Express away! What you said had thought to it. It wasn't the same mindless "I can't get hired, everyone sucks" rage that seems to troll these boards for every state and city.
The idea that one needs to be local to program a radio station is not true. Very few of the top programmers and talent anywhere are from the market they are in. The problem your city faces is after the storm a lot of talent didn't go back to work for their stations. For almost two years the companies had to hire whoever wanted to come, or in CC's case track 24/7. Factor that with about 6-months of no money coming in after the storms, people still under contract getting paid even though they didn't come back to work, and you have the current situation. A lot of stations are still off in billing from their numbers before the storms and don't have the cash flow to hire the people they want to. You can say CC has a lot of money as a company, but what they pay talent on the local level comes from local budget.
It's not fair but it's the reality of the situation.
As for change for the worse...who says the changes are for the worse? You said something telling...FAMILIAR WITH THEIR MARKET, FORMAT AND STATION HERITAGE...that's part of the problem. In the history in radio, once a station changes format and goes for a period of time as something else, a return to what was never works because it's not the same. Time passed, the talent moved on and listeners did too. What we as listeners want is the station back as it was, but if we get it we realize it was 3, 4, 5 years ago and we were at a different point in our lives then, and we aren't there anymore. It's a nice idea, but so was the all music morning idea that burned through radio 10 years ago because that's what was wanted, right? In both cases, it's been proven wrong time and again. Maybe there isn't something that serves you on N.O. radio right now. As unfortunate as that is, know that a company in the area is making some changes that may wake some of the others up from their sleep.
