Things you don't hear on the radio anymore

[Greg Goodfellow]

Yes on the Sunday church services. Small-town (very, very small town) radio still does this. KMGK 107.1 Glenwood MN has more than one church service on Sunday. In Clay Center KS, KCLY-100.9 even airs Gaither Homecoming AND Adventures in Odyssey on Sunday mornings! They might be the only commercial FM that airs Odyssey, the long-time children's drama produced by Focus on the Family. Two Lutheran church services too.

Agriculture updates are a part of the regular broadcast day on many MN, IA, and MO rural FMs. But not in the Yakima area...where we have a LOT of agriculture. Even the TV news doesn't broadcast the closing markets and we have tons of alfalfa, vegetable, hop, and apple fields, besides a lot of cow farms too, you'd think the cattle prices would be a given. Toppenish has a large livestock auction house. When my grandmother was still alive, she would often take goats down there to sell.

Brokered financial programming is still aired on a lot of news/talk stations on weekends.

Remote broadcasts still happen to some extent in my market, but they are mostly promoting a sale at a business, or they are at the Vintiques or fair.

Community calendar? Thing of the past. Facebook replaced that. But Positive Life Radio still airs 15 second community PSAs during the breaks, locally-inserted for each station. Church events and park/rec. events for the most part.

This is why I am taping small-town FM stations via their webstreams, because once the owners die or EMF gives them that sweet offer, the local news and local programming is gone forever. They are an endangered species thanks to streaming.

I'll add...*effective* PSAs. Most of them are bland nowadays. Yes, I'm talking to you, Ad Council. McGruff the Crime Dog and WE PREVENT had some excellent PSAs in the '90s on gun violence. Did Partnership for a Drug-Free America use the 'Brain on Drugs' as a radio PSA too? I'm not sure.

At least two of the stations in a local three-station group air church services.

 

[Kelly A]

Here's what I miss: Locally owned department stores, grocery stores, hardware stores, and electronics stores. Before the national big box chains and Amazon put them all out of business. They all used to advertise on the radio, and their money paid a lot of local people. Now there's not as much ad money, so we can't hire as many people. There's a reason why radio has changed, and it's because everything else has changed.

Here's another thing I miss: People actually talking to other people face to face instead of posting on message boards.

I agree, except the last sentence. Somehow I doubt you would ever speak with any of us here face to face.

 

[Ed Nielson]

This one is TV, not radio, but when is the last time you heard "Film at 11"?

 

[Oldie919]

I always thought it would be cool to reinstate Walter Winchell's "Let's go to press......" for an opening line of a TV news program...!!
"Mr. and Mrs. America and all ships at sea......." would be happy, I'll bet!!

 

[radiofan2023]

I always thought it would be cool to reinstate Walter Winchell's "Let's go to press......" for an opening line of a TV news program...!!
"Mr. and Mrs. America and all ships at sea......." would be happy, I'll bet!!

All the 95 year old viewers would love to hear that….