Now we’ve lost my local “Eastern Tennessee” board which I used to bookmark for things happening in my area and now it’s gone. This website is getting more useless everyday. These changes, combined with the loss of AllAccess a while back, makes it really impossible to keep up with national radio news. I guess if the industry is in decline, then news coverage about the industry will be in decline too.
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What happened?
- Thread starter passtheword
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The news coverage is on RadioInsight, whose proprietor now runs this site as well.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
I do not understand why it is such a big deal for people to accept the merging of many smaller regional subboards into the non-market specific area of each state's board.
Taking California as an example, since that is where I am based: The sub-regional boards there had so little traffic as independent boards that it is much easier to see the activity outside of the state's four large markets in one place rather than having to switch back and forth to read an incredibly low amount of posting traffic.
I have known Lance for decades now, and I know that he would not combine boards unless there was so little traffic as to make keeping them separate unjustifiable. There is no reason why the OP can't just bookmark the Tennessee state board instead and it would be little different than before. (IMHO.)
It’s great for some news, and I’ve subscribed to the Twitter feed, I mean X feed, for years. But it misses a lot of news, especially in smaller markets, that All Access used to report.
I know. It’s his toy and he can do what he wants with it. I’m just making my opinion known. By the way I’m surprised that he was asked to come here when he runs a competing board on the other website. But that’s none of my business. Carry on.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
That is more of a qualified lament about All Access shutting down than it is a reason to criticize the consolidation of lesser-traffic boards here.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
"Toy"???!!!???
And I do not believe, from your posts, that you understand the intertwined history of Radio Discussions and Radio Insight. At all.
Good Lord, it’s just an expression. Take it easy.
There hasn't been a message board on Insight for quite a while now. It's not a "competing" site at all. We're all working together now to create something that's relevant to radio as it exists in 2024 and beyond.
That includes combining boards that have had essentially zero traffic for years. That's the marketplace telling us there's no interest right now in much talk about, say, Fresno.
I strongly encourage bookmarking and using the "what's new" tab at the top of the site (desktop) or on the sidebar (mobile) - it's a good look at literally everything that people are posting on the site and a fun way to see where there ARE interesting discussions going on. It's still not a huge volume of traffic. And it gets us slowly away from the late-1990s model of individual market boards, instead opening up more general discussions that can still be tagged with specific markets or topics, which is the model that Lance is slowly working towards.
That includes combining boards that have had essentially zero traffic for years. That's the marketplace telling us there's no interest right now in much talk about, say, Fresno.
I strongly encourage bookmarking and using the "what's new" tab at the top of the site (desktop) or on the sidebar (mobile) - it's a good look at literally everything that people are posting on the site and a fun way to see where there ARE interesting discussions going on. It's still not a huge volume of traffic. And it gets us slowly away from the late-1990s model of individual market boards, instead opening up more general discussions that can still be tagged with specific markets or topics, which is the model that Lance is slowly working towards.
Thanks for the update. Admittedly I hadn’t visited the Radio Insight message boards in years and didn’t realize they were gone.
You didn't lose anything. The content was simply merged into the statewide board (there was no need for two slow boards with little participation). The bigger issue was the lack of participation in these smaller markets because as you said the industry is in decline too. That's a fact.
Guess what? Most of All Access' news in the past 5-10 years was first published by RadioInsight. I was the only national (and remain the only publication) not waiting for press releases to be sent and was actively seeking out news. In fact, we reported on a format change up in Elizabethton TN today.
I started this site when I was 17 years old and then had history rewritten to push me out. The RadioInsight boards haven't existed in almost a decade. You may follow my site on Twitter, but before questioning why I was the one asked to lead the new admin team, you should have at least done your research.
And I'll be honest. If it was fully up to me, I would combine EVERY board into one and change the operating structure to match the What's New feed. Radio is now a national operation and what happens in one market does in many cases portend to what happens everywhere else. There are very few thriving local markets. But that would be too much of a change for now at least.
I am aware of your accomplishments and don’t mean to make it sound like I’m minimalizing them. I appreciate all you have done. I’ve been following these boards since they were radio-info and even before then. But I somehow missed how you became reconnected with this board. Or maybe I just forgot. These things happen when you get old.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Excuse me? Where was there any combining of boards outside of any state? All that happened was low-traffic sub-boards for a state being combined into a single set of posts for a state, directly underneath the remaining boards for the larger markets in a state.
If Podunk, Iowa only generated enough posts (or, to use your term, "news") to appear a couple of times a month, it's not more difficult to find them amidst a dozen posts for the entire state of Iowa over that one month period ... especially since new threads will always be in boldface type until you first read them.
The state boards we combined were not used.
We're positioning this site for growth again. What worked in 2004 doesn't work in 2024. You have to evolve to stay relevant.
Remember, AllAccess "broadcast" a lot of straight press releases, which a message board does not do.
For that, you can subscribe to RadioInsight which is the best of the news sources. As costs go up and the user base declines, expect a lot of radio data sources to be subscription based in the future.
I'll make a statement here that should clarify a number of "objections" and "complaints".
I inherited this site from Frank Barry. I realized that both my technical skills and industry "connectedness" did not make me the ideal proprietor. I further noted that the changes in radio that made this year the first one since 1959 when I have not had a radio income were to a great extent beyond my knowledge and abilities.
So I looked for a person to take the site and move it to a better adaptation to today's radio environment: that person is Lance. And, I looked for moderators such as Fybush and Huff along with those I had already introduced to Frank like Michi to get a real team that complemented the skills of each member.
When I was a station owner or manager, I realized I was never going to be as good as the people I could hire in each department. So I had sellers, office managers, production people, engineers, program talents and the like who were all a lot better than I was... and they made me look good!
That is what I believe is happening with Radio Discussions now.
I am most pleased to see refocusing of boards and simplification of navigation as designed by Lance. The board is better now than ever! (And more redesign is coming, too!)
I've been on the board since 2009 (just made an account a few years ago) and I love the new board layout. If people want to find out about a station in Eastern Tenneessee, Western NY, etc. they can just use the search tool and look up the call letters to find any posts about it.
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