The state of radio

[qid937]

QID: Administration has nothing to do with it. In fact, it was Clintoon (intentional) who signed the 1996 dereg bill. If anything we have the Dems to blame for this.

BTW, after I heard a jock in Birmingham do a break that literally consisted of "That was Fergie on 103-7 The Q. For your chance to win free concert tickets go to 103 7 the q dot com" I literally wheeled into Circuit City and bought a XM receiver. I love it. There are so many channels that I would never get around here, not to mention MLB and SEC sports. I'm not going to say that I will never listen to free radio again but it certainly won't be as much.

Your pretty short sighted there Jonathan. As I recall there was a GOP controlled Congress at the time that sent that bill to the White House. Clinton could have vetoed, but it would have only taken 2/3 of Congress to over ride. It would not have been that hard of a feet to accomplish, espcially considering all the money coming in from Low Rent and the numerous CC tied groups waiting to merge, consolidate and f--- radio programming.

 

[jo-nathan]

QID: If I recall correctly (and please consider that this is over 10 years ago), he didn't even try to fight it but I'll admit tha I could be wrong (please correct me if I am). Sure, the veto would have probably have been overridden but he could have at least tried. Butthat's another thread.

 

[pobryan]

I need to get in on this thread! First, my 15 year old daughter was in the room the other night while I was listening to a few old air checks back in the day. This is her comment: Everybody knows that radio was better back then." Wow! I do have to admit, she has grown up with my critical mouth in the car listening to radio. But still, "everybody know...." It's not just the BIG companies who own 900+ stations. There are simply too many stations today!! We're all to blam. We all wanted to own a radio station. What did the FCC do? Well, let's see... docket 80-90 opened a few thousand signals. Back in the day there were class A, B & C stations. Now we have A B, B1, C, C0, C1, C2, C3 etc etc etc... not to mention low power, translators etc... We wanted a station and many of us got one. I owned a couple myself. My first was an A and I made it a C3 and cluttered the dial a little more. We've come too far to go back. We now have tons of other media outlets to compete with along with a gazillion stations. If you're like me and can't stand flat music with no punch, buy an Omnia 6 and plug your IPOD into it. That's my answer! I wish I could find an old Optimod and a pair of prizims. It still sounds better than anything out there... but that's a whole other thread.

 

[CatFM]

Right on, pobryan! Good radio is still available for those of us who are willing and able to make it ourselves, even if we are the only ones who end up hearing it. I have a home studio with a big board and a rack of processing gear that sounds better than most of the small stations I worked for in the early days. You would be amazed at what you can find on eBay! It wouldn't surprise me to see some former jocks get an LPFM license and get back on the air locally. A lot of them could turn out a better sounding product than their local commercially operated competition.

 

[qid937]

I'm personally not so sure the opening of more frequncies had more to do with the state of radio. Consider if the old ownership caps were still in place it would equate to more slices of pie. Now if everyone did have there own station, I think with the ownership limitations, that more time and quality could have been poured into molding the product. How well the station preformed would be pend on the markets acceptance or decline of the station, but I think the ensuring war between stations would have been good for listenership.