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Is radio taking precautions?

https://news.****************/articles/n38452/Warshaw-Issues-an-Open-Letter-To-Radio-Broadcasters

Dear Broadcasters,

We are in the midst of a crisis. It's incredibly painful to our business, as it is to countless other industries. Our communities are reeling.

This crisis is going to end. But radio's troubles didn't start a few weeks ago, when the coronavirus began its attack on our country. Competition for our audiences has never been fiercer. National revenue had hit a rough patch. Public radio companies were trading at their lows. Deal-making had ground to a standstill. It was harder than ever to grow our radio revenues. Certainly, there are bright spots and pockets of opportunity, and our industry is doing a terrific job tirelessly serving our communities during this unprecedented time. That having been said, I don't think many of us were looking fondly at the halcyon days of Q4 2019.

As difficult as this crisis is, we have an opportunity to turn this disease into a cure.

Our logs are wide open. What we allow to happen to our product once things return to "normal" is entirely up to us. Although our company has tried to maintain reasonable commercial loads, we can do much better. Let's take this opportunity to clean up our clocks, maintain lower spot loads, stop incessant bonus commercials, reduce endless promos. Demonstrate integrity for the value of our products and give our listeners more of what they crave.

The universe is doing for us what we would not and could not do for ourselves. We have the opportunity to emerge from this dark time with a brighter flame than we have seen for years. What we do from here may make all the difference.

Jeff Warshaw
CEO Connoisseur Media
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Here is a new memo released on the COVID-19 fallout.
 
The local radio station was working fine when I parked the car. When I got back in all I could hear was static. After I parked again and then got back in the car, it was back. I wasn't in the car when there was an explanation, if any. I just wonder if they can't have people there all the time so this can happen?
 
https://marketshare.tvnewscheck.com...on-to-distribute-reusable-masks-to-employees/

Gray Television to distribute masks to staff members

Gray Television has ordered several thousand reusable cloth masks to be distributed to all of its stations, offices and other work facilities as quickly as possible.

The masks will be available for free to all Gray employees, but the company wants the first delivery of cloth masks reserved for those full-time and part-time employees who continue to work in a Gray facility or out in the field.

According to a statement from Gray, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) currently advises that the general public should not use surgical or N95 masks, as these items are critical personal protective gear that must be reserved for health-care workers.

A coronavirus-infected person is likely to be contagious even in the absence of any symptoms or signs of illness – and potentially for several days after recovery too.
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Talk about a niche format! The liners could go like this: More Covid often! Virus News all the time!

I can see the order into PAMS or another jingle company: "COOOOOOOOOOOOOVID Nuh Nuh Nineteen One Oh Two Seven!!"
 
vchimpanzee said:
This is a little surprising from these big stations. A local station that airs community news and information told businesses to let them know they're open and they'd tell us for free.
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Not a surprise. This is both community service and good programming; it is public relations with those businesses that can pay long-term dividends when the crisis is over.
 
TheBigA said:
On the other hand, when you have a major owner putting 80% of its staff on furlough for 3 months, it's likely that most of their stations will be automated during that time.

https://radioink.com/2020/04/08/cumulus-furloughs-pay-cuts-begin/

It also says to me that we really haven't seen the depths of this situation yet, and the effects will reach into the third quarter.
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I am hearing from people involved in small markets saying that they expect many marginal stations to go silent. Some will never come back.

We have to remember that going back to the 50's when the FCC did financial reports, as many as half of all stations did not report profits. That same fact motivated the approval of consolidation back in the mid-90's.

So many small stations are marginally profitable in the best of times. I believe we can see hundreds of stations fail to survive the disease related economic downturn.
 
vchimpanzee said:
Well, it's about time. Community service didn't seem to be that big a priority on these big stations.
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You make a good point.

Consolidation brought corporate controls, and that made it harder for local PDs and GMs to do PSAs and event coverage for local community groups, churches and charities.

I went through this with KTNQ in LA. We had specialized in running many, many short mentions of things ranging from church bazaars to community parades and street fairs. A change in ownership brought requirements for paperwork proving the legal status of the entity being promoted, and about 90% of those true, genuine PSAs were killed because the little organizations, townships and the like were just not staffed and able to provide the same paperwork as national charities.

I still feel sad about that. I thought that doing those community notes brought the station to everyone's neighborhood and built loyalty while at the same time doing good things for our listeners.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Consolidation brought corporate controls, and that made it harder for local PDs and GMs to do PSAs and event coverage for local community groups, churches and charities.
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It made it harder, but not impossible. What a lot of corporate stations did was find sponsorship for that kind of thing. The stations became co-sponsors, using their platform to promote a charity that they combined with a sponsor. I could give tons of examples, but there has been a lot of that.
 
https://news.****************/artic...ssues-Open-Letter-to-Independent-Broadcasters


The CEO of Adams radio has released a statement on how the how independent broadcasters should step up in the time of a pandemic.

The following is an open letter to independent broadcasters from Ron Stone, President & CEO of Adams Radio Group: This letter was sent to all the independent broadcasters that I had email addresses for yesterday. I am sending this now as an open letter to ensure I reach every independent radio owner and operator as I believe we have a unique opportunity in front of us.

These are strange times to say the least. I have been thinking about the power of radio and the fact that there are so many independent radio stations in America that make a difference every day in our individual communities. Often the large public groups accomplish great things on their own to help various causes. Given that independent operators like you and I represent only a small number of stations individual, but together, represent more radio licenses than all the public companies combined, I thought we could use that power for something amazing and show the country and our own industry that independent radio still matters.
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