Fm translators in Austin

[rbrucecarter5]

And I'll bet the listeners to radio in the historical language of Tejas,

Give it a rest, already! The historical language of the area we know as Texas is some ancient American Indian dialect. They have found remains near me that date to 12,900 to 14.000 years old - in fact they delayed a major freeway project that is desperately needed here. That is long before the Spanish speaking invaders came over and brutally destroyed the civilizations that existed here in their unbridled desire for gold.

When you come to think of it, noting much has changed. Not all the destroyers speak Spanish these days. They speak English, too. They are destroying everything that made radio great, are driving people to MP3 players and iPods, Pandora, streaming, and satellite. When the final station in America turns Spanish language, and no English is left on the dial anywhere, I serious doubt anybody, including Spanish speaking people, will care because they long since will have abandoned both radio dials in favor of something more creative and closer to what they want to hear. And radio will remain clueless as to why the audience abandoned it. Perhaps age discrimination is my motivating factor. There will be as many motivating factors as there are people abandoning radio, but all relate to corporations trying to force feed us what they think we ought to listen to - instead of what we really want to listen to. People don't like to be forced into demographic (or any other type) of mold. They will break out of those little boxes - forcefully, perhaps even violently - in order to be the individual they are. If radio is too myopic and arrogant to realize this, in 100 years radios will be as irrelevant an antique as stereoscopic viewers are today.

 

[davideduardo]

Give it a rest, already! The historical language of the area we know as Texas is some ancient American Indian dialect. They have found remains near me that date to 12,900 to 14.000 years old - in fact they delayed a major freeway project that is desperately needed here. That is long before the Spanish speaking invaders came over and brutally destroyed the civilizations that existed here in their unbridled desire for gold.

The Spaniards incorporated Texas as well as New Mexico, Arizona, California and parts of what are now Nevada and Colorado into "New Spain" with settlements like Santa Fe dating to 1598. And most of the post-conquest exploration and settlement was not driven by the quest for gold, but to establish enormous ranches via land grants. But for this discussion, the Spaniards caused a single language to be spoken from today's East Texas to Santa Barbara. There was no prior civilization that was even close to being as centralized, unified and culturally related as that installed or imposed by the administrators of New Spain.

And that's why I find it hard to swallow the idea that Spanish is a "foreign language" as you say in your posts.

Not all the destroyers speak Spanish these days. They speak English, too. They are destroying everything that made radio great, are driving people to MP3 players and iPods, Pandora, streaming, and satellite.

A few Spanish language stations* among many, many English language offerings is not "driving" people to new media and such. What is drawing people to those alternatives is made up of things like more niche formats (that are unsustainable in any radio market), customizable on-demand formats and podcasts, the portability of "all your entertainment on one device" and such. Nobody is being driven away... they are being lured by new technology and "radio" is adapting by offering new media distribution with rich feature sets and side channels and all kinds of on-demand services.

In the meantime, while you blame Hispanics and sports fans for radio's downfall, you should realize that the change in format offerings is due to advertiser demand, not radio's capricious or avaricious management decisions. You moan a lot about oldies formats disappearing... but they can't be sustained, commercially, because advertisers don't often seek the age groups that like music that is 50 to 60 years old!

You are ranting about the lack of programming services and formats because your own pet ox was gored. It's too bad that smooth jazz, oldies, Beautiful Music and standards are not on the radio. It's too bad that advertisers can't successfully monetize advertising to seniors on the radio. But these laments have nothing to do with what the staff and management and ownership of today's radio stations have to do to be reasonably profitable and successful.

And I don't think there is any call to refer to users of Spanish language media as "destroyers" in the context of this or any discussion of language usage.

* I say "a few" because, competitively, the slew of stations in English, Spanish and other languages on inferior AMs get no attention, audience of much revenue in any market. We're basically talking FM here. Houston has exactly 50 FMs that are considered "home" to the MSA. How many are there in Spanish? What percentage of the Houston metro is Hispanic?

When the final station in America turns Spanish language, and no English is left on the dial anywhere, I serious doubt anybody, including Spanish speaking people, will care because they long since will have abandoned both radio dials in favor of something more creative and closer to what they want to hear.

This is where I get off the bus...

Over 50 years ago, I heard complaints in Cleveland, OH, about "radio being taken over by those people who wouldn't speak English". They referred to the various FMs that were 100% programmed for the many ethnic communities, including Italian, Greek,, Polisch, Czech, Hungarian, Gaelic and German speakers as well as the extensive weekend blocks in those and other languages on stations as diverse as MOR WDOK and R&B WJMO.

You are beating a dead horse to no purpose.

Meanwhile, radio stations are moving to new distribution methods and, eventually, all that steel in the sky will become a minor part of radio's business model for the future.

 

[captex]

It's sometime's hard to recieve 99.3 and 105.3. 98.5 had a good reception in north austin. 105.3 is weak.