With the new line of FM talkers becoming a recent trend, it should be noted the the recent numbers in Salt Lake City show 97.5 KFMS, home of Mancow, O'Reilly (stolen from KSL), local hot talker Tom Barberi, Jerry Doyle, Savage (stolen from KNRS), and Humphries, shows a big goose egg in 12+ and not much better in the big talk demos. With plenty of decent AM signals in the market, seems like FM talk should be reserved for the FreeFM variety (which I think should be expanded) and stations in markets with no good AMs (like Pittsburgh with WGPB), not for every stooge operator (cough, Bonneville) who thinks being on FM will instantly turn their Geritol-craving audience into candidates for trips to Cabo.
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When FM talk goes too far
- Thread starter ajhenderson
- Start date
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fred flintstone
Guest
Why "should"?Even under the best of circumstances, AM sounds poor and is always prone to interference.The vast majority of the radio audience won't-doesn't-can't listen to AM radio and the smaller portion that will-does-can tends to skew old.News, talk and news-talk formats also skew old. Do they skew old because they are on AM or are they on AM because they skew old? Chicken and egg.Putting a talk show for boomers on FM won't guarantee a young audience; but any talk show on AM will not get a young audience. (Except sports talk - guys will put up with static.)It's time to let go of the AM band. It has outlived it's usefulness.Music formats on FM also have a limited shelf-live. Satellite radio is a better way to deliver canned, personality-free music formats devoid of local content. Personalities and local are the only reason to keep terrestrial radio (including FM) going.Broadcasting (we play what we want, when we want and everybody goes by our schedule) will be put out of business by emerging on-demand technology - except for something that needs to be live and interactive, like news and talk (and yes, some people can and will listen later, too).Times change. Wireless audio media need to change, too.
Don't kid yourself on satradio... with your aforementioned wireless technologies, no one needs XM to tell them what to listen to just like they don't need Kiss or Mix to do the same.The AM band has been proven in many cases to bring in listeners still breathing on their own when content is there. Glenn Beck is the #1 talk show among listeners 25-54 in terms of CPM, and he's mostly on AM stations. Laura Ingraham, whose on 35 FMs (and a few pretty good ones) never too well in anything under 35-64. Tom Leykis has gotten 7 and 8 shares among men 18-34 and men 25-54 in markets where he'd never been on FM. And of course sports does well.While I do agree that the crop of new AMs that have come along in recent years will fade into obscurity with 24/7 brokered and ethnic formats, there is still plenty of use for good AM facilities.
Not to mention the fact that in emergency situations, AM's all you've got!
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fred flintstone
Guest
Huh? Bad weather. Storms blow down AM towers as easily as FM towers. Power outages. AM and FM both run on electricity.If you put news and talk on FM (as has already happened in some markets), people get trained to go to an FM station in an emergency.
Yes, but AM stations travel further at night due to skywave. FM stations do not. If you kill off the AM band, there will be no stations for anyone to turn to if all their locals are off the air.And secondly, O'Reilly is a blowhard who can't do anything without some part of the purpose for it being the inflation of his own ego. Those types don't generally get good ratings, no matter where they stand on issues.fred flintstone said:
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fred flintstone
Guest
You've made the arguement for:Josh C. said:
- Local news and weather channels on satellite radio (which the NAB has blocked, so far).
- Shutting down most AM stations and restricting the AM band to Class I-A stations operating on clear channel stations at 50kw (or more) to provide a dependable and interference-free ground and sky wave. Currently, most AM stations can't even provide decent nighttime coverage to their city of license (and the surrounding metro area) let alone provide useful regional coverage.
The case for local satellite channels is a nice one, but A) the satellite companies don't have the subscriber base to afford it yet, and B) are they actually going to broadcast from the city they're reporting on, or are they just going to rip 'n' read from their headquarters? I happen to agree with the NAB on this one.Secondly, I'm all for a cleanup of the AM band, but not to the point that we're only stuck with regionals and clears. I'd start by looking at all the short-spaced stations in each market. Relocating them on the dial or deleting them altogether would be the only two options, preferably deletion being the default action. Then we go by power according to market size (geographically). There would be one simple question to determine how much power the stations in a given market can run on: can they make do with 500 watts, day and night, on an ideally clean AM band and cover the entire market with a listenable signal (which would obviously have to be set by signal strength)? If so, that's how much power they get. Then 1kW. Then 5kW. Then 10. Then 20. All the way up to 50kW. Those already operating at 50kW 24/7 would be grandfathered in regardless of market size (none of this 50kW daytime operation crap).That should clean up interference and leave room for plenty of stations in each market regardless of size. Resetting the whole band may take a lot of work, but it would be better than just shutting the whole thing down.
Well, Philip, we're not going to get into another debate about how bad conservative talk is, but O'Reilly was on KSL up until he was on KFMS. Now, I never said KFMS should get ratings, but it seems some here think throwing talk on FM is the greatest thing ever, regardless of lineup.Hint: standardbearer for your cause libtalk, Ed Schultz, also lasted all of 6 minutes on KSL. He wasn't cancelled for dismal ratings either. Let's be fair.
It is currently in XM and Sirius' FCC license that they must offer all their content to the entire nation. They cannot do local radio.Josh C. said:
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fred flintstone
Guest
Thanks to the lobbying power (and dollars) of the NAB, which has worked to stifle any possible competition or threat to established broadcasting interests since the 30s.livingfruitvirus said:
Of course, they already do local traffic. They already rebroadcast local stations. It's amazing what you can do with smart lawyers.No, it's amazing what you can do when you're willing to make your music channels sound like &*#! by cramming extra bandwidth for stations designed for 5% of the subscriber base. Regional talk channels? People don't get satradio for the talk to begin with, let alone for talk that only matters 2,000 miles from their home.
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