Either: Stop putting News/Talk/Sports on FM (because there's a lack of coverage) (it's not difficult for someone to push AM on their car stereo. Stop the national programming, hire local people for radio. bring formats that are needed back to the area and do it right and customize it for the people. Or. do all the same except if it's going to have to be bringing music formats back to AM radio then that's fine. This economy is tough but it's not hard to freeze someone's pay. Who cares if they do well in the ratings, and they're nationally syndicated? The cost of Voice Tracking i'm sure is low but I bet paying a person to be on the radio is slightly more economically feasible. If someone that you're paying is doing great and refuses to take a pay freeze, fire them,you could hire someone local and better, you may not pay them as much as the other person but it will be hiring someone who needs a job. This situation we are in isn't that difficult to fix-America has been through these hard times before and we made it through-now go do it again.
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What Radio Needs to Do
- Thread starter XCountry285
- Start date
I had a grunch but the eggplant over there.
Simple, have the fcc rules revert to they way they were back in 1975...and give large corporations one year to divest there stations, or lose them. Now, for you youngsters who are wondering how the rules were differant back in 1975...here is the way things used to be:
1) All on-air people needed a fcc license and pass a simple test (mostly rules and power formulas) for it, this was the third class license with broadcast endorsement. and all engineers also had to pass an engineering test (first class license), also ALL stations had to have at least one licensed engineer on staff. plus jocks around the clock to take meter readings.
2) Require that corporations follow the old 7-7-7 rules, which stated any single corporation could ONLY own 7am stations, 7 fm stations and 7 tv stations MAX nationwide, and no more than 1am, 1fm and 1 tv in ANY SINGLE MARKET. This would return us to the days when kids received training and built their skills at small market station and worked their way up to bigger markets as they got better. (not to mention return the 50,000+ jobs that were eliminated when the 7-7-7 rules was done away with by the fcc). This rule also would mean that you would have (in a major market) about 30 seperate owners, instead of 3 or 4 like today, thus causing the stations to really have to compete for listeners, and bring the stations power back to programmers and talent instead of sales and gm's where it exists today.
3) do away with all the little low power stations and such..loosen up the frequencies again.
Doing these three things would create tens of thousands of jobs, bring back the old style radio trainings grounds for talent, create a basis for wealth again for talent, and give life to our business that is now almost dead.
1) All on-air people needed a fcc license and pass a simple test (mostly rules and power formulas) for it, this was the third class license with broadcast endorsement. and all engineers also had to pass an engineering test (first class license), also ALL stations had to have at least one licensed engineer on staff. plus jocks around the clock to take meter readings.
2) Require that corporations follow the old 7-7-7 rules, which stated any single corporation could ONLY own 7am stations, 7 fm stations and 7 tv stations MAX nationwide, and no more than 1am, 1fm and 1 tv in ANY SINGLE MARKET. This would return us to the days when kids received training and built their skills at small market station and worked their way up to bigger markets as they got better. (not to mention return the 50,000+ jobs that were eliminated when the 7-7-7 rules was done away with by the fcc). This rule also would mean that you would have (in a major market) about 30 seperate owners, instead of 3 or 4 like today, thus causing the stations to really have to compete for listeners, and bring the stations power back to programmers and talent instead of sales and gm's where it exists today.
3) do away with all the little low power stations and such..loosen up the frequencies again.
Doing these three things would create tens of thousands of jobs, bring back the old style radio trainings grounds for talent, create a basis for wealth again for talent, and give life to our business that is now almost dead.
The whole notion that the radio is the only way to enjoy one type of music or another individual station by station is absurd. We need a return to FULL SERVICE RADIO FORMATS.
Whether David, David, The Big A, (I'm not picking on you three either)or any of the other's believe it or not. Radio just might make a lot more money than they do now. The times I enjoyed KNBR and the other big AM's in "Frisco" was when they catered to all of us not just a select few! The PPM be darned! LOL...LOL...LOL! Remember the Term is "BROADCASTING" The owner's and programmer's need to grow a set or two or three and open their eyes and quit letting the CEO's (I know, "FAT" Chance) run away with all the money! Which is what is really happenning and ya all know it too! The time has come to break the mold and make a few new models. Take a chance and lets have a new day in Radio not just in America! lol...lol...lol. Remember to Vote in June! lol lol...get it?
Whether David, David, The Big A, (I'm not picking on you three either)or any of the other's believe it or not. Radio just might make a lot more money than they do now. The times I enjoyed KNBR and the other big AM's in "Frisco" was when they catered to all of us not just a select few! The PPM be darned! LOL...LOL...LOL! Remember the Term is "BROADCASTING" The owner's and programmer's need to grow a set or two or three and open their eyes and quit letting the CEO's (I know, "FAT" Chance) run away with all the money! Which is what is really happenning and ya all know it too! The time has come to break the mold and make a few new models. Take a chance and lets have a new day in Radio not just in America! lol...lol...lol. Remember to Vote in June! lol lol...get it?
We need to take a step back and see what the industry is truly facing. It would be a lie to say radio is doing well. Radio is currently losing the battle against digital media, specifically Pandora and Spotify. It is time people here also admitted that Spotify and similar services are not only capable of competing with radio, but can and are replacing radio. These services are capable of being the sole source for music for a subscriber. It is time to stop living in a world of "no one is going to tell me what to do" and instead look at what will continue to make radio viable in the coming years.
Radio is broken.
Radio is broken.
Casey said:
Other than playing music, there is no similarity at all between radio and digital media. There's no similarity in transmission, regulation, nor in content. Spotify & Pandora are fine ways to listen to songs you already know you want to hear. It's like a cloud service. That's not what radio does. My view is that there is an audience for both, and I've found that most people who use digital media also use radio. It's not a one-or-the-other thing. Most of the major radio companies are investing in similar digital services, so it's obvious they've got a plan for the future.
RadioStarOne said:
As I posted in the San Francisco KCNL thread:
To quote The Bard, "...full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
(I skipped the prior four words...)
That's quite a rant. How about some specific examples of things being done wrong and suggestions of specific actions that could be taken to make "a lot more money."
You might use some specific stations to illustrate either the good or the bad or the ugly.
ruger22com said:
Here's the simple reason why the FCC got rid of the 3rd class licenses: Too many stations, too expensive for them to issue.
Docket 80-90 increased the number of stations on the air. All of a sudden, what used to be a small agency, the FCC, was unable to handle all the paperwork the new radio stations created. Ronald Reagan cut domestic agency budgets, and so they had to cut back on regulation. Given the current climate, with politicians of both parties falling over themselves to cut government spending, I don't expect to see any re-regulation happening any time soon.
RadioStarOne said:
The thing about full service radio stations is they were built in the day when there were only a few stations per town, so a station had to be all things to all people. So they'd play all kinds of music, do local news, sports, and then run ethnic music shows on Sunday afternoon. That's what full service meant. What killed full service was the FM explosion in the 70s, followed by docket 80-90. That led to niche format radio. We can't go back to full service because attention spans and tolerance simply isn't as great as it used to be.
The only way for radio to make more money now is to find another source of revenue besides advertising. Because advertising doesn't provide enough money to cover the costs.
TheBigA said:
Also equipment became smarter and more reliable, not needing constant supervision. Transmitters today have microprocessors that can do much more than the average operator could, and they can even call the engineer who can, by IP, make most diagnostics and corrections... or change to the auxiliary transmitter.
Most FCC licensed "first ticket" holders knew just enough to be dangerous. I can recall when one of them miscalibrated the DA phase monitor at a station in a DC suburb, took bad readings and then decided to correct them by tuning the phaser. It cost thousands to fix the damage.
TheBigA said:
You are right. There are not very many similarities. But I would argue that it doesn't matter. If Spotify can convince people to listen to Spotify playlists or even their rather poor quality radio feature instead of a real radio station, then they can effectively compete. It all depends on how Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, etc. can market their products. They can't provide the local talent that radio can, nor the news, traffic reports, community announcements, etc. Neither can Pandora. And they probably never will. But if they can convince people who mainly listen to radio for the music to use their service and listen to that instead of radio, then they are directly competing with radio without even being remotely similar.
Spotify is trying very hard to make themselves the sole music destination. They are modifying their radio features extensively to try to combat with Pandora and radio in general and have an API to accelerate subscriber growth and add features. They should not be underestimated. Their sneaky Facebook partnership has accelerated their growth and now they want to take on everyone.
Casey said:
No, it doesn't. People generally can consume only one entertainment medium or source at a time (although plenty of us watch TV and use the Internet at the same time...) which means that if you are using Pandora, you are not using a radio station.
The name does not matter... radio, streaming, alternative media. It all occupies pieces of a person's time.
It's strange that I do not see gaming listed as a competitor for radio. We all worry about the Web, but the last CES stats I saw showed something like 130 million game consoles or devices supposedly "active" in the US. I find it hard to think of someone playing WOW or GTA while listening to the radio... or watching TV... or web browsing, unless they want their personal avatar or character shot or offed...
I think radio ought to be more concerned with time slices than whether Pandora is radio or not.
Spotify sounds like a business to insert spots into audiostreams.
The radio should always worry that it's not some other thing.
The pine tree can't stand the fact that it's not a Blue Jay?
It's not a bird; throw it and eat it.
Squizzem. Squizzem Frankie, Squizzem more.
Spray these spicy splitpulses already.
Who gwine spray all these splitpulses?
Regulate 'em, sure..
How bout we just play that everything is freemarket like Italy?
The radio should always worry that it's not some other thing.
The pine tree can't stand the fact that it's not a Blue Jay?
It's not a bird; throw it and eat it.
Squizzem. Squizzem Frankie, Squizzem more.
Spray these spicy splitpulses already.
Who gwine spray all these splitpulses?
Regulate 'em, sure..
How bout we just play that everything is freemarket like Italy?
N
nocomradio
Guest
Personally, and this is just an opinion, I believe radio will always be around. I don't think its going to totally evaporate and become consumed by the other media out there. Take a look at television. Its been around for somewhere on the order of 65 years give or take and it is still very much a useful tool. How many changes has it been thorough though? It certainly isn't what it was in the beginning, or even just 15-20 years ago. It's had to change. But its still around and still competitive with things like online streaming and DVD rentals on every corner.
I like being able to stream and pull up MP3 files in an instant, and have it my way, but those sources don't provide me things like a traffic report, or what is going on locally if say there is a huge accident clogging the Interstate, or a tornado alert. Sure, I can go and search for them on my smart phone, or PC, but it isn't the same. Plus, when I am driving, I really don't want to fiddle with some device to get what I want or need when the same spot in the dash provides that within reach and without even needing to take my eyes off the road. Plus, don't forget, it is a very large country we live in here in the US, and while the coasts seem to get all the attention, there are so many small towns and cities in between that need radio and it serves those places quite well in my experience.
I like being able to stream and pull up MP3 files in an instant, and have it my way, but those sources don't provide me things like a traffic report, or what is going on locally if say there is a huge accident clogging the Interstate, or a tornado alert. Sure, I can go and search for them on my smart phone, or PC, but it isn't the same. Plus, when I am driving, I really don't want to fiddle with some device to get what I want or need when the same spot in the dash provides that within reach and without even needing to take my eyes off the road. Plus, don't forget, it is a very large country we live in here in the US, and while the coasts seem to get all the attention, there are so many small towns and cities in between that need radio and it serves those places quite well in my experience.
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