a ton of radio stations today. Why should any company get any slack when it comes to their broadcast license, localism and serving the community?

 

[RADIO TRUTH]

One other thing.....go back some decades and radio stations were able to serve their community and also do entertaining programming to get ratings and billings.

 

[Steve Eberhart]

Stations are required to maintain an EAS system, capable of interrupting programming to broadcast things like weather warnings.

At MINIMUM, this will get the information on the air and warn local listeners.

Fully automated operators can also avail themselves to automated weather such as Dave Scott's "Unattended weather" which will announce weather bulletins and conditions automatically. No, it's not as good as a live announcer giving the information, but it DOES cover the bases and get the information out until live personnel can get to the station and take over covering the event, if warranted. Between the EAS and an automated weather system, it does get it covered.

EAS can also be used for other extrordianary emergencies.

Costs are much higher these days to operate a station (trust me) and it just is not profitable to have live personnel 24/7 at a smaller station. Voicetracking or satellite fed programming offers a very good alternative for stations that otherwise would simply have to go dark or operate at minimum hours of the day.

My experience has been that any talent a network provider has on the air is usually better than a smaller station could find or afford, thereby improving the product and providing a service to the public.

 

[oggie35]

Apparently Radio Truth you have had a bad experience somewhere. As a small AM/FM station servicing a county of 25,000 in the rural midwest, Satellite Music Network/ABC was the best thing that ever happened to us. A professional sound for a small market station. Someone was at the station from 5am till 10pm..if severe weather was possible, someone sat at the station until the threat was over. Local law enforcement had all of our phone numbers in case of an emergency. We did High School Sports, news, and had lots of local content. We wrote thousands of liners over the years for the jocks, to keep our listeners informed (we used those dead breaks like crazy). We cared about the format..we didn't just "put it on and let it run". Sure most of our listeners knew that Bob Leonard, Peter Stewart and the others weren't physically at the station, but the product they put out connected with our listeners and advertisers. There would be no way that we could have afforded to have a full-time air staff (weekdays and weekends), the music and equipment to make it work and put out a product as good as what we received from ABC. Sorry to see the changes..so many good years and people gone.

 

[gr8oldies]

The bigger issue is that a broadcast facility is a public trust and that means serving the community of license. There was once
a strong FCC that enforced this. That strong FCC of yesteryear would pull the licenses of a ton of radio stations today. Why should any company get any slack when it comes to their broadcast license, localism and serving the community?
[/quote]

The only reason staffing was ever required was to keep the transmitter in compliance, and to babysit the public file during regular business hours. You will not see the words "to read tornado warnings" or "to read the local police blotter" anywhere in the Communications Act. Now that transmitters stay in compliance without someone babysitting them, there really are no staffing requirements, except that the public file be accessible during normal business hours. If you want mandated 24/7 live bodies speaking into live microphones, then what you want is new regulation, not a return to old regulation. Back in the day, there were plenty of marginal operations that never had their license pulled.

A station can use satellite programming and use limited resources to cover news, sports and emergencies (someone can actually leave the building to do that; under your scenario a staffer would be stuck at the station, manually inserting CDs. Give your local law enforcement valid phone numbers, sleep with a weather radio beside you, and you can do a great job serving your community without sounding like a high school radio station. You can even automatically go on the air with a cellphone. When I was growing up, a good share of
smaller stations signed off at 10pm. No tornado coverage when you are off the air.

Yes, I am well aware of entertaininfg radio being done inthe 60s and 70s, when there were very fgew stations, no cable TV, internet, iPods or the proliferation of signals that there are today. In a small town, where it was just you and the local newspaper, that was much more realistic. Now it's you, a couple of other stations, the cable operator, the newspaper, 50 different shopper and coupon magazines, and who knows what else competing for the same limited advertising dollars. If you are saying that anyone who can't afgfgord a 24/7 live DJ staff should "sell to someone who can", I guess show me the lender who can look at the numbers and be willing to loan you the money to increase payroll by $100,000 a year (4 jocks times even $20,000 plus part time not counting taxes paid).

With all the pontificating about "serving the public trust" that goes on on this board, I'm not convinced that there's a genuine concern about the folks in West Podunk getting a tornado warning, as much as wanting "The Full Employment Act for DJs Act of 2010". Don't think it's gonna happen, folks.

By the way, Clear Channel has a "bunker" in Cinncinati which law enforcement in any one of CC's markets can reach by 800 number. This location can broadcast emergency messages on any one of CC's stations. I'm not sayinfg it's the best thing, but they are doinfg something to prevent another Minot.

 

[gr8oldies]

Turns out there still is:

Sec. 73.1208 Broadcast of taped, filmed, or recorded material.

(a) Any taped, filmed or recorded program material in which time is of special significance, or by which an affirmative attempt is made to
create the impression that it is occurring simultaneously with the broadcast, shall be announced at the beginning as taped, filmed or recorded. The language of the announcement shall be clear and in terms commonly understood by the public. For television stations, the
announcement may be made visually or aurally.
(b) Taped, filmed, or recorded announcements which are of a commercial, promotional or public service nature need not be identified as taped, filmed or recorded.
[37 FR 23726, Nov. 8, 1972]


And I thought every Sunday morning, Casey Kasem would go out to that little building at the edge of town with the tower beside it, and do American Top 40 just for my little town. I figured he stopped at the donut shop before he got there.

In the early days of consolodation, jocks would say that that the above section prohibited out of market voicetracking, but the FCC nor Confgress ever mandated the announcement. It could be argued that "we never said this is live". I'm not convinced that non-radio fgeeks care, and the announcements would be more annoying than anythinfg. The idea is folks would react "I thought he was right here. I'm never listening again!". They might be more likely to say "I wish he'd shut up and I don't care where he is".

Far as that goes, isn't almost all DJ patter "promotional"?
[

 

[bossbill]

Radio Truth, apparently you have never had the challenge of operating a small business. One of the basic business truths is that revenues must exceed expenses.

Yes, there are operators who "just walk away". I'm not one of them. My very small staff is always on call for any emergency. Our on-air people all live within 3-7 minutes of the studio, as do I.

We had a false alarm last year with a tsunami warning and we had it on the air within minutes. Last winter we had a bad storm and flooding, with power outages and went into wall-to-wall coverage quadcast mode. We have emergency plans which include rotating first-responder duties.

We operate 4 stations with format diversity for the benefit of the residents, but share ALL news, community events, weather, etc, so that no matter which station they're listening to, they hear it. Each station has a live & local morning show. And there is another radio group in town that is similarly set up.

You can argue that 8 stations in a "2 station market" is overkill, but we didn't create it, congress did, and the commission became the enabler. The additional stations come about after a speculator orchestrates a convoluted "move in" to a major market but has to get new channels alloted to retain local service in the smaller communities I'd love it if we each had one station and then the staffs could be deployed more hours and be live, but that's not the way it works. You get 3-4 operators chasing the revenues and none of them generate enough to stay afloat and then one goes down, and you end up with more stations than you really wanted anyway.

Thanks to companies like Wal-Mart, which have destroyed local retail in many communities, there is virtually no upside on the revenues in this market. Having a person on duty 24 hours would require 3 more people if the extra staff were shared, or 12 more people if we had to do it for each station. This would add from $60,000 to $250,000 per year to my cost of operation. Even the first scenario would break me.

And who would win? Not me; not the public. The only winners would be the consolidators, who would then snap up the rural frequencies that are still available for upgrade, and move them to Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, etc.

Radio Truth, if you want to take on the big boys, I'm in. But most of the small rural broadcasters are doing the best they can with limited resources.

 

[gr8oldies]

Apologies for the sticky f and g keys folks

 

[TheBigA]

The bigger issue is that a broadcast facility is a public trust and that means serving the community of license.

That's a bunch of 1920s mythology. The government is a public trust. We see how trustworthy they are. The public votes and pays for the government. No one votes or pays for radio stations.

The FCC has never revoked a license for lack of public service programming. Long before deregulation, I challenged the licenses of some stations on that basis. The FCC threw my challenges out. All the FCC cares about is that if a real emergency happens, they can commandeer the radio station. Today, the FCC has way bigger fish to fry, and they'd rather use the spectrum to make money than for public service.

One other thing.....go back some decades and radio stations were able to serve their community and also do entertaining programming to get ratings and billings.

Go back some decades, and there were a whole lot fewer radio stations, and even fewer that mattered. The FCC killed the golden goose in the 80s when they got greedy and over-licensed the spectrum. At one time, radio was the only way people could hear music. That's not the case any more. The one thing that hasn't changed: The minute a station runs public service programming, the listeners go away. If the people the programming is meant to serve don't listen, there's no point in doing it.

 

[TomT]

This discussion has degenerated into nonsense posted by the frustrated wannabe's living in their parent's basement. I would dare say that Steve Eberhart and Bill Wolfenbarger are just about the only ones posting who have the background and experience to fairly comment.

As some of those on this board know, Steve not only works weekends for Citadel Media but also manages his own station. I own two FM's, one licensed to a county seat of 2400, the other in another county seat of 5,000-- which has three competing signals. Steve was "running" my one station (which carries the AC format from Dallas); while the ops manager did a live remote from the tiny Ohio River town of Powhatan Point on our classic rock outlet.

Minot was mentioned. The true story of Minot is one of government incompetence. The emergency center had its own EAS equipment, but it was never installed. When a train derailed in the middle of the night, the emergency center couldn't communicate with the local CC cluster because they had misplaced the direct studio number, and only had the (daytime) switchboard number. Meanwhile, the LIVE operator at the CC complex could not get information from the emergency center because the phone lines were already jammed.

We monitor two NWS sources and two primary FM's. Our GM lives 5 minutes from the station, our ops mgr., even when he was a full-time college student at university 75 miles away--had a Mackie mixer and mike in his student apartment. He could (and often did) use go-to-my-pc to load info like school closings into our automation system from his apartment.

So--because we can't afford to use live announcers 24 hours a day, we should shut down, fire the staff, and go out of business? NPR going to provide programming to the 5 rural counties we serve?

 

[grandoleopry]

TomT
I agree with you,and Bill W. I too have utilitzed ABC network programming for
years on my stations in Pennsylvania. The Real Country network has worked
well for me and my stations. The talent is far better than most of the KIDS
working on our local competitors. They know the music, they are conversational
and our listeners enjoy the format. Although we are Live and local 6am - 1pm
and many specialty programs and sports broadcasts....I feel the programming
from Real Country gives us a professional sounding product at all times.
Far better than having some local yocal yapping about nothing.
And yes it has allowed our operation to remain quite profitable. Plus you don't have
to worry about someone not showing up for work, calling in sick, not following format
etc. This network has been very beneficial for the stations I've programmed over
the years.

Tim Michaels
York/Harrisburg PA

 

[PTBoardOp94]

RADIO TRUTH: There is a difference between not having local hosts and lacking localism. It would be very easy to argue that a solid Real Country affiliate like KEYE (Perryton, TX) is more local (whatever that really means) than any number of stations whose programming chiefly originates locally. I'll pick on WLTW Chicago.

 

[RadioFixerCLE]

The talent is far better than most of the KIDS
working on our local competitors.

Let's not be so down on the "KIDS", as you so derisively call them.

When all of us old farts kick the bucket....who do you think is going to be left to fix the mess we've turned this business into?

Oh yeah, there are still "KIDS" interested in the radio business. I know - and work - with quite a bunch of them. They have talent. The only thing they don't have is someone willing to stick their neck out to teach them how to channel that talent.

 

[ropertex]

That is a myth. It was a bi-partisan bill, supported by leaders of both parties. Vice President Gore went on the David Letterman Show to promote the bill.

In the Senate, 81 votes yes, 18 voted no. Among the yes votes: Kennedy, Bradley, Dole, Dodd, Feinstein, Kerry, Sarbanes, Simpson, and Thompson.

In the House, it was an even greater margin: 414 to 16.

To say it was pushed by Republicans ignores the facts. It was pushed by both parties, each of whom had reasons to want to see it passed.

The Republicans controlled Congress in 1996, and their original bill removed ALL ownership caps on TV stations as well as radio. Clinton was able to limit TV station common ownership to 35% market share, and the Democrats suppported the bill because it was better than taking the chance that Clinton would not be re-elected later in 1996, and a Republican president, FCC chair and cabinet approving total ownership deregulation (one company could own every TV and radio station in the country if the "free market" dictated that as the most profitable arrangement)

 

[gr8oldies]

Even though broadcast radio is the most important thing to us, it was a minor part of the overall bill. If you want to place blame, start with Docket 80-90.

 

[TheBigA]

The Republicans controlled Congress in 1996,

The Senate bill passed on June 15, 1995. Once again, the vote was 81 to 18, with only 15 Democrats voting no. And the bill was mostly written in 1994. This was a bi-partisan bill. Don't try and blame Republicans or anyone for it. They couldn't come close to writing a fair bill today.

one company could own every TV and radio station in the country if the "free market" dictated that as the most profitable arrangement

There are there no ownership limits in any other form of media. One company could own every newspaper in the country, every cable channel, and every popular internet site. For 40 years, newspaper companies could own broadcasting, and one newspaper could own two radio stations and a TV station. That was in the days when there may have been only two TV stations in a town. Democracy didn't collapse during that time, and in fact those combos were among the best licensees in the country. We'd be better served if we'd allow that to happen again.

As a country, we're quite satisfied having only two political parties controlling all elections. Imagine if the same was true for all media. And its the government that actually owns every TV and radio station in the country...they just happen to license the frequencies to independent companies.

 

[StaceLG]

Bill,

Good to see you posting although I am sorry it is about such sad circumstances. I know how hard you have worked over the years to balance cost with quality when it comes to your stations. Hope you're doing well.

Stacy LaRue Gannon