NBC News Radio As A 24/7 Progressive Talk Outlet On The Horizon??

[JeeperOne]

Yes - NPR does have a near monopoly - for a reason. The programming is excellent.

Yeah it is - Because they have BO domestic competition outside of Pacifica Radio (Which, if anything, is more like Current TV but on radio)[quoteI live in San Francisco, and we have a very good commercial news station -KCBS, but I rarely listen.[/quote]Which, like WBZ & WINS, is owned by CBS

IF NBC couldn't make it happen in the 80s - before the influence of NPR grew to its current level of popularity - what is the chance that a national news network would work now? Almost none, I think.

Ahh but the times (Like everything else) change, my friend ;D

And actually, it was the late 60s & 70s when NBC tried it

Cheers & 73 ;D

 

[cyberdad]

To make a broad statement, I thought it had been pretty well demonstrated that progressives are less inclined to listen to political talk radio than conservatives. If you look at the the demographics of progressive voters, you'll typically find that they match up pretty well with music formats that skew younger. Meanwhile conservative talk radio more closely matches the demos that vote conservative.

Or in other words, progressive voters tend to prefer music programming (or NPR in some cases) to liberal talk. A big signal....even in a blue area....won't help much.

An NBC progressive talk network might be a logical progression of their brand (or the MSNBC brand), and it might be better run and executed than "Air America", but IMHO would still fall flat on its (keister). If NBC is looking to get back into the radio business, they'd have better luck with "Monitor"....which also would face a highly questionable prognosis.

 

[FredLeonard]

NBC tried it in the mid-late 70's. NBC NIS (News and Information Service) operated from June, 1975 to May, 1977. It started operations when Monitor was discontinued. When NIS was cancelled, NBC started The Source, a news service for FM stations. At the time. each network operated over a single land line and were forbidden by law from feeding more than one network service at any time. NIS had to stop any time NBC fed programming to the regular network (i.e., News on the Hour, Emphasis...).

Problem is nobody has been able to make all news work outside of the major markets and nobody has started a successful all news station in some 40 years.

 

[TheBigA]

That's quite a far fetched extrapolation. First of all, the progressive talk brand is MSNBC. So if there's going to be a progressive talk radio brand, the one they'd use is the one that already exists.

But more importantly, why would NBC News want to associate it's very stable brand with ANY flavor of talk radio? Absolutely a bad idea.

The thing you should have done is check if ABC News and CBS News have registered radio domains. You'll discover that they have. ABCRadioNews.com forwards to ABCRadioNewsOnline, which is a web version of the radio network, providing audio and text versions of stories they're already gathering for their affiliates. CBSNewsRadio.com forwards to a site with podcasts and other audio from CBS Radio. So it's more likely that NBC News will something more like that to promote their hourly news radio service.