Perhaps... but it does seem that a lot of the explanation for syndicated programming is self-serving, and it's not as if ESPN is drawing huge numbers on its 24-7 stations. Some of them don't even show up.
For an example of self-serving, check out this quote from the Salem Boilerplate Quasi-Secular News Talk Format Media Kit:
"The world has changed over the past 20 years, and so has the way
we talk about the news.
20 years ago we looked primarily at what was happening in our own
backyard.
Today, we have a “national view” of world events and the economy,
not just at home, but across the globe. It affects every facet of our
lives."
So in 1986 nobody talked about Iran-Contra on the radio, and in 2006 nobody cares about their communities. Everybody got it? Salem's deluded stockholders hope so.
The piece goes on to quote some examples of questionable relevance to talk radio, such as the ratings Fox News gets compared to CNN, as reasons to go national with talk.
http://media.salemwebnetwork.com/SWN/WLSS-AM/LocalImages/WLSS_mediakit.pdf
There was a lot of good local talk radio in the 1980's in the top 50 or so markets that got displaced by syndication. Just ask anyone in Miami, which had four all-local talk stations 20 years ago, and now has only Neil Rogers in English. Ask anyone in Tampa, which had two fulltime talkers 20 years ago,
and now only has one local host outside a.m. drive who gets shared with two other markets. Ask anyone in HOUSTON, for heaven's sake, a Top 10 market, which used to have some killer local talkers. All of these cities have lost local content to syndication. All of them had successful news-talkers in the past.
We're not talking about one-lung AMs in Bugtussle, North Carolina here.
> You're not going to "outlaw" syndication. It seems that some
> of those posters believe that on December 31, 1995 there was
> no syndication..and only the ee-vil Telecom act convinced
> people that they liked Rush Limbaugh and not discussions of
> last nights city council meeting. If we're going to be "live
> and local", maybe it's time to dispense with recorded music
> and bring in all the bar bands to play live music. Maybe TV
> should stop airing network and syndicated programming (don't
> they have "local" requirements too?)and air nothing but
> local dinner theatre. 10 years after Telecom 96 we still
> have people thinking that the feds need to re-write the
> rules .."make them give me a job a a DJ". Syndicated
> programming exists because, like it or not, a lot of people
> like that programming.
A lot of people like some of the syndication. Some of the syndication is liked by almost nobody. Yet it persists. Radio used to be able to cleanse its bad programming. Now it sticks around, like the "impacted fecal matter" mentioned in so many of its infomercials.
