A
AQH
Guest
TheBigA said:
Nice, accurate post.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
is there a market for Progressive radio?
- Thread starter LITTLEBOYBLUE
- Start date
Nice, accurate post.
If AM is a "dead tree" then what do you do about it? Especially those of you with positions in the radio industry? Shall you lose the specialized audiences it already has on that dial (ie, KPTK, KIXI), in favor of more time-brokered stuff that far fewer people will actually listen to? Or just try something else that is directly competing with what somebodhy else is already doing with a degree of success (like more sports! fan-Q very muchQ), and divide that audience up into smaller chunks that are then small enough to kill off, like the rest of the stations?
Or can you be patient enough to stick with something that will age along with the audience, and learn how to raise money the not-so-easy way by not depending so heavily on agency group buys, and seeking advertising that gels with your actual listeners? And still invest some money into keeping the facilities operating with clean audio and as strong a signal as you can?
I don't see any heads nodding in agreement with any of that. OK, then if you really think AM is already "dead," can I count on you to support and push for reallocating some of those frequencies for other uses? Will you turn in your AM licenses that don't attract at least a 2.0 r ating in the under 55 crowd on Arbitron? Wil you let someone else, maybe even an LPFM oeprator, operate on those frequencies to see if they can afford it without going broke? Seems like a real waste of valuable spectrum to me already with most of what's offered on AM. And in pains me to say this, since I was proud to start my radio career on an AM station in a year when that was considered a lucky break. Even tho' that station was already bankrupt in 1973. And the expanded band of 1610 to 1710 never did provide listeners with a chance to hear programming they couldn't get elsewhere on the dial, pretty much everywhere I can tell where a station or two was added to that band. Unless you count some of the low power traffic info station that include a few tourism info loops in their recording.
Is it best to just be passive, as a way of adhering to the "marketplace forces are the only rules we will follow" approach to this industry? Or can you join me in asking the FCC to take an active role in protecting the medium (but not necessarily the current licensees) by regulating a few things to require a working AM band on receivers sold in the US, and perhaps to develop an AM stereo standard, and to reinstate some sort of protection for skywave signal in the areas they actually travel, etc?
Or can you be patient enough to stick with something that will age along with the audience, and learn how to raise money the not-so-easy way by not depending so heavily on agency group buys, and seeking advertising that gels with your actual listeners? And still invest some money into keeping the facilities operating with clean audio and as strong a signal as you can?
I don't see any heads nodding in agreement with any of that. OK, then if you really think AM is already "dead," can I count on you to support and push for reallocating some of those frequencies for other uses? Will you turn in your AM licenses that don't attract at least a 2.0 r ating in the under 55 crowd on Arbitron? Wil you let someone else, maybe even an LPFM oeprator, operate on those frequencies to see if they can afford it without going broke? Seems like a real waste of valuable spectrum to me already with most of what's offered on AM. And in pains me to say this, since I was proud to start my radio career on an AM station in a year when that was considered a lucky break. Even tho' that station was already bankrupt in 1973. And the expanded band of 1610 to 1710 never did provide listeners with a chance to hear programming they couldn't get elsewhere on the dial, pretty much everywhere I can tell where a station or two was added to that band. Unless you count some of the low power traffic info station that include a few tourism info loops in their recording.
Is it best to just be passive, as a way of adhering to the "marketplace forces are the only rules we will follow" approach to this industry? Or can you join me in asking the FCC to take an active role in protecting the medium (but not necessarily the current licensees) by regulating a few things to require a working AM band on receivers sold in the US, and perhaps to develop an AM stereo standard, and to reinstate some sort of protection for skywave signal in the areas they actually travel, etc?
D
DJ Alan
Guest
There is a rock station in Ottawa Canada CHEZ FM that is a rock station... but I don't think there is a CHEZ AM.
Perhaps 'CHEESE 1710' could be a reality someday. ;D
I might agree with the bit about how conserv. talkers were folks from radio originally not pundits but some prog talk hosts may have had quite a bit of radio experience.
Some folks may be like me: mostly conservative but liberal on some social issues--a Dennis Miller
type. I usually find myself listening to the conserv talkers. Both sides demonize or
make fun of politicians or media personalities from the other side. The trick is to make it entertaining, informative, etc.
Someone said call it news-talk, talk--- etc and forget the word progressive. Good idea. In some
ways hosts that are far right or far left can work but remember many listeners are like me perhaps,
a bit of both.
Left listeners may prefer NPR, although some may find NPR or even some prog talk hosts are
to their RIGHT!
Very important: mix in non-politics. Pop culture. Movies, music, sports-related, interviews
with authors (non politics). Even if just for a half hour segment. You may lure some folks
who might stay for the politics. Or at least boost up some quarter hours ratings.
Some folks may be like me: mostly conservative but liberal on some social issues--a Dennis Miller
type. I usually find myself listening to the conserv talkers. Both sides demonize or
make fun of politicians or media personalities from the other side. The trick is to make it entertaining, informative, etc.
Someone said call it news-talk, talk--- etc and forget the word progressive. Good idea. In some
ways hosts that are far right or far left can work but remember many listeners are like me perhaps,
a bit of both.
Left listeners may prefer NPR, although some may find NPR or even some prog talk hosts are
to their RIGHT!
Very important: mix in non-politics. Pop culture. Movies, music, sports-related, interviews
with authors (non politics). Even if just for a half hour segment. You may lure some folks
who might stay for the politics. Or at least boost up some quarter hours ratings.
AQH said:
I think you've hit a key issue. As a liberal and someone who pretty consistently votes Democratic, I have little interest in listening to talk radio just to hear something that conforms to my perceptions, beliefs, and biases as conservative talk radio does for my conservative, Republican counterparts. Instead, I prefer to get information online, which just seems more efficient than listening to talk radio.
Part of it is a matter of timing, I suspect. Conservative talk radio came of age in the 90s, back when the Internet was something indulged in by a relative handful of tech geeks. By the time liberal/progressive talk radio appeared on the scene, the Internet was fairly established a mainstream medium and successful Democratic blogs were already established. The bottom line is that conservative listeners formed the talk radio habit when talk radio was the only game for partisan media. Liberals formed the habit of going online instead, because that's what was available to us.
But it may go further -- I wonder to what degree talk radio has become branded as a conservative medium, especially on the AM band? And that may be a killer for progressive talk stations, that would not only have to make listeners aware that they exist, but also overcome that perception of AM talk as a conservative medium.
So many great posts and pithy thoughts on this interesting subject...
Thinking back to the late 1980s when Rush was at KFBK he attracted an audience because of his shtick. There was no shortage of talk then, but much of the talk in NorCal was local in orientation. It made sense but at about that time TV news changed and cable news exploded.
The 24 hour news cycle emerged as content hungry all news operations tried to keep it fresh and zero-in and mass appeal stories.
Local TV concentrated on spectacular visual stuff--crime, violence, fires, sensationalism, sex and anything else salacious and might generate conversation next day in the company kitchen. The only ones who really seemed to care about local politics or government were older people in that "useless" 55+ demo. Everyone was just too busy trying to survive to care about boring local stuff with colorless politicians and narrow issues.
People began getting their news from the cable sources and then they went "entertainment" and before long Fox copied talk radio and turned news into opinion and commentary.
If a progressive format were to get legs it would have to start as entertainment. An example would be intelligent lampooning of the right wing incessantly. Again, it must be intelligent and entertaining. No somnolent NPR talking to teachers and environmentalists, no sophomoric shock-jock rubbernecks, and no emotion-driven friends of the down-trodden need apply. Just go with the old Limbaugh model and change the tune.
More Dennis Miller and less Ed Schultz. Get someone like Alex Bennett from Sirius/XM. Give John Stewart and Steven Colbert gobs of money for a couple of hours a day on the radio. They won't do it? OK, then find a bunch of pros that have been displaced (there are dozens in every decent market) and start from scratch. We (me included) will work for next to nothing. Trust me. It beats shutting down an AM or firesale-ing some marginal FM license.
Oh and it needs to be cool to be liberal again in the business world and not dangerous to one's career. I suspect there are lots of libs who feel like they're in the closet at work.
Thinking back to the late 1980s when Rush was at KFBK he attracted an audience because of his shtick. There was no shortage of talk then, but much of the talk in NorCal was local in orientation. It made sense but at about that time TV news changed and cable news exploded.
The 24 hour news cycle emerged as content hungry all news operations tried to keep it fresh and zero-in and mass appeal stories.
Local TV concentrated on spectacular visual stuff--crime, violence, fires, sensationalism, sex and anything else salacious and might generate conversation next day in the company kitchen. The only ones who really seemed to care about local politics or government were older people in that "useless" 55+ demo. Everyone was just too busy trying to survive to care about boring local stuff with colorless politicians and narrow issues.
People began getting their news from the cable sources and then they went "entertainment" and before long Fox copied talk radio and turned news into opinion and commentary.
If a progressive format were to get legs it would have to start as entertainment. An example would be intelligent lampooning of the right wing incessantly. Again, it must be intelligent and entertaining. No somnolent NPR talking to teachers and environmentalists, no sophomoric shock-jock rubbernecks, and no emotion-driven friends of the down-trodden need apply. Just go with the old Limbaugh model and change the tune.
More Dennis Miller and less Ed Schultz. Get someone like Alex Bennett from Sirius/XM. Give John Stewart and Steven Colbert gobs of money for a couple of hours a day on the radio. They won't do it? OK, then find a bunch of pros that have been displaced (there are dozens in every decent market) and start from scratch. We (me included) will work for next to nothing. Trust me. It beats shutting down an AM or firesale-ing some marginal FM license.
Oh and it needs to be cool to be liberal again in the business world and not dangerous to one's career. I suspect there are lots of libs who feel like they're in the closet at work.
A
AQH
Guest
notalent said:
Magnolia?
S
stevensonair
Guest
Because there's no money/marketing/time commitment from anyone to develop progressive radio talent.
- Status