TV personalities anchoring radio news

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Information without context is simply noise. The role of media was as a filter for all the noise and as an aggregator of information. The most important function of the media, especially with so much more information available, is to sort the important from the mundane, and to scrutinize what's presented as "fact" in order to determine its veracity.

I think the classic example of what you have defined are the small town stations here and there a number of years ago decided that hiring a news person was expensive. Affordable was installing a spare amplifier down at city hall, ordering in a phone loop, and broadcast the council meeting live. No commentary. No interpretation. Just the raw, bloody meeting, guts and all. (I use such a graphic description because those broadcasts were really that bad!)

Today, where I live, the cable system does much the same thing.... with pictures.

Without a mentor sitting at your side, you have little understanding of what is going on.

Even worse are broadcasts of a Zoning Committee meeting. Y.... a... w.. n.

 

[Lee Rust]

It's a happy new year again. The broadcast radio medium is one more orbit further away from those halcyon days that were so golden for so many of us.

They're not coming back. It's time to think different.

There is a future for radio. It just isn't the past.

I agree that the integration of audio broadcast services with other electronic media is a natural thing, but we must not forget that the greatest strength of broadcast is that it is NOT online.

We tend to lose track of the fact that the internet is very new. Right now it is about where broadcasting was in 1934. The galloping pioneer days are past and the reins are starting to be pulled in. Soon, the choicest parkland of the online world will have a fence around it and the gatekeepers will only let you in to play if you pay. That's when the free-range media like broadcast will find their new places in the sun. They may not be the top spots anymore, but the territory will be worth developing and holding.

In the meantime, broadcasters are indeed in an awkward transitional phase, but this is the time to experiment with new ideas. The online information glut that Roxalot mentions is one such opportunity. How about radio programming that reviews a daily or hourly selection of any or all types of online material; music, blogs, videos, news or opinion? Many listeners would appreciate that kind of service, so that they might always have a fresh site to check out when they got home or settled down with their iPad. There would certainly never be any shortage of material to work with, the selection could be tailored to any audience or locale, and the on-air content would integrate perfectly with a station's on-line presentation. All it would take would be a few geeks with laptops in a room with a microphone connected to a transmitter.

Just one possibility.

Hmmm...

 

[Paul_Warren]

...How about radio programming that reviews a daily or hourly selection of any or all types of online material; music, blogs, videos, news or opinion? Many listeners would appreciate that kind of service, so that they might always have a fresh site to check out when they got home or settled down with their iPad...

KSL here in Salt Lake City, currently promoting itself as "Utah's FM Talk Station" but also still simulcasting on a 50-clear signal at 1160 AM, was one of the stations from which CC pulled Hannity, and responded with a local show called "The Browser" from 1-3pm. I wondered if this wouldn't be A.D.D. Radio, and it's taken a few weeks to find its way, but there may be something here. The execution on KSL sounds kinda small-market, and it'll be interesting to see how it scores by Spring.

I've felt for a while now that the "freedom from the gatekeepers" offered by the internet would lose some of its appeal when end-users realized there isn't enough time in a day to keep up, let alone sort the wheat from the chaff. There may be a whole new set of liners out there, along the lines of, "We read a thousand Tweets a day so you don't have to!"