Element9 said:
Certainly, it takes manpower to deliver local news and talk, but smart managers and programmers know the return on investment from news is absolute.
Especially at WXUR, when your total investment is just the salary for one person to read the news, plus 50 cents a day for the Observer-Dispatch he's reading it from.
No, but seriously, you have some very valid points. Even for FM music stations that only have news during morning drive, people want to know what's going on in their immediate community. Local news is a great idea, and you don't even need newsreaders for every station in the cluster. Many clusters that have a news/talk station usually have one of their morning anchors (if not "the" morning anchor) record some quick casts for the FM stations. It's rare that you have any "breaking" news that require these newscasts to be updated once they're in the can. But if something major happens, any cluster worth their salt has the plans and capabilities in place to figure out a way to get the information on pronto. Whether it's a matter of having the jocks read it (if it's THAT serious, listeners won't care WHO reads it) or just forcing everyone to sync up their clocks to hit an "internal network" newscast fed from the AM studio to the FM studios, there are ways to get it done.
Another thing more radio stations could cash in with is traffic. I know many folks make fun of Clear Channel traffic in Syracuse because the reports are often outdated, underestimated and/or overestimated. (For example, announcing accidents that are causing delays, when they were cleaned up 20 minutes earlier, and never even caused a problem -- or neglecting accidents that ARE causing backups.)
But seriously, even in cities where traffic isn't a major problem... even the pettiest minor accident
can wind up causing people significant delays. People who live in big cities come here and say, "20 minute delay? You call THAT traffic?" Well, when you're used to getting from Point A to Point B within 10 minutes every day and you're not planning for a delay that triples your commute time... yeah, that's traffic. Or if a major concert or sporting event is letting out -- but you aren't aware of it -- it's nice to have that little "warning" in the car (ie. "steer clear of the War Memorial - the Syracuse Crunch game just ended and Adams Street is gonna be jammed between State St. and 690 for the next half-hour or so.")
(Of course, I'll still fault CC for attempting to do traffic for several markets out of Syracuse. How well can someone in Syracuse do traffic for Buffalo if they've never even BEEN there?)
Jason Roberts said:
As much as I'd love to see at least one station in a cluster staffed 24/7 (needn't be live DJ's, though), when I really think about it...it's just not necessary at every station. (...) Yes, EAS is programmable to be automatic...but those stations are the ones that need to get it right when seconds count. Those boxes are fallable.
Agreed. Even if it's not required by law, it's still very good practice to have at least one warm body in the building at all times. Studio automation equipment is just as fallable as EAS equipment. Even with the best redundant servers, battery backup power supplies, generators and the like, there's still a chance for equipment to crash. And even though most of your overnight spots are "comps" (and it doesn't matter if they don't air), it's still nice to have someone in-house who can immediately take steps to get things back in order, rather than letting your morning drive folks discover these nightmares when they walk in the door. No morning show can be off to a good start when their valuable prep-time was wasted playing phone-tag with engineers or tech support. (And what if it's a major problem that takes awhile to fix? Better to get started on repairs at 2am and finish at 4, than to begin at 4:30am and be kept off-air until 6:30 or 7, while your competition rolls out the welcome mat for your P1's... and your traffic department is going crazy trying to schedule make-goods for all the high-priced AM drive spots you missed.)
In many clusters that have an AM news/talker, this is already fulfilled by way of the overnight newsroom person. Even though their primary duty is to prepare news copy for morning drive, it doesn't take much to make sure they have silence alarms or EAS monitoring capability in the newsroom, so they can immediately react to any situation.
Jason Roberts said:
Playing "local" music. From time to time, there could be a local act that's worthy of airplay. Most of the time though, the amount of local music that's truly worthy of airplay is extremely limited.
Yes... and what happens if your station is a format that just doesn't HAVE any local talent? Should an AC or classical station be required to play some local grunge band's music simply because they're local and nobody else has submitted anything? That's just going over the line. I think music selection should be left up to the stations. If you have good ratings, it's obvious that the public approves of what you're playing. End of story.
Jason Roberts said:
Voicetracking should not be an issue. The problem today is, in a lot of cases, the jocks (and the PD's who are supposed to be coaching them) don't know how to do it right. Or, in other cases...management seems to be intentionally attempting to devolve the job of air talent to nothing.
I have a feeling the FCC's attempt to "define" and possibly restrict voicetracking might be aimed toward stations where voicetracking is done by out-of-town talent. For example, when Utica signed on Bob 102.5 in Utica (correct me if I'm wrong, this is a good few years ago) they had a syndicated morning show, a middayer voicetracked out of Pennsylvania, and a local PM drive show. Or look at clusters where weekends are totally (or nearly totally) voicetracked. I think those are the kinds of situations where the FCC might have a problem... what if there's a major event, but nobody's home to get the word out? I believe this happened once several years ago, someplace in North Dakota or something like that, and the story got a lot of play nationally afterwards.
Jason Roberts said:
A public advisory board? I'm sure some good ideas could come of it...but it ain't "the public" that has to ultimately answer to advertisers and the FCC. This just smacks to me of allowing a couple of local whiners complainers and know-nothings the opportunity to take up a lot of a station's time
You've hit the nail on the head again. It's like when people call local newsrooms, asking stations to do these huge, drawn-out investigations on petty rumors involving small-town politics, or further coverage of something they saw on the network news. I just wanna say "Dude, we're a LOCAL station with just 7 or 8 reporters. We don't have the time, the money or the manpower to do a Dateline NBC investigation on why the Citgo in Suburb A charges 7 cents a gallon more than the Mobil 2 miles down the road in Suburb B." Or to look into some petty rumors involving small-town politics. "So what if the Podunk Dog Catcher watches porn at night on Cinemax? Why the hell do you care or know so much about this in the first place?" These people don't have a clue on how the station works, and even if you try to explain it, they still don't get it.
JakeLongwell said:
Jeremy (theradiokid) brought up a great example when he talked about the state of radio in Oswego county. It is sad that all of the stations in Oswego and surrounding communities (Fulton, Pulaski) are all Syracuse repeaters, but I think there could be a fair balance of local origin programming, and Syracuse simulcasts.
I just took a quick look at Google Maps.
Syracuse to Oswego: 39 miles.
Syracuse to Cortland: 33 miles.
When you look at it that way... it's pretty weird that Cortland is considered a separate market, even though Oswego is farther away. According to Census numbers posted on Wikipedia, both cities have similar population levels too. So yes indeed, it's a very valid point to argue Oswego may be underserved by all these stations that are simply repeaters of Syracuse stations. But could/should Oswego be considered its own market? I don't think it could happen. Many people in Oswego County commute to Syracuse anyway, especially from the southern areas of the county. The market boundary would basically be the City of Oswego, and anything north of 104. Then there's only so much room to go north before you're in Watertown's territory. With such a small market territory -- and most listeners likely going for the Syracuse stations
anyway -- it would be pretty tough for an owner to be profitable with an Oswego-based station. Look at Galaxy... if WSCP in Sandy Creek was actually doing anything, they probably would have kept it.
