Not to bum everybody out, but...

[jaymarvin]

Content, local ownership, and good talk stations that are neither right nor left, but just good talk for adults. Music? Wide playlists and local, live DJ's who relate to the music and the community. Break up the big boys!

 

[12 In a Row]

Content-agree
Local ownership-depends on who owns it. Some have been good, many others very bad.
Neither right nor left=boring vanilla talk radio.
Wide playlists has been tried over the years. Widen your list and your ratings drop.
Live-local d.j.'s-depends on their talent. Listeners will choose the better performers, regardless of where they're from.
Break up the Big Boys-wish it was that easy.

 

[FTL_Ian]

Neither right nor left=boring vanilla talk radio.

My program is on 40+ stations. Hard to get that far if you're boring and vanilla.

There are many people out there who find politics boring, FYI.

 

[12 In a Row]

Neither right nor left=boring vanilla talk radio.

My program is on 40+ stations. Hard to get that far if you're boring and vanilla.

There are many people out there who find politics boring, FYI.

Totally agree.

Left says right can't do anything correctly, right says left can't do anything correctly, and millions tune em out.
My Top of The List Tune Out Boring is Hannity. Talk about creepy man love.

Oh, on your 40+ stations, "Congratulations!" 8)

 

[Biz Listener]

Totally agree.

Left says right can't do anything correctly, right says left can't do anything correctly, and millions tune em out.
My Top of The List Tune Out Boring is Hannity. Talk about creepy man love.

Of course millions tune out left wing or right wing talk radio. Most folks would rather listen to music.

But then, no music format enjoys a majority audience. At best, the most popular radio formats get a plurality of listeners.

But here's the deal. It would appear, based on the ratings, that people who don't like extreme wing talk radio also don't like middle of the road talk radio, either, It would appear, that the people who don't like left wing or right wing talk radio are going to listen to music format radio anyway, so what difference does it make what kind of talk radio they don't like. They're not likely to switch from music to talk anyway, so what's the use of worrying about them?

 

[radiophiler]

I've got Sirius in my car and during the conventions have been listening to CNN audio. There's a format that might work on radio: Soundbites of politicians are played, then commentators from both (all?) sides of the political spectrum are brought in to give their two cents. It's not conservative, it's not liberal, it's news that mixes in various opinions along the way.

Another option: Someone needs to do a Hannity and Colmes for radio: two hosts, two different points of view.

 

[FTL_Ian]

But here's the deal. It would appear, based on the ratings, that people who don't like extreme wing talk radio also don't like middle of the road talk radio, either

It appears you are stuck in the paradigm that talk radio must be "right", "left", and "middle of the road". Common paradigm, but false.

Would you describe a voluntaryist as "middle of the road", "left", or "right"?

 

[12 In a Row]

Yikes, people who (bottom line) don't believe in government and paying taxes.
All things considered, much more good than evil comes from a well run government.

 

[Biz Listener]

But here's the deal. It would appear, based on the ratings, that people who don't like extreme wing talk radio also don't like middle of the road talk radio, either

It appears you are stuck in the paradigm that talk radio must be "right", "left", and "middle of the road". Common paradigm, but false.

Would you describe a voluntaryist as "middle of the road", "left", or "right"?

I'd have to meet one first. And I realize that a talk radio program can attempt to be all things to all people, or can stake some obscure piece of the political landscape. But Just as music format station operators have learned that success comes from picking the right music format and sticking to it, talk radio operators have learned the same thing.

Sure, a music format station could play a mixture of country, rock, polkas, swing, and rap. There's no law against it. But they'd get abysmal ratings. Likewise, a talk station could program something other than the political philosophy that draws in the listeners. But they'd also get terrible ratings.

If I'm stuck in any paradigm, it's that stations that don't get ratings don't stay on the air very long. Dispute that if you want, but you won't find many people agreeing with you.

 

[FTL_Ian]

I'd have to meet one first.

Here I am. Now, do you have an answer?

Sure, a music format station could play a mixture of country, rock, polkas, swing, and rap. There's no law against it. But they'd get abysmal ratings. Likewise, a talk station could program something other than the political philosophy that draws in the listeners. But they'd also get terrible ratings.

My philosophy is that politics should abandoned and that it's wrong to aggress against one's neighbor. Believe it or not, people want to listen to that.

If I'm stuck in any paradigm, it's that stations that don't get ratings don't stay on the air very long. Dispute that if you want, but you won't find many people agreeing with you.

Nothing to dispute there. We get ratings just fine. In fact we're #1 M25-54 on WVNA AM where we follow Ed Schultz. That same station also airs Rush.

 

[Biz Listener]

I'd have to meet one first.

Here I am. Now, do you have an answer?

I haven't met you. I've encountered you. So no, I still don't have an answer.

Sure, a music format station could play a mixture of country, rock, polkas, swing, and rap. There's no law against it. But they'd get abysmal ratings. Likewise, a talk station could program something other than the political philosophy that draws in the listeners. But they'd also get terrible ratings.

My philosophy is that politics should abandoned and that it's wrong to aggress against one's neighbor. Believe it or not, people want to listen to that.

I'm sure some people do. I've never encountered any strong advocate of any position, no matter how fringe or bizarre that couldn't find some people to listen to him. In some atypical parts of the country, finding such people is easier than in the rest of the country. For example, in San Francisco one often finds large groups of people whose opinions on some issues are quite different from what is typical in the rest of the country. Other places where one can find pockets of people whose collective opinions on some topics are out of sync with the prevailing opinions of the mainstream include, but are not limited to, Salt Lake City, Utah and Tuscumbia, Alabama. There's nothing wrong with holding an opinion that few people share, or with living in an isolated area where that minority opinion is shared by a plurality of people. Just don't expect to extrapolate success in an atypical location with overall success nationwide.

If I'm stuck in any paradigm, it's that stations that don't get ratings don't stay on the air very long. Dispute that if you want, but you won't find many people agreeing with you.

Nothing to dispute there. We get ratings just fine. In fact we're #1 M25-54 on WVNA AM where we follow Ed Schultz. That same station also airs Rush.

Like I said ...

 

[jaymarvin]

Just jumping in here. Talk radio is at its all time worst. I can't listen to my own format anymore. I don't care if you are on the left or the right. Same people talking about the same things day in and day out. I find the best spoken word show on the radio is NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. No yelling, not name calling just good interviews without all the BS. I've haven't ever really liked NPR, and we have a bad NPR station here, but it's better than what's on in syndication on most stations. What great talk radio we did twenty years ago. Sad what it has become. :-[

 

[Biz Listener]

Just jumping in here. Talk radio is at its all time worst. I can't listen to my own format anymore. I don't care if you are on the left or the right. Same people talking about the same things day in and day out. I find the best spoken word show on the radio is NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. No yelling, not name calling just good interviews without all the BS. I've haven't ever really liked NPR, and we have a bad NPR station here, but it's better than what's on in syndication on most stations. What great talk radio we did twenty years ago. Sad what it has become. :-[

Everything you're saying about news/talk radio could also be said about music format radio. All commercial broadcast radio has been dumbed down by the suits who run it. Music format stations have had their playlists squeezed down to what seems like a dozen songs repeated ad nauseum. News/talk format shows have trimmed their topic lists down to a few topics that seem like they "test well", as if topics were to the news/talk formats what songs are to music formats.

You're right about Fresh Aire. Non-commercial radio does a better job with spoken word programming, largely because they don't even attempt to do standard commercial radio style news/talk. But you can no more compare public radio shows with commercial news/talk shows than you can compare the weekend Metropolitan Opera broadcasts with the a commercial CHR station. They're apples and oranges.

Of course Terry Gross does great interviews. But then, Fresh Aire is an interview show. You can't very well condemn any spoken word format show that is not an interview show for not having good interviews. That's like condemning a hardware store for not selling fresh meat.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Of course Terry Gross does great interviews. But then, Fresh Aire is an interview show. You can't very well condemn any spoken word format show that is not an interview show for not having good interviews. That's like condemning a hardware store for not selling fresh meat.

Biz Listener: you are "re-framing" the debate. The question is not: Should a program containing basically only the voice of the host be compared to an interview program. The other question that seems to run through this thread Is: Are stations, networks and syndication organizations that program ONLY 'host approved-and-sactioned thoughts' meeting the intent of public policy which addresses the use of broadcasting for content of "public interest and necessity"?

 

[Biz Listener]

Biz Listener: you are "re-framing" the debate. The question is not: Should a program containing basically only the voice of the host be compared to an interview program. The other question that seems to run through this thread Is: Are stations, networks and syndication organizations that program ONLY 'host approved-and-sactioned thoughts' meeting the intent of public policy which addresses the use of broadcasting for content of "public interest and necessity"?

Huh?!?!?!

This is the launch post of this thread:

Scanned the dial this week...radio everywhere sounds really bad, the worst I've ever heard (and I lived through the slow demise of AM Rock in the seventies when things were pretty damn brutal). Clearly, the industry is in serious trouble.

And the worst format? Talk...

Where does that say anything about "meeting the intent of public policy which addresses the use of broadcasting for content of 'public interest and necessity'"? And what "public policy" are you talking about? The one set when Calvin Coolidge was President? Or the modified policies set during FDR's administration? Or the revised policy implemented when Ronald Reagan was President?

Why single out stations that have opted for the news/talk format for scrutiny? For every news/talk station that treats news topics as if they were hit songs, there are something like a dozen stations that play nothing but hit songs!!!

AM radio is no longer the only mass communications medium in the United States. It's not even one of the more important media. That's why the public policies written in the 1920's have been changed. Granted, our system of government includes both statute law and common law or precedent law. There may well be old laws on the books that were never rescinded by new statutes, but they have been over turned or superseded by common law. There are enough legal precedents set by failed license challenges or by the lack of license challenges to have effectively killed any public policies that require Rush Limbaugh to start putting Terry Gross-style interviews on his show.

I'm not saying that the condition of the broadcast radio industry is good, but it is what it is. If someone is going to whine about things being the way they are, they can at least whine accurately. Jaymarvin missed the point. Here in the news/talk thread, we're talking about the news/talk format. If he doesn't like the way the news/talk format is being run today, fine. I agree with him that it sucks. But whether or not other programs on the radio that aren't news/talk programs might appeal to him more is beside the point.

Terry Gross is not an example of someone that other news/talk hosts should emulate, because she's not a news/talk host. Saying she's better than the news/talk hosts on commercial stations is about as germane to the discussion of the news/talk format as saying that Click & Clack or Micheal Feldman is better than Rush Limbaugh.

 

[smedge2006]

Biz Listeners' posts are a great example of taking a principle and running it off the cliff. If deregulation and consolidation have produced bad radio, it's time to do something else! Results do matter!

 

[Biz Listener]

Biz Listeners' posts are a great example of taking a principle and running it off the cliff. If deregulation and consolidation have produced bad radio, it's time to do something else! Results do matter!

Deregulation and consolidation didn't produce bad radio. The people who run radio produced bad radio. They'd have produced bad radio with or without deregulation and consolidation. The specifics of how and why radio became bad might have been a little different, but it still would have gone down the crapper. All of the things that are making radio crap started before deregulation and consolidation. So maybe news/talk would never have become a dominant format. Big deal.

In fact, had it not been for deregulation and consolidation, things might be even worse. Instead of what we have now, there would be nothing but national satelite-delivered network programming, and all local stations would be affiliates doing nothing but passing along the network feed, just like television stations.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Deregulation and consolidation didn't produce bad radio. The people who run radio produced bad radio. They'd have produced bad radio with or without deregulation and consolidation. The specifics of how and why radio became bad might have been a little different, but it still would have gone down the crapper.

If radio is viewed only as a money machine, then deregulation has been a great 12 year windfall. The broadcasting world is now standing around holding it's collective breath to see if we have entered a mild hick-up, of if the magic bubble has burst. And if it is a bursting of the bubble, what kind of residue and flotsam will be left behind for the beach-combers to sort through.

If radio is viewed as a something of a "vehicle of social intercourse" much like the invention of the printing press, like drama, like the fine art of conversation, then we have to say that deregulation and consolidation have brought us the Plagues, tuberculosis, the 20th century dust-bowl, and the Civil War all rolled into one neat little ball.

The truth is that from the beginning it was our national policy that this "art form" would be financially self supporting through the sale of commercial message as part of the stream as opposed to the nationalized format of some of our European friends.

35 years ago, as the operator of a small mom-and-pop business (not radio) I was able to say to my peers, I will spend some time representing you (and myself) in the state capitol and and Washington. I don't want you to pay me, I don't want you to reimburse my expenses. Just adorn me with the mantle of being your official "Legislative Director" so I have some credibility. I walked into congressional offices and they didn't ask me what my party affiliation was, and they didn't go look on a list to see how much I had given. I was a citizen there to speak to my legislator, and I was ushered in, and I was heard. THAT CANNOT BE DONE TODAY.

In that same era, the broadcast owners I had worked for just before exiting the industry, had that same kind of entry, and when they went on the air with opinion pieces and news that exposed corruption, we had the undivided attention of legislators and politicians.

Today you have to be Jack Abramoff or Grover Norquist or Ralph Reed or one of the many K street guys who don't even know the names of, YET (they haven't been caught!) to have any influence in this nation, and the idea that some guy owning a radio station in Canton, Ill or Sedalia, MO or Salina, KS might be able to raise his voice, tap his foot, and ANYBODY in government pay attention to him is long, long gone.

This is a world where you have to own at least 150 radio stations to have any stature. I guess you have to own at lest 50 small town newspapers to have any stature in that line of work.

This is not the world I dreamed of living in. If I have to live in a world where my only dream is to be one of 200,000 employees to work all day so the C.E.O can earn a $20 million salary every year plus an equal amount of stock options, why would I ever tell my grandson to look forward to laying his life on the line in the military to protect our freedoms when our home town has lost it's voice called radio and it's voice called the paper. What freedom... WHOSE freedom are we encouraged to fight for? Oh, that's right. I'm fighting for the freedom of the people who manage Clear Channel. They have brought us so much to our culture that at least they should be free.

 

[Biz Listener]

If radio is viewed as a something of a "vehicle of social intercourse" much like the invention of the printing press, like drama, like the fine art of conversation, then we have to say that deregulation and consolidation have brought us the Plagues, tuberculosis, the 20th century dust-bowl, and the Civil War all rolled into one neat little ball.

Ah, the old "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" argument. After this, therefore because of this.

I have a news flash for you.

Things change.

Sometimes they change for the better, sometimes they change for the worse. But the one things don't do is stay the same.

The printing press brought us the Gutenberg Bible, and it brought us Hustler magazine. The development of drama brought us the works of Shakespeare, and it brought us Desperate Housewives. Technologies don't cause social change. Society will change anyway. Technologies simply shape or facilitate change.

35 years ago, as the operator of a small mom-and-pop business (not radio) I was able to say to my peers, I will spend some time representing you (and myself) in the state capitol and and Washington. I don't want you to pay me, I don't want you to reimburse my expenses. Just adorn me with the mantle of being your official "Legislative Director" so I have some credibility. I walked into congressional offices and they didn't ask me what my party affiliation was, and they didn't go look on a list to see how much I had given. I was a citizen there to speak to my legislator, and I was ushered in, and I was heard. THAT CANNOT BE DONE TODAY.

No, it cannot be done today. But today, I can type my opinions (just as you can) and they're laid out for all the world to read (or at least that portion that chooses to read them can). Once upon a time, anyone could walk into the White House to talk to the President. But then, once upon a time it took several weeks to get from Atlanta to Washington, DC. Once upon a time, people died of diseases that today are unheard of. Once upon a time, the average life expectancy was half of what it is today. Once upon a time, there were miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles all across the country. Once upon a time, anyone who wanted free land only had to do a little homesteading.

Things change. Nothing stays the same.

Once upon a time, many of the bigger radio stations derived most of their income from carrying national radio network programming. They didn't have to worry much about being local. People tuned in to hear Amos & Andy (try broadcasting that program today!), Jack Benny, Gunsmoke, or The Shadow. Do you want to go back in time, erase the changes that have happened, and make things the way they used to be? Why argue for only going back a few decades? Why not demand a return to those thrilling days of yesteryear? Why not lobby to have television shut down so radio can return to its former position as the primary mass medium for the nation?

In that same era, the broadcast owners I had worked for just before exiting the industry, had that same kind of entry, and when they went on the air with opinion pieces and news that exposed corruption, we had the undivided attention of legislators and politicians.

Today you have to be Jack Abramoff or Grover Norquist or Ralph Reed or one of the many K street guys who don't even know the names of, YET (they haven't been caught!) to have any influence in this nation, and the idea that some guy owning a radio station in Canton, Ill or Sedalia, MO or Salina, KS might be able to raise his voice, tap his foot, and ANYBODY in government pay attention to him is long, long gone.

Does the term "Drudge Report" ring a bell? Radio broadcasters used to have clout because radio used to have clout. That clout still exists. But it's on the internet now. Before the broadcasters, it was newspaper publishers who had the clout. Who knows who'll have clout in a decade from now.

Things change.

This is a world where you have to own at least 150 radio stations to have any stature. I guess you have to own at lest 50 small town newspapers to have any stature in that line of work.

Or, you have to run one pretty good blog.

This is not the world I dreamed of living in. If I have to live in a world where my only dream is to be one of 200,000 employees to work all day so the C.E.O can earn a $20 million salary every year plus an equal amount of stock options, why would I ever tell my grandson to look forward to laying his life on the line in the military to protect our freedoms when our home town has lost it's voice called radio and it's voice called the paper. What freedom... WHOSE freedom are we encouraged to fight for? Oh, that's right. I'm fighting for the freedom of the people who manage Clear Channel. They have brought us so much to our culture that at least they should be free.

No one ever lives in the world they dreamed of living in. I'm in my mid 40's. Things are not the way I thought they'd be. Things are definitely not the way my dad thought they'd be. I'm still waiting for the flying cars they promised us.

I was in grade school when Armstrong walked on the moon. My grandmother never dreamed she'd live in a world where men could travel to the moon and back. If you thought that back in the day, things would have stayed the same, or that they'd only have changed in ways that you could have predicted, then you thought wrong.

I won't deny that the people who run radio stations have made money after deregulation and consolidation. But they made money before deregulation and consolidation. They would have made money without deregulation and consolidation. Smart business people make money regardless of what the basic ground rules are. Changes in the rules might change the details of how they make money, but they'll make money no matter what. D & C opened one path to making money, and so the smart people took that path. Had there not been the D & C, the smart people would have taken a different path, but they'd have still made money.

In the words of a great American pundit (or maybe it was her twin sister), "Wake up and smell the coffee".

The good old days are gone, and they're never, ever coming back. And truth be told, they only look good in hindsight. They weren't all that great at the time.

 

[jimwalsh2001]

I'm with Mr. Marvin; the talk format, for the most part, is not just bad, but unlistenably so. What frustrates me is the number of talented, entertaining hosts who are being shut out because they don't fit the narrow paradigm of what "talk radio" is supposed to sound like.