As a boomer, I am more than content with talk radio of all stripes and newsradio. I would be worried that broadcast radio won't be for Gen Z. From a number of directions, they have been conditioned to think that music is, and should be, "free". Especially from commercial interruption. When people get beyond 40, they start dropping music radio for talk and news, I'll bet. But if a kid never got into the habit of listening to the radio in large doses, will they do the same? And will broadcast radio survive waiting for them to graduate to non music programming as it exists now?
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Saving AM Radio
- Thread starter BruceB
- Start date
Which one is 'Beautiful Music' (as opposed to 'Smooth Jazz')???I'm lucky because there are quite a few stations that play music I enjoy on AM in my area. 2 playing 50s-70s, 1 playing 60s-80s, 2 playing older country, and 1 playing beautiful music.
Of course, these are mostly mom and pop stations so the commercials are not obnoxious. I don't really mind them, actually. Usually if the break is more than a minute, though... I'm outta there. Or if a song I've heard a few million times comes on... adios.
On the rare occasion I'm listening to an iHeart/Audacy station with national spot buys and whatnot... the moment they go to commercials I'm outta there.
And yes, I know I'm an outlier. I'm sure the average person just sits through the six-minute stop sets and just tolerates them. Not me, though
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
They are the ones who are going to be the most upset as streaming moves more and more to a choice between "free with ads" or "paid subscription." TANSTAAFL.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Smooth Jazz is the modern-day equivalent of Beautiful Music, and is declining just as quickly as its predecessor did in the 1980s.
If they want something cheap and easy, the option is there. People don't need to have established a lifelong habit in order to start doing something new. To them, it's an oh wow thing. What we're seeing are a lot of people in their 20 & 30s who were ''raised on the radio'' because that's what their parents did. They have a romance about it because it brings them back to their happy childhood.
There was no consumer "brand equity" associated with the name "Clear Channel" as a company. In fact, its first AM station was bought in 1975 (it had bought an FM in 1972) and the status as a clear channel station owner gave rise to the name.
It was not until late 2014 that they renamed as iHeart because the term "clear channel" had become an obsolete one.
That is less than 40 years under the Clear Channel name, not 60.
When radio time spent listening, around 18 to 20 hours a week per person, descends to today's 5 to 6 hours a week in most markets, it is obvious that owners of stations have to move to platforms where people are going. There is no evil force here.
Somebody forgot to tell WDMV that AM is dead. They have a CP to add a fourth tower and go 50kw for a daytime only signal. Radio-locator doesn't show any FM translator.
That also seems to fit the word "outlier", as has been used in this thread a number of times.
So, the owner has a pretty deep pocket full of money to do that upgrade. Good on them. Does this upgrade now succeed because one or more adjacent stations have been silenced?
There's a station here, moving from an omni to a three-tower directional array at a different location. The station is presently a 50kw daytime-only outlet. The upgrade/move will allow the station to broadcast at night a staggering 425 watts. Since they simulcast the same programming on an FM they own, the station owner (the state, thru the local land-grant university) must have some compelling reason to keep it alive as well.
"Outliers" exist.
My plan exactly. I pay a small amount for my own domain which I believe gives me much more privacy than Google and other "free" services.
Apparently you've never had a pay as you go play, available for low income people. When I was financially strapped, I had one of those plans. And it had a data cap. And to my chagrin, and anger, an ensuing OS update ate it all up. $30 worth of data, as a back up in case my DSL went down, and the seemingly never ending updates ate all my data up.
I had to dig into the phone and turn off the updates, and was able to switch them to Wi-Fi only Since then I'm on a monthly plan. That said, next time you're in a large metro with a supermarket, take a look at the phone card kiosk. Those phone cards aren't there because no one if buying them.
What percentage of the population uses them? I have no idea. But they're out there.
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We used to call those things "Keyloggers" and "spyware", but now it's just software.
You're absolutely right. A lot of seniors use those prepaid cards with data caps because they live alone and can't take advantage of those family plan discounts.
People saying nobody thinks about data limits don't know many seniors.
(emphasis mine)
Have you seen the AM stereo "groups" on Facebook? They're even more refractory.
I'm surprised there aren't people who want to bring back kinescopes, too. Or maybe they exist, but I haven't found them yet!
And there is a huge group of "underemployed" people who can't afford the plans most of us have, so they have to limit their usage . Those same people don't spend hours a day streaming audio and podcasts and playing online games.
When I turned off AM stereo at KTNQ in LA around 1995 I got a lot of nastygrams and negative comments.
The AM stereo caused major issues in our deep nulls that hit some of Orange County and the far eastern San Gabriel Valley, and turning it off improved the analog signal a lot.
Have you priced plans lately?
Spectrum will sell you unlimited service (throttles after 50 GB, which is a LOT of data) for $30 a month, $25 per line if you have two lines. Consumer Cellular does 5 GB for $25 a month. Verizon's prepaid Visible service has unlimited data for $25 a month.
There might be a handful of limited data plans out there for a little less, but it's not like data is very expensive these days if you're looking in the right places.
And standard mono was what most listeners listened-to. I did the same with KJR back in the late 80's. Turned off useless AM stereo and the front desk was flooded with callers wondering if the station had suddenly increased power.
That is still a considerable amount when a family wants phones for the parents and older kids. Even with a family plan, the cost is considerable for people at or near the minimum wage.
My point is that those users and families tend to limit their usage or use pay as you go plans with "burner" phones.
There is also the situation where families do not have any credit, credit cards or bank accounts. They are users of cash pay as you go accounts: in my area at least AT&T now has cash deposit devices at some locations in the agricultural area of my home market.
When KCJJ turned off their AM stereo about 10-12 years ago, a guy from one of those “AM Stereo Is Life” Facebook groups, who also did mornings at some station in Massachusetts, started a mini radio war by calling the morning show and blasting the decision. That led to many of the KCJJ callers calling his show (which didn’t have a screener) and pestering him. It was great!
They didn’t mention signal reasons for turning off their AM Stereo, mainly just that moat listeners didn’t have AM Stereo radios.