I don't think anyone, including me, is defending them. There are many examples of how radio stations, when owned by electronics companies or other businesses, weren't always priorities within their ownership. Unfortunately, things didn't always improve when they were sold to radio-only companies. I'm not expecting big improvements for these stations under new ownership.
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Radio is "not a viable business"
- Thread starter TheBigA
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I don't think anyone, including me, is defending them. There are many examples of how radio stations, when owned by electronics companies or other businesses, weren't always priorities within their ownership. Unfortunately, things didn't always improve when they were sold to radio-only companies. I'm not expecting big improvements for these stations under new ownership.
I'm in a border City, so I have OTA reception of some of the now ex-Bell stations. You are entirely correct.
Understood, and in this case, it looks like the 45 stations being sold are being sold to other, smaller radio companies -- companies that may have better motives (and abilities?) to keep the stations in question viable. 21 of the Bell stations in BC are being sold to the same company, so obviously somebody thinks that radio is "viable".
The way to make radio more viable, especially in low population areas, is to consolidate programming among co-owned stations. That's what Bell did, and what Stingray currently does. I anticipate that Vista will find a way to do that now with the Bell stations. I don't expect them to hire full local staffs for all of these stations, or pay them as much as they made from Bell.
Journalism presently is not viable, at least in the US. Look at the industry. NPR reported on New Year's that there are 30% less newspapers in the US than there were in 2000. During the same time period, it's estimated that 48K journalists in the US lost their jobs. In 2023, 2.5 newspapers shut down permanently each week. Fortune magazine claims that 2/3 of America's journalists lost their jobs since the 2000's.
The LA Times, as I believe I mentioned upthread, laid off 180 of their staff over the past two years, and they've been losing tens of millions of dollars a year since 2018. And they're a large and very important newspaper, with a big online presence.
If the news business were viable, none of that would be happening, especially not at that level.
One problem is that we're in an age where anyone can put up "news" on a website and call themselves a journalist. Also, the definition of journalism has altered, with gonzo-style journalism one sees in internet based sites like Vice and Raw Story -- with varying levels of usefulness. But Journalism, as a business, is in trouble.
The free news aggregators still get clicks, views, and engagement, but the industry is in big trouble, and it's not because people want to pay for news. It's apparent most of them don't.
Check out the Pew Research papers on the state of the news industry. They're free to read, and enlightening.
Obviously, there is a problem with the business model. Maybe there needs to be some sort of digital royalty for news, that pays .004 per read per story, or something like that. If it's good enough for the music industry, perhaps the news industry will need to look at something like that.
Sorry to all for our derailing the thread, but news -- as Theater Of The Mind so accurately pointed out -- is indeed important. It's that 'informed electorate' thing. The problem is the business model doesn't appear to be working. Just as the internet has changed other fields (like Radio, TV, retail, etc.) it's also changing the way news is paid for and consumed.
Maybe it will just work itself out.
Some of the BC stations already are consolidated, programming wise. "Bounce Radio" is the format on many of them. The ones in the Okanagan Valley I think are possibly operated out of one or two locations. So maybe there won't be that much disruption.
That is going to make it a problem for the concept of government funding to work. The question becomes: Who is really a journalist?
True. But I suppose they could start out with the BLS's NAICS code. There is apparently a 'code' for every field of work out there. I know I had one when I was unemployed. That's when I learned about NAICS codes. The definitions are fairly extensive.
The fact that it would be government involvement in the press could be problematic. But it looks like some of the news sites and news services need to think outside the box.
Just saw that Spotify is dropping a feature that allowed podcasts to include licensed songs:
Spotify Drops Feature That Allows Podcasters To Play Full Songs Inside Episodes.
It is last call for music on Spotify podcasts. The streamer says it will shut down its three-year old “Music + Talk” format that has allowed podcasters to include full
Likely because of increased royalty rates. People talk about podcasts as an alternative to radio, and that's less of a factor when music is involved for this reason,
Well then the timing couldn't be better for all news organizations to shut down except the one paid for by the RNC. The road to authoritarianism looks better than ever.
The news organizations are shutting down because the business model is no longer viable for traditionally based news media. It hHas nothing to do with politics. As for your veiled reference to Fox News, they're aging out just as much as the "DNC sponsored" cable news channels (MSNBC and CNN) are. The aging out of these cable news channels has nothing to do with politics, either.
The traditional and legacy news media are aging out, and the internet -- and its effect on advertising revenues -- is the culprit here, if there is one. Example: when Craigslist began offering free classified ads, in every metro in the country, all the daily newspapers lost 45% percent of their revenues within a couple years. You can look it up -- there are articles on it. That was in the late 1990's / early 2000's (when CL got really popular). Most newspapers -- even those which survived -- never really recovered from those lost revenues.
I'll repeat what I said before: the business model has changed. It has nothing to do with politics, or "authoritarianism", but everything to do with the advancement of internet tech and its changing the nature of mass media, and changes in demographics.
The same changes are affecting radio, although the news media has been hit harder because -- as David Eduardo mentioned upthread -- most radio stations play music, not news. The advertising crunch is hitting them as it's hitting other media, but news is really getting slammed. The big three or four broadcasters (CBS, NBC, ABC) will be around for a while. There will always be a news industry. It probably will be hyper-national with probably another tier that is hyper-local, with any local journalists being lower paid (many weren't paid well to begin with. Ask any journo who got their first job in some podunk town with a weekly paper that paid them less than minimum wage). But these are just guesses.
Journalism, on radio, can be interesting enough to have the listener hang on every word. It can be captivating. It can have you hanging on through the commercial break. (Paul Harvey's business model?) My frustration with journalism, of any type, is that it is so rarely of the old Mike Wallace variety. I can point to stories by the dozens in my local market that a good reporter could tell, and people would buy the paper just to read, but "corporate" is afraid of stepping on toes. Real reporting, at the local level, is dead.
As station values continue to plummet, it will be interesting to see what sorts of niche markets will be catered to. Are there places where someone with 1,000 watts AM could make a living broadcasting just to Haitians or Guatemalans? Regional Mexican?
I've often daydreamt of what I can do with a 250 watt station, in my backyard. Probably a great way to eat up my retirement. With no kids, as long as I timed it right, it could be fun!
As station values continue to plummet, it will be interesting to see what sorts of niche markets will be catered to. Are there places where someone with 1,000 watts AM could make a living broadcasting just to Haitians or Guatemalans? Regional Mexican?
I've often daydreamt of what I can do with a 250 watt station, in my backyard. Probably a great way to eat up my retirement. With no kids, as long as I timed it right, it could be fun!
Our local paper has issues it could address, but they will never Rick the boat. Also, I was interviewed a couple months ago by a reporter that somehow got several key facts wrong, even though he recorded the interview. I know these folks have to knock out a paper every week, but they make the most-amateur mistakes in virtually every edition. When I taught, I would put sections of stories on the smart board so the students could find all the grammatical errors. They heard me say “Don’t do that” on innumerable occasions.
That's true. I listen to "From Our Own Correspondent" on BBC Sounds app every week. The stories are delivered from around the world purely in the voice of the BBC correspondents (with no actualities). This week's episode featured two reports from the US, one from Madrid and one from Mumbai, India.
I don't know that it's so much because corporate wants to avoid toes, but because doing that kind of reporting takes a lot of time/effort. If your whole newsroom is 8 people, it's hard to dedicate one reporter for a whole week to a lead that might not even pan out.
I think the answer there is not many. The value of AM stations has been approximately zero, if not negative, for quite a while.
In 2016, I followed the sale of WAMB 1200/Nashville. It was a 50kW daytimer. It sold with its transmitter site (8.5 acres in Nashville), and a translator, for $395,000 after its owner died. It is now religious WFCN. The new owners valued the AM so highly that they cut it from 50kW to 2kW.
Although what you experienced may have just been a poor result of journalism training.
I think that overall -- at least from seeing the results -- journalistic training has nosedived in quality. Even in the late 1990's, a local daily posted a pic of a large political event without giving the date of the event in the caption. When I emailed the editor, because I thought the date and location were important, the reply I got was "the five W's" (who, what, when, where, and why) were no longer taught in journalism schools. That sort of thing was outdated. I'm not sure whether that still is the case. Maybe in the 25-odd years since then the journalism courses have corrected that tendency.
I suppose in journalism, as in any other field, YMMV with the results. Most news stories I see on the internet seem reasonably well written. Sometimes a key fact is buried deep in the story, but at least it's in there. I see a lot more editorializing in stories than I probably saw 30 years ago, but in today's polarized media world I supposed a certain amount of that is expected. Once again, YMMV.
What is your opinion of the radio companies that seem to be buying the 45 stations that are put up for sale. Just curious.
A former editor would not recognize his paper now. He held to incredibly-high standards. Our local high school gives an annual cash award in his name to future journalism students at graduation. Unfortunately, those students leave the area.Although what you experienced may have just been a poor result of journalism training.
I think that overall -- at least from seeing the results -- journalistic training has nosedived in quality. Even in the late 1990's, a local daily posted a pic of a large political event without giving the date of the event in the caption. When I emailed the editor, because I thought the date and location were important, the reply I got was "the five W's" (who, what, when, where, and why) were no longer taught in journalism schools. That sort of thing was outdated. I'm not sure whether that still is the case. Maybe in the 25-odd years since then the journalism courses have corrected that tendency.
I suppose in journalism, as in any other field, YMMV with the results. Most news stories I see on the internet seem reasonably well written. Sometimes a key fact is buried deep in the story, but at least it's in there. I see a lot more editorializing in stories than I probably saw 30 years ago, but in today's polarized media world I supposed a certain amount of that is expected. Once again, YMMV.
I find that spelling errors seem to crop up more in internet stories than they should. I do admit many of the spelling issues which spellcheck programs don't catch, as in break for brake.
Or as in this story:
Florida man arrested after causing scene over handicap parking space, calls 911 on responding officers
Florida police arrested a man after he allegedly caused a scene at a gas station when a person parked in a handicap space illegally, then later called 911 on the officers.
During an investigation, Taylor was unsteady on his feed and smelled of alcohol, police allege.
I even find that, with traditional newspapers, they'll publish mistakes in the stories on their website that are correct in their printed media. It's almost like they rush the story to their website or have them posted by interns or lower-level staff, then properly proofread and edit them before printing in their papers.
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