Imagine There's No...

[jimwalsh2001]

Just imagine you're the program director of a talk station in a fairly large market.

Now imagine a tornado touches down just a few miles down the road, leaving scores of poor souls dead, injured and/or homeless.

Now, imagine that some host on your station decides he'd rather talk about some stink involving a handful of illegal immigrants in a state over a thousand miles away...

...than the tragedy in your own backyard.

Now please explain to me how that host...and that programmer can hold on to his gig... :



http://jimwalsh2001.blogspot.com/

 

[del_griffith]

20 years ago, I'd say you were right.

Today, I think the listeners would rather hear about border crossings a thousand miles away.

 

[smedge2006]

20 years ago, I'd say you were right.

Today, I think the listeners would rather hear about border crossings a thousand miles away.

Certainly the consolidators want you to think that. Salem even uses that argument in its sales pieces. "20 years ago, people were concerned about their local communities. Now they want to hear about national issues." Except I can't find any basis for that in reality, other than the behavior of Salem and other consolidators, which is rooted solely in their FINANCIAL reality... and in Salem's case, its ideological reality.

Do you really think nobody cared about what Reagan was doing as President in the 80's? Makes as much sense as claiming that nobody cares about a tornado flattening their town in 2010.

 

[del_griffith]

Only going by what happens when local events take Rush off the air.

People bitch when that happens. Maybe it's the vocal few, but you know the story of the squeeky wheel.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Two or three decades back there was a Southern-flavored humorist by the name of Lewis Grizzard and I remember ONE of his lines: Following heart surgery Grizzard gave a colorful description of the surgery which he claims included chain saws and this line: "I want to tell you Baptists something. The pain of heart surgery will give you a whole new attitude on narcotics."

Let me paraphrase the Grizzard line. When a tornado levels six houses in your neighborhood, or the SWAT team tracks a gunman on the run to the house three doors down from you and you didn't even know it was happening til it was all over, you Washington news junkies may have a whole new attitude about local news, and why isn't some radio station doing it?

 

[gr8oldies]

TV station in Nashville pre-empted part of an NHL playoff game for Tornado warnings last weekend. I was watching the "call the station and tell them to take the g-d weather off and put the game back on!" tweets.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

What's the childhood fable..... The Little Boy Who Cried Wolf (too often)?

Once a broadcast operation commits to staffing and weather radar and whatever else, they want everybody to know "we can be trusted" so they lose track of the difference between proper promotion and proper service.

TV stations tend to have coverage areas reaching out... what... 75 miles? So if they interrupt MY FAVORITE BROADCAST to announce "possible server weather" 150 miles from me.... I am not a happy camper.

Sadly, the little local radio station reaching out 15 miles can restrict interruptions to only things near me.... but try fitting the ability to do REAL weather and news coverage into today's small station budget.

Radio needs a steady flow of imaginative people who can figure out how to do things. Something has disrupted that steady flow.