It depends. My take is that once these station groups reach 85%, they don't need networks anymore.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
FCC & Radio Ownership Limits
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
It depends. My take is that once these station groups reach 85%, they don't need networks anymore.
I would dispute this. I live here now, and from my perspective radio has never been better from a choice perspective.
Local radio has pretty much disappeared from FM stations that used to be local, and they're now putting out network programming, that's undoubtedly true.
But in its place, there are so many interesting independent operators doing different things. In the North West alone, there are stations like In Demand Radio (Rhythmic CHR) and its sister In Demand Decades (classic hits) doing fully live-and-local radio. Happy Radio does the same thing in Manchester with a mainstream AC format. There are stations with interesting and different music formats, like The Buzz and Reform Radio in Manchester. Even the small town closest to where I live has a local station that it never had before, Your Skipton.
I went for a long weekend in Norfolk last weekend, and in the relatively small town of King's Lynn I found two local stations on the DAB+ dial (KL1 Radio and Radio West Norfolk) alongside two stations from Radio Caroline, and a fun retro 80s tribute station called Laser558, plus a few more local stations from nearby areas, including a great little station out of Cambridge with lots of local talk.
You don't even have to be in range of the transmitter any more, thanks to stomping 4G/5G coverage pretty much everywhere, so the choice is almost infinite. I can listen to stations from other cities if I like the format. I travelled home from work on the train listening to WTTS from Indianapolis the other night. But for local radio in the UK, there's never been more, we're in a golden age.
Tech (DAB+ and internet streaming) has made it pretty much irrelevant what's on the local FM dial. I can't remember the last time I listened to an FM station. I think your perspective is a bit out of date. We have a massive choice of national music formats, and local radio is still there, but more independent and scrappy, and all the better for it.
That's my point though. Yes you have plenty of choice and I did have a DAB radio but the local element is gone. True local radio is basically community radio stations nowadays. I'm not sure if it happened but I believe I heard even the BBC is becoming more regionalized.
Suppose y'all had heavy rains and floods and wanted to know if the roads were passable. Or there was some major police incident and roads were blocked off. In lock down or something, could you rely on the radio to provide you with uptodate information?
I'm not really sure what you're driving at. You keep saying there's no local radio, I've given a bunch of examples of local independent radio stations that I've heard with my own ears in recent days and weeks. Unless reading radio forums has finally sent me crazy and I've imagined all these stations.
The main reason local radio grew in this country was because at the time there was an opportunity for local advertising revenue. Once the local advertising market began to dry up in the 90s, combined with media competition, local radio became less viable. If the programming is primarily recorded music, there becomes less and less justification for local radio.
I think that the purpose of radio has changed, at least in the U.S. When I was growing up in the 1970s, radio listening was primarily for entertainment (that's true) but when disasters came and you lost your electricity, suddenly radio became a distributor of information about when power might be turned back on, how to find help in an emergency, etc. The young people of today do not view radio the way I did back in the 1970s (or as I do now). They believe that when bad weather hits or other disasters strike, they can get all of the information they need through their cell phones. Radio for them is just a form of entertainment, like somebody putting on a bunch of records with no (or very little) talk in between them. What many of these young people don't realize (and they won't realize this until they go through the experience themselves) is that those cell phones they rely on for information could become useless if the conduits from which they are receiving information from the Internet are closed down.
Keep in mind that by the 70s, radio was used by record labels as its primary marketing service. The main purpose was to induce the listeners to buy the music they heard on the radio at their local record stores. That business model started to go away in the late 80s and early 90s, as record labels found other ways to market music (MTV, video games, festivals, etc). Radio became less useful. The entire thing blew up with Napster and file-sharing. Today the primary outlet for artists and labels is digital streaming. Radio is a smaller business, isolated to a handful of formats where radio marketing is still useful to major labels. Localism in radio is motivated by the trade charts that require local stations to provide unique music airplay information in order to retain status as a chart reporter. Stations that carry satellite programming with no local staff can't qualify for chart reporter. The more gold music a station plays, the less interest there is in radio airplay for charts and record labels. We are really on the tail end of the music radio boom of the 70s & 80s. As local money disappears, there is less of a budget for local staff. My expectation is that if the labels get their broadcast music royalty, that will totally kill what's left of local music radio.
Any disaster that affects cell service also affects broadcast radio. Towers blow down, power goes out, people are unable to set to the studio. All common problems. The government prioritized restoring cell service above broadcasting to disaster areas. We saw that with Hurricane Helene. The way the DHS system is set up, all emergency communications is the responsibility of local homeland security and emergency personnel. Broadcast radio is merely a conduit for their information. There is no "deputization" of radio staffers to augment local emergency unless that has been set up in advance.
The importance of being a chart reporter has been lessened over the decades. The legal restrictions most broadcasters have internally as well as "in the system" have made everything from saying "WZPQ brings Taylor Swift to Anytown" to artist merchandise and show ticket contests harder and harder to do.
Even in the larger markets, record promoters are an annoyance and generally useless. That is why, going back decades, not years, stations had very specific times for visits or calls. Some stations would not even accept record promoter calls, and many had things like "promoter visits: Wednesday 1 PM to 4 PM only" posted in the lobby.
I'll mention again the phone message of a PD of Power in LA in the later 90's "Hi, you've reached the Program Director of Power 106. If you are a record promoter, you can hang up now. Otherwise, leave a message after the tone."
And in many areas, such as all Hispanic formats and music types, being a chart reporter for any trade publication or monitoring service has always been irrelevant.
You are over stressing the importance of labels and record promoters. In essence, they used radio to push sales. The labels had no interest in the stations themselves; radio was just a tool.
No, it does not. Radio is a lot more resilient than cell towers with a few hour's worth of battery backup. Stations, in their majority, have generators and fuel storage. And in any case, they are all part of the EAS, legally requiring them to take the EAS feeds. Most areas of the nation have stations that have been hardened to make sure they stay on the air in an emergency.
There are enough recent incidents that prove that radio... not cell phones, not TV, not the internet, is considerably more resistant to disasters.
And without a conduit, the system does not work. No other conduit is as resistant in the case of disasters.
And that is because the EAS system is dependent, basically, on "taking over" local stations and transmitting information from official (meaning "government") sources.
Perhaps, but it's enough to make companies like iHeart still employ local music directors so they can take calls from the labels.
On the other hand, it's a driving force in the country format. It's also a big reason for localism in the country format.
Of course. Radio is not in the music business, and vice versa. The reason boomers have such fond memories of radio in the 70s and 80s was because of labels and promo departments bringing artists to the radio stations. Now that labels have shifted focus, radio is less oriented around music. For some, it makes radio less exciting. Some blame corporate ownership, but it's also the record labels.
The establishment of DHS in 2002 completely changed everything in how radio handled emergencies. As we saw with the Maui fires, radio was the very last thing the local emergency staffs contacted. Radio needs to receive emergency information in order to present it. If the local emergency crews don't involve them, then the stations depend on the internet. If the internet is down, the radio station has no other source of information.
Correct. No local radio staff is necessary. On the other hand, if the government doesn't deliver the information, the station continues broadcasting its normal format. That's what happened in Maui.
Last edited:
And that's key. If perception has changed, then radio will change to adapt to those perceptions. I don't like it one bit for just the reason you mentioned. If there is no cell signal due to a disaster or civil unrest, the younger generation just does without. They wouldn't even think of using the radio. And as a business there is no point providing a service that nobody will use
Let's be blunt about this -- the president's opinion on this matter is neither informed nor intelligent. It is just a reaction to the generalized grudge that he has against the major broadcast networks.How do you explain that to the president?
Trump Opposes FCC Raising 39% TV Ownership Cap if It Would ‘Enlarge’ ‘Fake News Networks’ Like ABC, NBC — but It Wouldn’t Do That
President Donald Trump weighed in on the issue of the FCC's potential move to raise or eliminate the current 39% cap on local TV station owners -- saying he opposes it if the result would be an "expansion of the fake news networks," citing ABC News and NBC News specifically.variety.com
But the Maui fire happened so fast, nobody "kenw what was really happening". There were plenty of reports that, had the public been given more information, they would have actually fled into the fire. There was just not enough time for any agency, person, website, radio station or even the police to understand what to tell the people.
This is exactly what happened in NC after Helene.
Not in NC. People became very dependent on radio.
My post was about the FCC response to Hurricane Helene. Their priority was about restoring cell service and providing discounted cell and broadband services:
FCC Outlines Relief for Service Providers impacted by Hurricane Helene - Universal Service Administrative Company
On October 1, 2024, the FCC released Order DA 24-1025 relating to Hurricane Helene, Tropical Storm Helene and Post-Tropical Cyclone Helene which struck Florida’s Gulf Coast on September 26, 2024, as a Category 4 storm, and caused widespread damage in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina...
www.usac.org
FCC approves discounted phone, broadband services for those affected by Helene - UPI.com
The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday approved providing survivors of Hurricane Helene and its tropical storm aftermath with discounted phone and broadband services through the agency's Lifeline program.
www.upi.com
Yet the only two-way communication system working in a number of areas was Musk's Starlink; he even flew in many systems and phones and donated them.
In another example, in the aftermath of Maria in 2017, there were parts of Puerto Rico that had no cellular service for well over a month. Broadband took even longer.
A cellular network during a hurricane is sort of like blowing a hair dryer at a cobweb.
Keep in mind who was in charge of FEMA and the FCC at that time.
I saw a random post on Bluesky before a Tennessee Volunteers game. "Where can I get the radio broadcast of the game tonight. I don't subscribe to SiriusXM or Tune-in". I so much wanted to say "on an actual radio".
I saw a random post on Bluesky before a Tennessee Volunteers game. "Where can I get the radio broadcast of the game tonight. I don't subscribe to SiriusXM or Tune-in". I so much wanted to say "on an actual radio".
They could still stream a broadcast station without those subscriptions and without an "actual radio."