Re: [Swprograms] Digital radio news

["Scott Royall" <royall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Content. That's what it all comes down to. The content distributors
(stations, etc) do not perceive enough benefit in providing better content
for secondary streams. They're just bright enough to realize they might
someday so they stick junk on it as a placeholder. 

The real problem is that nobody has come up with an accurate and socially
acceptable method of measuring content consumption, ever. Nielson? Don't
make me laugh. I did say accurate, not voodoo sampling. Advertising has
reached such a feeding frenzy that content sponsors are starting to demand
the specific demographics of the audience consuming that particular
programming. Since there's still no measuring approach accurate enough to
placate advertisers, content distributors continue to be unaware who, if
anyone, is partaking of the secondary content.

Doesn't this situation all seem so very familiar? Think of SWBC 30 years
ago. Question is, how to avoid repeating that exodus? Distributors won't
keep those secondary streams lit forever without some sort of return.

-----Original Message-----
From: Swprograms [mailto:swprograms-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Rob de Santos
Sent: Friday, January 10, 2014 00:44
To: 'Shortwave programming discussion'
Subject: Re: [Swprograms] Digital radio news

Ted, it's not that there is anything wrong with services like Me-TV or
Antenna TV per se. I occasionally get some amusement out of watching old
shows myself.
It's simply that after nearly 43 months, the station has yet to come up with
**anything** better to put on the sub-channel. 

Moreover, there probably isn't a major market where those services and
similar ones don't dot the sub-channels landscape. Not because they get
ratings, they don't (they don't generate enough viewers that Nielsen will
even bother rating them). They are there because station programmers can't
figure out what to put there that significant numbers will watch. 

For that matter, my cable provider (TWC) stuffs the cable feeds up in the
990's above the music channels where nobody will find them unless they
accidentally go down from the HD channels. With a few exceptions, such as
MHz in Washington, DC the HD sub-channels are a wasteland. Ask yourself, if
they gave any of us on this thread a channel to program, what could we come
up with to put there? I'm betting 9 out of 10, it's not Me-TV. 

--
-Rob de Santos


-----Original Message-----
From: Swprograms [mailto:swprograms-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
Ted S.
Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2014 9:50 PM
To: Shortwave programming discussion
Subject: Re: [Swprograms] Digital radio news

On Thu, 9 Jan 2014 21:16:41 -0500, in shortwave you wrote:

> Two examples of this come to mind. A few months before the digital 
> changeover I had a meeting with an executive at one of the Columbus TV 
> stations. Ostensibly, I was there to talk sports programming and 
> promotion. I asked him: "so what is W***-TV going to do with their 
> sub-channels?" Answer: "We have no idea so we'll probably just 
> temporarily fill it with old shows and news feeds for now." Three and 
> a half years on, "temporarily" is now "permanently" and this is a 
> locally owned and well-run station.

One of my other interests is game shows, and I'm a member of an internet
board dedicated to game shows, both new and old.  There's a substantial
percentage of the membership there that likes the nostalgia TV channels like
Me-TV and Antenna TV.

I also like having a digital sub-channel that cycles through various
weather/radar maps, which I find particularly useful any time there's a
thunderstorm and I don't really want to fire up the computer, or a heavy
enough snow storm that I worry about the satellite internet getting blocked.

--
Ted Schuerzinger
fedya at hughes dot net

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