Snow What!

[mwebster]

Many parts of the country have had their first major snow accumulations.
Many radio stations - especially all news and news-talk stations - once again have felt the compulsive need to dump the format and read interminable lists of school (and other) closings.
Radio stations do it because:

1. They did it last year.
2. Other stations are doing it.

The lemming mentality rules in broadcasting.

I say specific closing announcements no longer make sense (beyond general news coverage):
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[*]There are better ways to disseminate the information (TV crawls, websites, telephone - enter your school number using Touch-Tone). The latter two provide the information on-demand, without forcing people to go through a list of (sometimes) hundreds of items they don't care about to get the one they do care about.
[*]Closing announcements often do a disservice to the regular listener in order to (maybe) serve the occasional listner. The core audience does not hear what it tunes in most every day to hear.
<ul>
[*]Most of the audience for news and talk radio is beyond the age of having school age children. Most are empty nesters and above.
[*]People who are the age to have children in school are likely comfortable with new media and more likely to go to an information-on-demand source.
[/list]
[*]People abuse the service. In some markets, some use the closing announcements as free promotion. I personally know of individuals baby-sitting less than half a dozen kids in their homes who call in "day care" closing announcements. Businesses often get free mentions.
[*]This practice of announcing closings may actually encourage closings in marginal weather conditions. The school closes and the staff may get a day off, but most businesses remain open. Households without a stay-at-home parent (which is most households) therefore have to make some other arrangment for their kids or lose a day of work.
[/list]
Among all the dumb things radio managers do, school closing announcements belong at the top of the list.

 

[gr8oldies]

I'm hearing a lot less of the marginal ones (Jenny's School of Dance, where they could call the 10 students a lot quicker)lately on stations like WLW and WHIO (Dayton), seems they do the major ones and direct people to the website or a TV station for the big list. I've often said this when threads come up about "local service", that a lot of the things radio stations used to do are irrelevant with on-demand media. (School Lunch menus on the radio..I can get them off the school's website at my convenience.)

When WLW used to do long, long lists Gary Burbank used to throw in funny fake ones every five or so.


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..from the Ball Park Franks sponsored gr8oldies keyboard...</P>

 

[Tom_]

Re: Snow What! 49 to dead!

* There are better ways to disseminate the information (TV crawls, websites, telephone - enter your school number using Touch-Tone). The latter two provide the information on-demand, without forcing people to go through a list of (sometimes) hundreds of items they don't care about to get the one they do care about.

GOOD POINT. SCHOOLS SHOULD ALREADY HAVE AUTOMATED TOUCH TONE PHONE SERVICES AS YOU SUGGEST. THE TECHNOLOGY FOR calling and entering a code for your school has been improving for quite some time.

o Most of the audience for news and talk radio is beyond the age of having school age children. Most are empty nesters and above.

IT'S THE 49 TO DEAD CROWD SINCE AM MUSIC/NEWS/PERSONALITY SHOWS THAT APPEALED TO WOMEN AND EVEN CHILDREN ARE A THING OF THE PAST IN MANY MARKETS - IT'S EITHER ALL NEWS, OR AGENDA DRIVEN CONSERVATIVE OR LIBERAL TALK. SOME NEWS/TALK STATIONS DON'T EVEN RUN LOCAL SHOWS, SUCH AS THE NEW PROGRESSIVE TALK STATIONS that run Air America, Stephanie Miller, Bill Press, or Doug Stephan. (That's right, seems that every thread has to mention liberal talk on this board... (sigh...)...