Sorry, but I have to agree with Fred on this one. Radio isn't something most people are willing to work at to enjoy. Why should they have to? There are plenty of other ways to get the content they want. The big advantage radio has always enjoyed is that it's easy.
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Sorry, but I have to agree with Fred on this one. Radio isn't something most people are willing to work at to enjoy. Why should they have to? There are plenty of other ways to get the content they want. The big advantage radio has always enjoyed is that it's easy.
Good point. Many stations had monitoring done at remote locations by a central "bureau" much as we have our home security systems monitored from a central station. This was a case of technology jumping ahead of antiquated rules.
The very reason stations had to be "manned" at all times in the past had nothing to do with programming. It was purely technical, and based on the fact that equipment was not stable and reliable enough when the rules were written to allow unattended operation.
As equipment got better, remotely operated lower-power stations were allowed. Then directional AMs and higher powered stations. At that point, the staffing was just somebody to take meter readings and reload the automation... generally not somebody who could originate programming.
Automation, from the mid-70's, just followed the progress of the microchip. Again, technology finally allowing things we would have done in 1930 had the systems been available.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
I'll agree with both of you, in part.
Interference causing devices are indeed the AM broadcaster's "problem". Point to Fred.
But, they are outside of the scope of the station's control (laws of physics) ... or responsibility to control (that license doesn't include the authority to order sources of interference to cease and desist). Point to GRC.
The challenge to AM broadcasters is to find programming that is compelling enough for the listener to mitigate the interference in order to listen to. Replacing older fixtures that generate more interference is along those lines. So is only using incandescent lights when listening to AM. Or, as is often the case with ethnic or religious AMs, simply putting up with the interference.
As this convoluted discussion continues, I find myself more and more in agreement with an earlier poster (Ravens?) who opined that Fred just hates AM because that's where the foreign-language broadcasters, the religious organizations, and the all-brokered program stations tend to be located. (Yes, I know that's a generalization, but there are more stations in those three categories on the AM band than there are on the FM band.)
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FredLeonard
Guest
Hate? Well, I don't have much use for foreign language, religious or brokered broadcasting. A lot of people don't. That's why AM has already lost most of its former audience. Yes, maybe if the content were more appealing, people would go to the trouble of working around AMs limitations. Maybe if more people listened, manufacturers would make AM receivers better able to deal with those limitations. Maybe if pigs had wings, they could fly.
AM radio is more than a century old. It had a good run. Let it go.
I know some people like to drive around and take pictures of towers and stuff. I don't care about technology. Content is what matters. AM is obsolete technology and an inferior system for delivering content.
I like steam locomotives, too, but I don't think they are coming back.
Dirigibles are fascinating but I don't think they'll come back either.
U
Unregistered
Guest
Content ----- in radio & TV means----- air any crap that makes $$$$$$$.
Quality often is not a primary concern.
( And---- this thread might outlive AM radio.)
Quality often is not a primary concern.
( And---- this thread might outlive AM radio.)
Except for infomercials, making $$$$$ means delivering an audience that an advertiser actually wants to reach. So, that means programming something that a bunch of people want to listen to. To them, it is "quality" because it satisfies a need.
Of course, quality is subjective. What is one person's "quality" is another's trash.
It will go when no one can make money off of it. Having AM radio around isn't hurting anybody or anything. If you don't like it for any reason, you don't have to punch the AM button, and there's presently no other use for the technology.
U
Unregistered
Guest
Infomercials seem to be the life blood of many AM stations. (& many TV stations)
Imagine if this also happens on FM. Seems hard to imagine but I suppose it could happen.
It's one of the problems. And not a minor one. Oddly enough, the FCC could do something about this by enforcing shielding rules. But they won't. Too busy trying to get control of the Internet.
As someone who prefers CFL bulbs myself, I think this is premature to say. Most people still prefer incandescent.
K
K.M. Richards
Guest
But that happened over time as FM began to duplicate the mass-appeal formats that had been so popular when AM was ... well, all there was. It was only as listeners discovered they could get essentially the same programming, free of interference, on FM that they turned their backs on AM.
That is the gist of the discussion, despite side visits to programming philosophies and whether or not marginally profitable stations should be "allowed" to keep their licenses.
If anything, we should be marveling at the ability of AM to once again reinvent itself, as it has so many times in the past, and remain as viable as it is. I concede that it is considerably less viable than it was 90 years ago.
Fred, it is perfectly all right for you, as an individual to have no use for foreign language, religious, or brokered programming. It is not all right for you to unilaterally decide that there is no room in the world for those broadcasts. In other words, unlike Al Haig's infamous moment in the sun, you are not in charge here.
That's great. If you first get rid of your cell phone, computer, flat screen TV and all other modern conveniences, I'll agree that we should return radio to the way it was 40 years ago. That won't make radio better....just make you think you're 40 years younger. And it won't solve the problems radio had 40 years ago that made deregulation necessary. Truthfully, given the explosion of non-regulated media in the last ten years, I think radio would benefit from even more deregulation to put it on a level playing field with everything else.
The fact is that rolling back FCC regulations by 40 years won't improve the situation AM radio is in now. It would, in fact, make it worse.
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Avid Listener
Guest
You have just presented a classic example of a post-hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.
And in this post, you present a classic example of just plain being wrong.
The dogmatic talk hosts brought new listeners to talk radio, partly because they had an appeal that the boring hosts who just chatted about pleasantries didn't have. And, they came along at a time when Baby Boomers were still a desirable demographic and many of us just didn't like the music on Top 40/CHR stations, and we turned our backs on the classic rock stations because the uber-tight playlists burned out our taste for that music on the radio.
Top 40 playlists were never identical, but even if they were, that simply makes the irrelevant garnish, the "personalities", into a feeble tie-breaker. When the only thing differentiating two almost identical things is trivial, then the trivia becomes the tie-breaker. But that doesn't make the tie-breaker any less trivial.
DJ's were never radio's biggest appeal. Once the suits running radio realized that, they changed the way they operated to accommodate what they learned. They didn't marginalize DJs until after they realized that DJs were irrelevant. There's also the fact that when broadcasters moved music formats to FM at first, they often didn't want to invest in well-paid DJs because they weren't sure people would listen to rock music on FM, so they wanted to minimize financial risk. What they discovered was that using the old "beautiful music" approach of three-song sets with minimal DJ chatter between songs got ratings that were as good or better than a having a "personality" boss-jock yammering between each song. That's another thing that taught the suits that DJ's were irrelevant.
And, in the context of this thread, even when we did listen to music, we didn't want to hear it sounding as crappy as it did on the AM band. When talk radio started growing was also when music formats on AM died, and the suits needed something to put on AM where crappy monaural sound wasn't an impediment.
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40 years ago, there was nothing else. You may THINK it was better, but for the most part, it wasn't. I'm not "blaming other options," but truthfully, there weren't any. People read newspapers because it's all they had. They listened to the radio because there were no personal portable music devices. Once they had other options, they used them. There were a lot fewer radio stations 40 years ago. There was no internet. TV was limited to three networks, all over the air. To be honest, there is nothing better about the other content options today. There is no such thing as "compelling internet radio." Try Pandora for a week. It's just computer driven music jukeboxes. But people listen to it.
As for news/talk radio, 40 years ago, the audience was 40 years younger. Today younger audiences simply aren't interested in news/talk radio, no matter who the host is, no matter what the approach. You can't regulate people to listen to something they don't like. To force radio to operate under more regulations than the other content options won't make radio better, more popular, or more profitable. All it will do will make radio more difficult and more expensive.
Historically not true. What led to the current style of talk radio was it became popular. As it became popular, other styles of talk dwindled in popularity. Put Larry King up against Rush Limbaugh, and who wins? You tell me. Did the Fairness Doctrine change that? No. The listeners changed that.
Absolutely not true, especially now. Radio companies are hiring lots of on-air talent. Listeners still use non-hosted internet streams. No live & local talent on internet or satellite radio. Your problem is you want to force radio to go back to when you were younger. It won't make radio better, just make you feel better. But today's audiences don't want what you want. That's hard for you to accept, but it's true.
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Avid Listener
Guest
In fairness to Fred, when the end of the Fairness Doctrine removed the fear of license challenges and enabled broadcasters to put hard-hitting, opinionated talk radio with a specific perspective on the air, it didn't really add more listeners to the audience that was already listening to talk radio. It more likely replaced the old, small audience for lightweight talk with a whole new, larger audience. Since radio only measures total numbers divided by age, it only shows that talk radio ratings increased within the same age-range of listeners. What it doesn't show is that the new talk radio chased away the previous small batch of talk radio listeners and replaced them with a whole new, much larger batch of listeners. My guess is Fred is only considering the relative handful of previous listeners who stopped listening because of the change, and is ignoring the much bigger batch of listeners that was gained.
It's similar to when FM took over the role of primary broadcast source of popular music. That did chase away the old farts who preferred FM's prior content of "beautiful music". But for each old fart chased away, ten whippersnappers came over in their place, so there was a huge net gain.
In a way, you have to feel sorry for the listeners who preferred beautiful music who ended up moving to listening to non-controversial talk on AM who were then chased away by the new group of talk listeners who preferred the new, hard-hitting formats. And now, the fans of current talk radio are getting old and aren't being replaced with younger listeners, which is why AM radio is dying.
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FredLeonard
Guest
Avid, I agree with most of what you said. However, talk radio in the fairness doctrine era, generally had much bigger cume and shares than it does today (or even a few years ago). Admittedly, before syndication, talk radio was an expensive format and therefore limited to a relatively few big market blow torches. Satellite distribution and low cost-higher quality long distance lines opened up the format (not Rush or the style of talk with which he is associated, as some claim). Those "heritage" talk stations, mostly evolved from full service and mostly still talkers, generally had much greater audiences than they do now. Note the word "generally:"
Doesn't matter. Returning regulations won't return ratings. There is no correlation.
You're ignoring everything that happened in between, and between 1986 and 2014, you had a huge boom in talk radio, where it outperformed music. Now, that boom has ended. But you can't recreate the past.
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An the boom was in no small part due to the fact that medium and small market stations could do talk without fear of legal problems and license challenges. In places ranging from Palm Springs, CA to Lake City, FL, talk came to the radio dial where none had existed before.
The convergence of the elimination of Fairness, the availability of syndicated programming and an audience ready for talk and listenership nationally expanded exponentially.
I agree, for once, with Avid Listener.
At the time when many major markets had two or even three Top 40 stations, the playlists and rotations were not identical. Each had different mechanics, and that was often the core element in differentiation.
While jocks were indeed the glue that held Top 40's together, that was 50 to 60 years ago. Jocks were part of a listener's social media and became the equivalent of Facebook friends on the radio. Today, Millenials and Gen X listeners don't care so much about jocks because they have other sources for social engagement and for information about everything from artists to the weather.
You are forgetting that "way back when" radio stations did more listener engaging promotions and contests, did far more personal appearances and remotes and played lots of jingles and stagers. All of that has become far less important because they don't get the same kind of listener reaction... if any at all.
You want to blame management for everything. You think jocks were eliminated just to purely save money; jocks have been minimized because they don't have the same importance to listeners they once did. You think talent raids were done to steal a hot talent; the main reason they were done was to leave a competitor in a lurch.
The fact is that radio responds to changes in tastes and needs, or individual stations lose share and change format.
Just look at the product life cycle of morning shows on Top 40 / CHR stations. In the 50's and much of the 60's, we just had a personable jock doing much of what the station did all day long. Then we started getting the Dale Dorman / Dr. Don / Robert W. Morgan style of more personable morning shows, but still with very little talk. The 70's gave us the Morning Zoo type of show with multiple personalities and much more content. Now, those Morning Zoo shows are being limited to less talk and more music because that is what gets the best ratings. In essence, we have come nearly the full circle, responding at each stage to listener needs.
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Let's not forget about how it would affect the effectiveness of EAS.
How many PEP's would have to be created on FM just to be able to have such a broad coverage AM PEP's have given most of the nation. From my perspective, I think AM stations provide a backbone (11/9/11 being an exception) where government dials confidential phone numbers to call the PEP to initiate a national alert. CAP and Wx Radio could replace it. But I thought the FCC would have wanted a strong AM/FM presence to serve as a PEP.
I don't know if I am just plain stupid this morning.... just plain lazy.... or a common combination of both.
You are taking something for granted. You assume we all know what EAS, PEP, CAP and Wx mean.
Let me borrow a phrase Rush used a lot in the early days: Maybe I'm from Loma Linda so you'll have to 'splain it to me.
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