The definition of "corporate ownership" isn't that important to the discussion,it's the corporate MENTALITY that is/or has killed local radio. The idea that we are here to only maximize profits and not serve the listening public that began when deregulation began and ownwers were allowed more than 1AM/1FM/1TV in a given market......Greed(and not service) is the primary motivating factor for owners...they are no longer "guardians of the airwaves."
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The Rest Of The East Tennessee Market is Dead ...apparently
- Thread starter SpeakIngles
- Start date
I don't know if I agree with that, simply because I knew of many stations that signed off (even with 24 hour licenses) in this market because it was cheaper than hiring an overnight board op, or the many examples I gave.
Small town mentality pinches as many pennies and probably more than a corporation ever would.
I'm back to being presented with cliches.
Small town mentality pinches as many pennies and probably more than a corporation ever would.
I'm back to being presented with cliches.
Yes, but the early sign off stations were locally owned.
You are seeing the Light of Dawn....the corporate mentality.not corporate ownership,but corporate MENTALITY,that is and has ruined braidcasting....the chase of the almighty dollar at the expense of the local listener who my need a wx report b4 going to work at 430AM......You have finally seen the light.....Congratulations!!!
We're talking Semantics here, but I just don't know if the mentality you speak of is best called "Corporate."
Now I get it. Community service. You want 'JCW to do hog reports. "Les Nesman-WKRP, winner of Ohio newshawk award" yadda yadda .......If there was a way to connect to the automation from a phone, weather reports on overnights might be possible. Ask Bob Gordon,he ran 'JCW's automation from his bedroom on weekends leaving me bound and gagged. Then I figured I wasn't needed anymore. I knew where the door was. woof!
Fame and fortune... well small portions of a fortune... await the person(s) who can figure out what the appropriate replacement today is for the "hog reports" parodied by Les Nessman. And once you figure that one out, we need a replacement for The Hospital Admissions Report, the School Cafeteria Menu Report, etc. etc.
It ain't rocket science. It's just radio.
It ain't rocket science. It's just radio.
You forgot the obituaries. Now thats big. The old folks pay big money and foam at the mouth to here that. Thats community service....
kd4rnc1964 said:You forgot the obituaries. Now thats big. The old folks pay big money and foam at the mouth to here that. Thats community service....
I'm unable to tell if you are serious or if you are "putting down" the dead people. (Intentional play on words!)
Small markets, rural markets do tend to contain an older demographic. If you are young and you live in a more urban area like Knoxville or Cookeville or the Kingsport-Bristol-Johnson City area broadcasting obits will likely seem quaint, strange and maybe distasteful. (For the young, even ATTENDING a funeral tends to be distasteful.)
Your community does not have a daily newspaper, or if the paper has poor circulation in the area outside the city limits, without radio obits the funeral is often over and body buried before people become aware of the event.
Churches and civic organizations in rural areas tend not to have a "well oiled" internal communication methodology. In the city it is more likely that churches and other organizations will have a phone tree organization or a committee that will see that such an event is communicated so that is why city dwellers tend to write off the idea of broadcasting obits.
Getting back to the original question and topic of this thread: If radio does not have SOMETHING that people want to hear, need to hear, (or can I say it...) dying to hear, why would they ever turn on any radio thus the (radio) market is eventually dead.
Here again, Younger people who dwell is groupings known as cities tend to be much more focused on MUSIC so radio in the last 50 years not only has been built on a foundation of music, but the walls and the roof have also been music.. If we sat down and made a spreadsheet listing every station in East Tennessee and then started putting check marks in columns to indicate what they program, what would we find? Music is 97% of the programming content? If the market is dead, that may be the cause of death.
Now: back to making a list of vitamin pills to keep our radio station alive. Tradio. obits, Police station news. Boy! We run out of inspiration quickly, don't we?
I'll buy that reading the obits on WEMB might make sense.
But if I may, I don't think this is the way to go for local content in the overall scheme of things.
Give you an example. Back in the 1980s when my family went to town a local radio station gave us a "welcome" to their community. Sounds nice- very homey- we'll tune in and stay tuned- right?
Not necessarily. We never heard our names on there. Not that we were listening in the first place, but think about this- you're catering to a grand total of ONE in your audience and nobody else cares.
That station was 91 Country- WJCW.
And you know- I think they have better served the community by going talk than this cutsie pie stuff that is along the lines of thinking of reading obits.
By going talk, we were able to get in tune with what the rest of the country was saying on talk shows. I might even say that since the hosts we were hearing were syndicated and supposedly the best of the best the country had to offer, the local talent had a new standard to live up to.
In terms of community, we were given a place to hear local issues and sports with Bill Meade.
This served the community, but in such a better way than the mindset of hog reports.
Now, we can discuss how well the talk shows do NOW with this. The sports talk shows discuss mostly national and University of Tennessee stuff and nothing that goes on in our community.
And when Phil Roe upset David Davis in the Congressional race last year, I was looking forward to tuning into "Thinking Out Loud" to hear about the political battle that made national news and was discussed the following Sunday on "Meet the Press."
Instead, I heard the hosts interview the public relations person for some Tomato Festival that would be held that weekend in Kingsport.
What this market needs is more of the "corporate thinking" of trying to get bigger while not forgetting where they are and covering the community events. And when I say cover- I mean COVER- not be a glorified public relations department.
And folks- hog reports ain't ever gonna be the way to get bigger and better.
But if I may, I don't think this is the way to go for local content in the overall scheme of things.
Give you an example. Back in the 1980s when my family went to town a local radio station gave us a "welcome" to their community. Sounds nice- very homey- we'll tune in and stay tuned- right?
Not necessarily. We never heard our names on there. Not that we were listening in the first place, but think about this- you're catering to a grand total of ONE in your audience and nobody else cares.
That station was 91 Country- WJCW.
And you know- I think they have better served the community by going talk than this cutsie pie stuff that is along the lines of thinking of reading obits.
By going talk, we were able to get in tune with what the rest of the country was saying on talk shows. I might even say that since the hosts we were hearing were syndicated and supposedly the best of the best the country had to offer, the local talent had a new standard to live up to.
In terms of community, we were given a place to hear local issues and sports with Bill Meade.
This served the community, but in such a better way than the mindset of hog reports.
Now, we can discuss how well the talk shows do NOW with this. The sports talk shows discuss mostly national and University of Tennessee stuff and nothing that goes on in our community.
And when Phil Roe upset David Davis in the Congressional race last year, I was looking forward to tuning into "Thinking Out Loud" to hear about the political battle that made national news and was discussed the following Sunday on "Meet the Press."
Instead, I heard the hosts interview the public relations person for some Tomato Festival that would be held that weekend in Kingsport.
What this market needs is more of the "corporate thinking" of trying to get bigger while not forgetting where they are and covering the community events. And when I say cover- I mean COVER- not be a glorified public relations department.
And folks- hog reports ain't ever gonna be the way to get bigger and better.
Well Pratte4life, I can certainly sense your enthusiasm and passion for what broadcasting should be doing. You and I have no need for a head-banging session like we see in some other threads for we are each looking at different markets, different circumstances. I don't think you could ever entice me to participate in a market like the Tri-cities with a basketful of stations. My brain is not wired to deal with "chaos" of trying to be a broadcaster in that kind of market. I have to hand that task to people like yourself who have a comfort level and a vision for a market like that.
With the exception of one thing, Erwin IS my kind of market. I would prefer to have a few more miles between my small market rather than sit as close to the bigger market. Whereas I would wake up in the middle of the night and reach for a notebook to write down one more idea to deal with the next day or the next week, I think you would find a station like WEMB a frustration rather than an opportunity.
I did a bittersweet thing two nights ago. Next Wednesday will be the anniversary many years ago of the day we threw the switch and put a brand new station on the air in my home town. The station is long gone. I wrote an essay about the August day and sent it to the hometown newspaper... in case to want to take not of the event. They probably will because it gives them an quiet, dignified way to remind people that the 100 year old newspaper just keeps plodding along, but the radio station couldn't make it. Before I hung it up, I worked for eight different stations that functioned a whole lot like Erwin. I worked for five different stations that looked a lot more like WJCW... two of them in a market of a million people.
I've had several years to look in from the outside and ask myself many times as I looked at how people run their radio stations of all sizes and types: "Why on the worst day of my life ever do what that station is doing. What ARE THEY THINKING?"
You have a trait that I never acquired. You have no doubt what should be done, and you can jump in and do it without hesitation. I spend too much time asking myself: Why are we doing this and what should we really be doing? Broadcasting needs some people like you and some people like me. Makes for interesting staff meetings and water cooler discussion.
I wish you the best. It would be neat to restart this conversation 20 years from now. Some of the issues we disagree on will be clearly decided by then... but not all of them.
And once again the question can be asked: Is the East Tennessee market dead?
With the exception of one thing, Erwin IS my kind of market. I would prefer to have a few more miles between my small market rather than sit as close to the bigger market. Whereas I would wake up in the middle of the night and reach for a notebook to write down one more idea to deal with the next day or the next week, I think you would find a station like WEMB a frustration rather than an opportunity.
I did a bittersweet thing two nights ago. Next Wednesday will be the anniversary many years ago of the day we threw the switch and put a brand new station on the air in my home town. The station is long gone. I wrote an essay about the August day and sent it to the hometown newspaper... in case to want to take not of the event. They probably will because it gives them an quiet, dignified way to remind people that the 100 year old newspaper just keeps plodding along, but the radio station couldn't make it. Before I hung it up, I worked for eight different stations that functioned a whole lot like Erwin. I worked for five different stations that looked a lot more like WJCW... two of them in a market of a million people.
I've had several years to look in from the outside and ask myself many times as I looked at how people run their radio stations of all sizes and types: "Why on the worst day of my life ever do what that station is doing. What ARE THEY THINKING?"
You have a trait that I never acquired. You have no doubt what should be done, and you can jump in and do it without hesitation. I spend too much time asking myself: Why are we doing this and what should we really be doing? Broadcasting needs some people like you and some people like me. Makes for interesting staff meetings and water cooler discussion.
I wish you the best. It would be neat to restart this conversation 20 years from now. Some of the issues we disagree on will be clearly decided by then... but not all of them.
And once again the question can be asked: Is the East Tennessee market dead?
Stud- that would be the definition of "death."
Somebody said this was a market that didn't cater to youth. Why is that?
I would submit that it is because the people running the stations are so set in their ways they aren't interested in developing the next new thing, or, worse yet, they are afraid of it. Getting a 2.0 or worse on FM is just fine- let's not try to develop something new.
Let me ask- in the past few years, who are the young "up and comers" in the market? And by this I do not mean someone manning a DJ shift for a few bucks and reading liners who is disposable.
I mean someone with a real impact.
I can think of only two- one being Matt Hill- who is more of a politician and had the advantage of his father owning the station he works on.
The other being Jay Sandos, the ETSU Play-by-Play announcer. And the struggles he had to make it to where he is are legendary.
So really, there is only one guy who has a name.
This is a market where the size indicates it would be a place where someone could come from ETSU or UT's broadcasting departments and grow.
Sadly, that is not the case.
Somebody said this was a market that didn't cater to youth. Why is that?
I would submit that it is because the people running the stations are so set in their ways they aren't interested in developing the next new thing, or, worse yet, they are afraid of it. Getting a 2.0 or worse on FM is just fine- let's not try to develop something new.
Let me ask- in the past few years, who are the young "up and comers" in the market? And by this I do not mean someone manning a DJ shift for a few bucks and reading liners who is disposable.
I mean someone with a real impact.
I can think of only two- one being Matt Hill- who is more of a politician and had the advantage of his father owning the station he works on.
The other being Jay Sandos, the ETSU Play-by-Play announcer. And the struggles he had to make it to where he is are legendary.
So really, there is only one guy who has a name.
This is a market where the size indicates it would be a place where someone could come from ETSU or UT's broadcasting departments and grow.
Sadly, that is not the case.
Uh, sorry guys, but coming from ETSU broadcasting dept. is not gonna happen with Citadel right in the middle of the market. Been there, done that. That's why the dude once known as "Mad Dog" gave it up. Ask Bud. He's been doing the same thing since the Rufus Hurt days. The only place he's "grown", is around the middle. Yes, he may be Promotions Director because nobody else want's to run JB&B. But, show some love to the kids at ETSU anyway. The best thing to do for an ETSU graduate is get the **** out of the Tri-Cities and don't work for Citadel or Clear Channel.
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