Cousin Brucie to join Sirius

[MHVRadiofan]

This is the article in the Poughkeepsie Journal about Cousin Bruce’s new home.

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050610/LIFE/506100326/1005/NEWS

Cousin Brucie is the latest to leave over the air radio and Sirius or XM. Although not exactly Mid Hudson valley it point to the truth posted a while back. I replied after it reached page 2 and would like to repost here.

Excepting the internet, local news is much like it was 70 years ago before Poughkeepsie’s first radio station 1450 WKIP hit the air. FM never did much news and with the AM stations on satellite 24/7 the clusters have virtually closed there news departments. Their news local news is the same headline stuff on FM presented by a reader .Seems much of it comes from the Poughkeepsie Journal, which as in the old days is many people’s main source of local news. True, Cablevision has a repeated 30 newscast I can’t comment on because I have Satellite, and WRNN is a sorry excuse for a newscast, mostly aimed at Westchester since they turned of Channel 62 in Kingston. What ever happened to serving the public? The FCC really screwed that up allowing these big companies take over. If the resulting clusters really wanted to they could economically use the news department to serve all their stations.
Its also true there no longer is any local personality on radio. Being told what to read and when is as bad as voice tracking
As to the weather how often do we have to hear do we have to hear today it will be…, Only to realize that was yesterday? Much worse still , while they do as required and broadcast the EBS severe weather announcements they are not incorporated in the later regular forecast so if you missed the EBS you are out of luck . Again this is public service?
I am not ready to fork over the money for satellite radio, but local stations should be live & local as much as possible

 

[talkinthewalk]

It's not the size of the company that's the problem. It's the fact that they are publicly traded in the stock market and are unfortunately more concerned with what their stock goes for than what their spots sell for. Therefore, like most US businesses, they are constantly trying to cut costs. They learned that the loss of income from not having a good local staff was less than the amount of income having one would generate. So they set up the satelite dish and left.

The good news is these companies are (slowly) starting to sell off their small market operations. The problem is that they are asking a lot for them so the next owners will be too leveraged to really change anything. It won't be until those guys sell and the next wave comes that we will start to see the return of the local broadcasters.

There are some, though. I work in West Chester, PA (Suburb of Philly) for a guy who is trying to make live, local radio work. I'm the morning host, our midday guy sells after he's done and my newsman comes back at 4 for a PM drive show. Our news room has two full timers and a slew of journalism majors from local colleges on internships. The sad thing is, our boss gets regularly pilloried on these boards. You'd think people would thank him for doing the one thing no one else seems to have the stomach to do.

Hang in there. It'll come back.

"Why buy the cow (subscription radio) when the milk is free?"