You're right...for breaking local news, your local news/talker is the ideal outlet...professionals
uncovering and quickly delivering accurate news......except...
it costs so much to operate a real live local newsie, that most stations that call themselves
news/talk are 90 percent off the bird...it's more cost effective...some stations don't even
have board-ops to babysit...they might hire one live personality in the afternoon--M-F...MAYBE.
I recall ten years ago, a pretty good sized earthquake hit my region...a big deal, actually for
a small market...too bad it happened on a sunday morning...we had to read about it in the
monday newspaper.
These days, we marvel at a wonderful job turned in by the one or two stations that interrupt
network programming to cover big breaking news...That used to bother me, but in reality, times
have changed...we can get live updates on a smartphone anywhere, anytime...the drawback ?
do you always trust the source of something you read on line ?
Radio saw this coming...the extra competition...instead of meeting the challenge
and adapting -- we chose to hide our head in the sand...