• 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

Media Companies Are Ready to Sell. Does Anyone Want to Buy?

Status
Not open for further replies.
michael hagerty said:
Ablin, WY's Main Street (not joking):

View attachment 6408
Click to expand...
Bet the real estate is cheap to rent, though.

michael hagerty said:
I'll be at the Top of the Mark:
Click to expand...
Not going to say the obvious.


michael hagerty said:
When we did Grand Teton and Yellowstone in 2017, we came out through Cody, WY and went to the Buffalo Bill Museum. Had a great time, and Cody has a fairly charming historic downtown.
Click to expand...
The year before, I did a whirlwind trip through Yellowstone one Saturday. I was already in Idaho Falls for some critical infrastructure work with DHS and Idaho National Labs, and decided, now or never. Being in West Yellowstone, Montana a week before Yellowstone shuts down for the winter was a bit bizarre, though souvenirs were really cheap...end of season clearance, of course. The radio scene is even more isolated than Winnemucca - basically, KWYS and that's it. Lots of ads aimed at tourists.

We will go back and this time take a more leisurely pace.

michael hagerty said:
The best Basque food I've ever had was in Nevada---I've heard good things about The Martin Hotel in Winnemucca but haven't been.
Click to expand...
We had dinner there in September. Everything is family style. We were seated next to a couple who travel all the time between Sausalito and Boise to see their kinds, and to another couple and their kids who came from Elko for a high-school football game. Distances there are such that school football games are played in the late afternoon (and broadcast live on one of the Winnemucca radio stations). Good food and some rather astonishing architecture...for example, the men's restroom still has the original fixtures from the turn of the 20th century. Don't worry; it's clean.

The rush to beat the movers from Denver was an interesting trip, even with all the rushing around, but I'll have to say that Nevada was not especially intriguing. There's a whole lot of not much out there. I used to get itchy driving through eastern Monterey County on the way to Paso Robles; northern Nevada is far more bleak and isolated, I think.
 
kfbkfb said:
the whole "radio" and "TV" broadcasting/reception/specialized equipment concept will vanish, the (USA) National Broadband system
Click to expand...

You keep talking about this "national broadband system," and it really doesn't exist. There is broadband, but it's not overseen or regulated by the government. It's more of an ad hoc system built around various ISPs and telecoms, all of whom have their own rules and handle their own parts of the system (such as fiber or cable). At this point it's not fully national. There's still a small percentage of the country that doesn't have access to broadband. The current plan designates some money to assist in areas where profit-making companies haven't already built the service. But once it's installed, it will be implemented by a private company in the geographic area.

On the other hand, radio and TV broadcasting IS in fact overseen and regulated by the FCC, and as far as we know, they haven't set some sort of "sunset" to that service. They seem to want to perpetuate it as long as they can, and there's an act in congress right now aimed to perpetuate the use of AM in cars. You seem to be the only one who foresees some shutdown to broadcasting in the US. No one in the US government does.
 
Mark Roberts said:
Bet the real estate is cheap to rent, though.
Click to expand...

You could probably buy the whole town for one month's rent on a three-bedroom in Marin.

Mark Roberts said:
Not going to say the obvious.
Click to expand...

A bear walks into the Top of the Mark.

Bartender: "What'll you have?"

Bear: "Gimme an Old Fashioned."

Bartender mixes the drink, brings it to the bear's table by the window.

Bartender: "That'll be 26 dollars, sir."

Bear gives him two twenties.

Bartender counts out the change and says: "We don't get many bears here at the Top of the Mark."

Bear: "At 26 bucks a drink, I'm not surprised."
 
Last edited:
Mark Roberts said:
The rush to beat the movers from Denver was an interesting trip, even with all the rushing around, but I'll have to say that Nevada was not especially intriguing. There's a whole lot of not much out there. I used to get itchy driving through eastern Monterey County on the way to Paso Robles; northern Nevada is far more bleak and isolated, I think.
Click to expand...

Oh, God, yes---Fernley to West Wendover is 370-ish miles of nothing. And US 50 between Fallon and Ely is even worse---that's why it's called "America's loneliest highway."
 
National Broadband system - kinda like the USA Interstate Highway system - private contractors built it (to minimum standards).

The tech is being developed to allow easy nationwide streaming of (Hi Fi stereo [& quad]) audio and (HDTV) video+audio, once the TV program distributors (also called TV networks) realize they can provide their shows to viewers without the hassles of TV affiliates, I think they will move their (ad supported) TV shows to streaming only fairly quickly.


Maybe there's one way to save AM radio - broadcast the audio of streamed only Network TV shows on the local AM station(s), that way people without Internet of any kind can still enjoy the TV show (sorta).


I guess from a business standpoint, investigating doing what a TV Network does (related to program distribution) with streaming instead of broadcasting is part of planning for the future/due diligence.


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
National Broadband system - kinda like the USA Interstate Highway system - private contractors built it (to minimum standards).
Click to expand...

Except the interstate highway system is overseen by the Secretary of Transportation. There is no agency of the federal government that oversees the internet. The FCC would like to. They oversee the telecoms. The dems feel it's part of the FCC. The repubs say no. Under Obama, they tried to take control. Under Trump, they reversed all of the controls. So for now it's completely ad hoc.

If you want to access the internet, you need to subscribe to a local ISP. The government might give you some money, but your access to the internet is between you and the ISP, not the government. This is very different from how other more centralized countries run. The US is not centralized, but rather a collection of 50 states.
 
kfbkfb said:
National Broadband system - kinda like the USA Interstate Highway system - private contractors built it (to minimum standards).
Click to expand...
WTF?? You mean this? National Broadband Plan
Look at the date Kirk; 2010. It was a vague proposal that never happened. As BigA said, the Internet is the Internet.
kfbkfb said:
Maybe there's one way to save AM radio - broadcast the audio of streamed only Network TV shows on the local AM station(s), that way people without Internet of any kind can still enjoy the TV show (sorta).
Click to expand...
But that's not AM radio Kirk, that's streaming. AM stations can do that now if they choose.

Too many on-spectrum ideas are being tossed out today.
 
kfbkfb said:
So...any other predictions about how the USA OTA DTV system will be shut down (TV stations in rural areas become "translators" for TV stations in nearby large cities, possibly just one rural transmitter is maintained, transmitting the Big 4 + PBS in 16:9 480i stereo [no HDTV from the translators]), this method spreads across the USA until most (all) areas have just 1or 2 [ATSC 1.0] DTV transmitters (with no HDTV, 480i widescreen SDTV stereo only), then these transmitters begin to be shut off as streaming becomes ubiquitous in the USA (due to completion of the National Broadband system)?
Click to expand...
This country can't even shut down a service that's as obviously obsolete as AM radio...much less a service that still has at least some viability left in it.
 
It's really a question of the minimum data rate available to nearly every Internet subscriber - once it gets high enough for streaming 1 (good quality picture and sound) TV program, I think the TV broadcast/reception/specialized equipment business model is done for.


Kirk Bayne
 
Mark Roberts said:
This country can't even shut down a service that's as obviously obsolete as AM radio...much less a service that still has at least some viability left in it.
Click to expand...
The point is: why would the government with broadcasting being a free enterprise industry, want to shut it down? Doing so wouldn't benefit anybody, and in fact, would decrease revenue into government coffers. If AM like SW eventually fades away, it will be for similar reasons; lack of business and lack of interest. The government has no say in the matter of whether broadcasting stays or go's..
 
kfbkfb said:
It's really a question of the minimum data rate available to nearly every Internet subscriber - once it gets high enough for streaming 1 (good quality picture and sound) TV program, I think the TV broadcast/reception/specialized equipment business model is done for.
Click to expand...
There's already a model where if you want higher bandwidth, you can pay the ISP for it. And yes, they usually charge extra.
Would broadcasters love to get rid of expensive transmission equipment and towers? You bet! It's not there yet. When will it be? If I knew that I wouldn't be on some radio discussion board debating someone who still has a CRT TV and a VCR.
 
Kelly A said:
The point is: why would the government with broadcasting being a free enterprise industry, want to shut it down? Doing so wouldn't benefit anybody, and in fact, would decrease revenue into government coffers. If AM like SW eventually fades away, it will be for similar reasons; lack of business and lack of interest. The government has no say in the matter of whether broadcasting stays or go's..
Click to expand...
Partially free enterprise. It is regulated, after all. The government does have considerable say in how the electromagnetic spectrum is utilized. The transition to DTV was not entirely voluntary, after all.

Agreed that there's no tangible benefit to a mandated shutdown of AM radio.
 
Mark Roberts said:
Partially free enterprise. It is regulated, after all. The government does have considerable say in how the electromagnetic spectrum is utilized. The transition to DTV was not entirely voluntary, after all.
Click to expand...
But even though regulated, it's not up to the government whether broadcasting lives or dies. The DTV transition didn't force stations to shut down. Between the initial modulation shift and repack, some were compensated and chose to shut down or work a deal with another station to carry their programming after voluntarily vacating their channel. All DTV stations were even given a transition channel on top of their analog one for several years. Nobody was left out in the cold on the transition. Some transitioned and took the money while others vacated and took the money.
 
I think the cruelties of the for profit business model will take care of the (IMHO) inevitable transition to streaming only for "radio" and "TV" type ad supported services.


Re: AM radio providing audio for (streamed) TV shows - I believe that ABC TV put the audio of some of their popular TV shows on their NYC AM radio station during dispute with an NYC cable TV company (ABC was blacked out).


Kirk Bayne
 
kfbkfb said:
I think the cruelties of the for profit business model will take care of the (IMHO) inevitable transition to streaming only for "radio" and "TV" type ad supported services.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, but this country also has a very vibrant NON-profit business world that has embraced traditional broadcasting and has invested heavily in it. So while it's possible that for profit companies will transition to other platforms, that will not be the end for broadcasting.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.


Back
Top Bottom