nmoore6676 said:
"Warning. The Census General has determined that the LA metro is highly ethnic, composed of groups with a known intolerance to AAA, a.k.a. Americana.
What if the lowest rated stations just turn their licenses in to the FCC and let the ratings for every remaining station go up. In the old days and less concentrated ownership stations found an audience and went out and sold it to the sponsors who wanted to reach that segment. Now with corporate absentee owners everyone wants to reach the majority and screw the minorities.
Radio formats are basically self regulating. There are formats capable of big shares, such as the 17 shares available in LA for regional Mexican, and in that sort of situation you will see 4 or 5 different stations competing with versions of the same thing. AC has perhaps 8 shares to 9 shares, and so we see overlapping AC stations, all variants of one single format with different age or lifestyle targets.
Some formats only can barely take one entrant... like CHR ( 4 share, but if split, due to being young, would cause both to fail) or smooth jazz (half of a 3 share is a 1.5.. not enough) or Spanish adult hits (3 share, but not enough for two). And some are below the level for a major signal... like country, AAA, hard rock (KNAC lost money for years), etc.
In markets like LA, most of the money is agency money... and it has very specific demographic profiles attached. Stations can not go for targets that advertisers will reject because the client of the agency has given other instructions.
Stations, more than ever, are designed to appeal to segments of the audience that advertisers want to reach. Thast's why there are no teen stations and no 55+ stations... no advertiser interest. And good signals that don't get a 2 share or so on FM change format, or muddle along like KKGO will, since it has an "interesting" local owner with nobody to insist on a good fiscal performance.
The reason that the FCC allocated so many frequencies to this area was because at some point someone went and applied, promising that their new station would somehow serve some segment that was to that date being under-served.
Almost all the allocations in the LA area were given before FM had achieved any kind of economic viability. There have only been a couple of new channels, class A's all, in the last 40 years. Whatever was promised back then is irrelevant as the LA area is so different in ethnic composition and lifestyle.
And... really important... the FCC does and did not approve music formats. The only made sure that the station complied technically and would do some kind of service to the community it covered.
AMs are not allocated... if it fits, and someone wants it, the FCC gives it. Nearly all LA assignments (not allocations) today are direct descendants of stations already on thee air before 1950... As most good AMs were assigned int he 30's and 40's, this explains why the best are in cities that were big and important then, while ones like Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Atlanta and San Diego and such that grew later have so few if any "big" AMs.... it has nothing to do with service promises.
Over time those owners sold and through the process that has led to the current scene those facilities ended up in the hands of the present conglomerates. The little Class A signals allocated to communities like Long Beach and San Fernando, for example, were meant to be local voices for those communities, not part of an area wide simulcast.
The San Fernado Valley is no longer a separate community with interests separate from the LA metro. Neither is Long Beach. Nor is any place in Orange County. And, remeber, even int he strictest days of ascertainment and programming content, stations were expected to serve the primary coverage area, not just the city of license. The only COL requirement was putting a certain signal level over it...
In the "bad old days" of individual owners, there was a lot more pressure to perform by most, as the owner only could have a few stations and if one did badly, the whole company was in jeopardy. That's why most of us had no health plan, no career track, no 401-k and why everyone wanted to be the #1 Top 40 station, not offer a niche format. For example, Cleveland, in the early 60's, had three formats only: CHR, MOR and R&B. Diversity in formats has grown as radio was deregulated.
The carrot held out to the regulators was that multi station clustering would support the less popular minority formats by spreading the costs, and profits, over the group. Maybe that concept as practiced needs revisiting and rethinking. Not likely though as they now want to further relax the rules governing multiple ownership caps per market.
Dereg has very much enhanced the variety of formats. Just look at 1980 format choices and today's. Just in one segment, Spanish language, LA had two different Spanish language formats in 1980 and today there are 10.
