F
FloridaBear1776
Guest
Maloney wrote a piece for Inside Radio responding to the Benchmark study that
suggested syndication overload and a strong listener identification with local talk hosts. He wondered why radio companies counterintuitively keep firing them and adding more syndication.
Other than the savings of a salary line, I'd guess it's because they don't have the programming talent in place at most stations to adequately supervise them.
The full time talk PD is a thing of the past outside the top 25 or so markets.
(Not that many of the talk PDs in the 80s and 90s were all that good; they usually came out of cheesy small-market AM Top 40 radio during its 70s bubblegum era, just the kind of stations FM put out of business for good.)
Usually the "ops manager" or some such title has responsibility for six or more different formats. A talk host is a live loose cannon for 15 or more hours a week. If music jocks aren't getting airchecked, how on earth could a six-station overseer have time to go over the voluminous air product of a talk radio host. Management is afraid of putting such an unknown quantity on the air, regardless of the revenue that could be generated from local direct, in this era of indecency crackdowns and endless bad publicity for offhand remarks such as the "shoot the illegals" statement. Not to mention that dependence on live endorsements for revenue and salary coverage can mean the top advertisers end up being program directors, almost becoming brokered radio.
suggested syndication overload and a strong listener identification with local talk hosts. He wondered why radio companies counterintuitively keep firing them and adding more syndication.
Other than the savings of a salary line, I'd guess it's because they don't have the programming talent in place at most stations to adequately supervise them.
The full time talk PD is a thing of the past outside the top 25 or so markets.
(Not that many of the talk PDs in the 80s and 90s were all that good; they usually came out of cheesy small-market AM Top 40 radio during its 70s bubblegum era, just the kind of stations FM put out of business for good.)
Usually the "ops manager" or some such title has responsibility for six or more different formats. A talk host is a live loose cannon for 15 or more hours a week. If music jocks aren't getting airchecked, how on earth could a six-station overseer have time to go over the voluminous air product of a talk radio host. Management is afraid of putting such an unknown quantity on the air, regardless of the revenue that could be generated from local direct, in this era of indecency crackdowns and endless bad publicity for offhand remarks such as the "shoot the illegals" statement. Not to mention that dependence on live endorsements for revenue and salary coverage can mean the top advertisers end up being program directors, almost becoming brokered radio.