Re: [IRCA] Radio Needs to Serve Listeners...Not Wall Street

[Mike Pietruk <pietruk@xxxxxxxxx>]

Tim

I tend to agree with you.  What many of us fail to recognize is that radio 
"as it was" wouldn't serve today's consumer.
Note that I use the word "consumer" rather than "listener" because today's 
world has far more information alternatives than it did in the heyday of 
AM.
Also, the local advertiser which was the mainstay of many radio operations 
simply don't exist today.
There are actually many efficiencies achieved by the conglomerate 
operations in many markets and the avoidance of dupplication of services.
Moreover, TV, cable, the internet, satellite, et al compete and often 
bring about more efficient and timely delivery of information.
What works better:

sitting around an hour for a baseballscore or going to www.usatoday.com

during a snowstorm, listening to 235 school closing listings or checking 
the station's web page

Listening to a static filled signal from 250 miles away or a clear 
fm-quality like one via the net

And I could go on and on.

Sure, there are examples of local full-service stations around that 
program themselves for a good part of the day.  A major market one is WGN 
chicago (www.wgnradio.com).
A smaller market one is WJBC, Bloomington, IL (www.wjbc.com).
WJBC, incidentally, through its sister website of www.wjbc2.com is doing 
some exclusive web content such as live play-by-play not available on its 
over-the-air signal.

Find a way for old-fashioned full-service radio to be profitable, and 
you'll have more of it.
Because it isn't profitable, you have less of it.
And I'd wager that the average person could care less as alternate sources 
of info does it better.
It's faster to get the current temperature from the Weather Channel screen 
than radio.

In many ways, contemporary radio isn't as good as it once was.  But in 
many other ways, thanks to technology, it is much better with actually 
more choices with many of those choices
no longer limited by signal strength.


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