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Someone far smarter than me...

R

robgrayson

...With a thorough scope of broadcast law and the ins and outs of FCC junk, would do well to file against local stations at renewal time, based on the lack of service to their local markets. I would cite Friday's storm as an example. WREC had it going for a short while Friday afternoon, and then came shift change. Everyone went home and turned on the automation. Mind you, there were overturned tractor trailers on the interstate, trees down, people stranded, but at Memphis news and information giant, it's time to go home now. Radio should be the first place you turn in time of emergency. If you do, especially in the evening, you'll probably hear syndicated programming or something someone recorded yesterday. There was a time when regular programming would be suspended and the news staff (remember the news "staff"?) would go on with important information about restoring power, about why it wasn't being restored, about where to go for shelter, about the next line of storms coming through, about where you could get something to eat or fill up your car or get a generator. There would be listener reports of damage, requests for assistance, offers to help. Radio has given up and left their rightful place in the distribution of critical information in times of emergency to TV. Guess what? In the new digital age, the battery operated portable TV is, for the moment being, a thing of the past. Radio is the easiest and most efficient way of taking care of this public duty. That is, to a point, what these companies promised they would do when they were awarded licenses in the public interest.


They lied.

They need to be called on it.
 
Amen!
 
Okay, I will admit... maybe too much coffee. But still...
 
robgrayson said:
Guess what? In the new digital age, the battery operated portable TV is, for the moment being, a thing of the past. Radio is the easiest and most efficient way of taking care of this public duty. That is, to a point, what these companies promised they would do when they were awarded licenses in the public interest.
Click to expand...

I had my ATSC tuner card connected to my new notebook and I can say that reception was a challenge with the old standby "emergency" antenna. You're absolutely correct, we need radio to step back up to the plate and take care of Business!
 
I don't disagree in the least with your comments, but it raises the question of how does a return to "live and local" occur? Are the regulations changed to require 7/24 live staffing? In the real world of dropping advertising revenues and operating losses even with the drastic reductions of personnel, who takes on these properties if the licenses are indeed revoked, knowing they'll have enormous financial exposure?

This latest episode of storms and lack of coverage is nothing new. Remember our "blizzard" of this past winter? The whole city shut down, but if you turned on any local station you heard normal (normal?) programming with no mention of road closures, power outages, shelters, agencies for assistence, etc.

Radio today can hardly be counted as serving the public interest, but I don't have a clue how to solve some of these issues. If I was a local Market Manager, I might be tempted to have someone available to cut into programming with vital information, but I also might not get that past the corporate suits sitting several thousand miles away and counting every penny of expenditures.
 
Ah, for the days on Gilligan's Island, when one simple, white, single, seashell-operated transistor radio would give all the castaways all the information they ever needed, right when they needed it!  ;D  And the announcer would even stop talking while all the castaways conversed with each other about what they had just heard on the radio!

Wow, we need radio like that again!  ;D The castaways were not only tuned in to the radio, but radio was tuned in to them, and their needs!
 
Rob you make some great points about the state of radio today and questioning why these folks still have a license to broadcast. One of the strengths of radio is community and being local. Comparing today with the old days it is easy to see that the pendulum has swung all the way to the other side. I just wonder how lon it will take for it to move back to the middle position. And when it does will there be anyone trained in how to do the radio that we all love.
 
A couple of possible solutions:

1.) An "on-call" meteorologist who takes over programming at the station in the event of severe weather. (If there is no severe weather, he gets to sleep in, but in the event of severe weather, he/she tracks storms over the air.) This is similar to "on-call" engineers who we have, in the event that a transmitter or other piece of equipment breaks down.

2.) The station flips a switch, and simulcasts with a partnering TV station, not necessarily even a "sister" station, or even a station in the same building. Some Nashville stations do this.

Obviously, I don't live in Memphis, but it appears to me that the situation you had there might have been aggravated by the analog-to-digital transition that was going on last Friday. If only Congress had let us transition back in February like we should have done anyway! ::)
 
We have had a similar discussion on the Tampa board because we are the lightning capital of America, and during the summer rainy season severe weather is a daily afternoon/evening occurance. This followed a tornado warning that was aired by many stations since it happed in the afternoon, but not all stations. But the big concern was what if it had happed at night.

A local newspaper editor had written a scathing editorial in her newspaper following a freak storm that came during the night and caused severe damage to the area some years ago. She said she did what the NWS and county emergency managers had trained us to do- head for cover with her battery powered radio. Of course all she heard was music, no weather warnings, nothing from government agencies updating the situation, no "all clear". She was not happy, and of course many local station managers were interviewed but not much came of it other than the managers promising to give local agencies their cell phone numbers.

I am in favor of having NOAA radios in the EAS chain for unmanned stations in areas subject to severe weather. You can program them now for county by county alerts only, and can limit them to warnings only so you dont get all the advisories and other crap that causes most of us to turn off our cheap Radio Shack Wx radios after awhile. Think about it, we have in place an expensive system to alert us to nuclear war (thankfully a slim chance of that), but leaving us vulnerable to the very real possibility of a tornado or flash flood sneaking up on us. Here in FL it has to be a statewide event like a hurricane before the state warning point issues an alert. Its the local events that will kill us.
 
Everybody is surpirsed that a Clear Channel station would go into automation during a disaster?!! Isn't Cheap Channel notorious of this? Anybody recall the train derailment in South (or North) Dakota. And since when has radio really cared what happens with the listeners?

Can anybody answer these questions?
 
It's not just CC. It's all of them. The business model is the same. Cut expenses (people) and maximize revenues (sell assets, rent vertical real estate, cut salaries and bonuses, take it to the bone and cut some more.) Forget maintainence, upgrades, capital expenditures for improvements, live operation and immediacy of reporting and be sure to turn out the studio lights when no one is using it (which is most of the time.) Put any corporate name in the blank; they're all doing it. One of the reasons they're going down is that we've all voted with our iPods, CD players, and sattelite subscriptions. It will get worse as new technology allows for remote operation of local facilities from miles away. Hide and watch.
 
Thanks for the post, Rob. Folks like you and Professor Tynes certainly remember that it didn't used to be that way. You're also smart enough to know it doesn't have to be that way now, either.

The Engineer is correct...it's the business model of the day, and we - as an industry - certanly don't have the corner on the secret. It's happening everywhere...and where it happens, the product suffers. Radio's products don't just suffer, they tend to suck...out loud. When the Memphis news comes out of Cincinnati, they simply can't be timely or correct IF they were to make any on-air assessments. Then there's the mispronunciations of names and locations that are distinctly local. There will ALWAYS be the issue of timely information that is designed to warn the public of impending danger and how it rarely comes in a timely fashion.

Engineer asked what it takes to RETURN to local information. The answer is simple. They should remember how to do it, since they've done it before. All it takes is money...and when your company doesn't have any (or they've paid too much in executive bonuses) somethings gotta give. I never thought I would see the day that the product would be the thing that "gives".

You're right, Rob. They lied...and that's not the half of it. Truly, they are NOT serving the public interest as a public trustee" when they put it on auto-pilot and walk away. The old saying was "I guess it'll take someone getting killed for it to change."

Nowadays, not even THAT would change anything.

...and we are all the worse for it.
 
What it will take is LOSING LICENSES. Then they will start taking their responsiblities seriously.
 
Mr. Fastard,
Is that the Fastards from West Memphis or the Faus-tards from Germantown?
Either case… The answer is… "When Paine-Webber talks, do you still listen?".
The key to broadcast success in the 21st century. Value= $0.09 per dollar invested, write that number down somewhere.

Best,

w/
 
Rob good rant.
I have to laugh at this entire topic discussion. I could never imagine this happening back in my day. Not only was it required for community interest, there was also a feeling of obligation by the stations. Hell in my day radio news was somewhat of a ratings enhancer. This is exactly why I got out of the business when it ended being fun.
Dan
 
I hear ya! I stayed in a little too long, I guess. Quit being fun BEFORE I got out. (or was gotten out and never returned)
 
Rob: You may be right, however it's pretty tough to get the F.C.C. to deny the license. You can say they suck (and be correct), you can say they don't serve the public interest (and again be correct) and they don't act on it. History has proven that unless you can prove the licensee has been caught in bed with sheep while surfing child porn sites and snorting cocaine, their character is still O.K.

Perhaps we need a legal watchdog group to take these bastards to the wood shed. You are correct that nothing will happen until they lose the paper...and I join you in hoping it happens...soon.

Watt: Officially, it's the Frog Jump Fastards, just down the road from Cat Corner, Hollow Log and Possum Trot. We don't cotton to Arkies or the snooties from Germantown. ;D
 
This problem, folks, had its beginnings a LONG time ago. Its genesis was when the greedy and unprincipled bastards on Wall Street noticed the large amounts of money being generated by large-market radio station. Greedy bastards who knew NOTHING of how radio works, and had NO appreciation of what its responsibilities to the General Public are. All they saw were these numerous Cash Cows.

Enter politicians like Ronald Reagan, who never met a Government regulatory agency he liked, and worshipped at the idol of Unbridled Capitalism. Over the years, they eliminated the safeguards that kept radio (and TV, for that matter) in the hands of people who loved radio, and who actually believed in PICAN (that's the "Public Interest, Convenience, And Necessity" for those who don't know), and allowed broadcast properties to be owned by people whose primary interest was making money. The Rules weren't changed overnight; that would have triggered a public backlash (boiling a frog, et.al.) But the Rules were changed gradually and inexorably to allow us to arrive where we are today. Some of the major changes:

1. Eliminate the need to prove fiscal ability to build, then operate a radio station for a specified time.
2. Eliminate the original 7-7-7 ownership Rules.
3. Eliminate the Rules prohibiting owning more than 1 station in each service in a market.
4. Eliminate the Rules prohibiting controlling more than 1 station in each service in a market.
5. Eliminating the Rules requiring a company or individual to own and operate a station for at least a minimum period of time (this change allowed stations to be bought and sold at whim, thus permitting trafficking in broadcast licenses).
6. Extending the license period to its current length from the previous 2 or 3 years, whatever it was (this eliminates practically all responsibility of the licensee to the public).

EACH ONE of the above changes was justified at the time under such logic as "well, we've gone this far, why not go all the way?", and "government is imposing undue burdensome restrictions on us", and finally as necessary to keep large numbers of station from going dark (which was the consequence of the PREVIOUS Rules changes!).

So much more could be added, but the point is made. I believe in Capitalism and free markets too, but when it comes to public utilities and services, Rules and Regulations are necessary. We allowed "marketplace competition" in our electric and natural gas utilities, and look where THAT got us.

So blame it on greedy bankers and speculators, politicians (both Democratic and Republican) who are either idiots or crooked (or both), and last but not least, the NAB, who not only didn't oppose any of this, but actually fought for much of it. Oh, and finally US, for not screaming more loudly as the water pot was slowly being heated to boil the frog.
 
robgrayson said:
What it will take is LOSING LICENSES. Then they will start taking their responsiblities seriously.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Rob. One of the real times all us old-timers are glad we know our stuff is when severe weather impacts our listeners. The generator's up when the power's out, we're providing information and coordinating help when no one else can, and it is a good reminder of the unique value of radio. And of radio professionals.
 
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