GenXRadio said:
What needs to be done and I am going to sound like a broken record is a rexamination of ownership rules in radio & television.
And how, in a globalized world of the Internet, is making radio into a small business going to help? The average US station bills less than annual gross sales of a single McDonalds.
The competition is satellite, Pandora, and all the variants. The fast growth of Pandora, for example, is not based on localization but on personalization. Terrestrial radio can not personalize itself, as it serves groups, not individuals and is only successful if the group is both large and satisfied.
Bringing back the talk-to-the-post jocks and 20-20 news will not do it. Reducing the options for broadcast companies by chopping off their legs is not going to do it.
With Bain owning CC and not wanting to stay in the radio business
I musta' missed the press release. Bain wants to make money. At present, selling stations at a loss does not make money, but expanding stations and content into new media might.
and with the ownership problems with Emmis and other broadcast companies this would be the PERFECT time for the old rules to be put back into place that way we have more indepent ownership in radio and thus bring about competition.
I see. A company that has debt is going to sell its properties at a fire sale so that they can never pay the debt. Why would they do that?
That competition would make it easier for the old radio wars to heat up but more than any mean spirited billboards or backbiting it would encourage creativity, bits, actual active listenership and bring some more enthusiasm into broadcasting....
It would do no such thing. You are talking billboards when the public (I hesitate to call them "listeners") is spending more time on the web than in their cars. And you are talking about bits and stuff when electronic measurement shows that today's audience, as BigA said, "has moved on."
Someone wisely remarked in this post that it's difficult to rip the "competition" if they're owned by the same company and work down the hall from you and if you do go against them then it just has a very professional wrestling look to it with scripts and everything being orchestrated instead of being real.
[/quote]
I owned 9 (3 were simulcast AM/FM combos) stations in a million plus market in the late 60's... and each station's job was to maximize audience. That meant competing with ever other station in the market, even if some were mine.
Back in the 7/7/7 days, we had our Don Burdens and Richard Eatons. There are always good and bad participants in every endeavor, whether it is a steel mill or a soccer team. Rolling back the clock is seldom a viable solution to a perceived problem.
