Don, thanks (I think). Despite its MANY warts, TR has advantages over "widecast" formats such as sat or i'net radio. But those benefits are only for the local listener. If "Joe Local" doesn't care about a watermain out on Central Avenue, or who the Podunk Panthers are playing Friday night, or what time the local March of Dimes "Walk" kicks off, the widecasters make sense, especially, like Bounce says above, TR fade certainly is a problem.
Bounce, I see from your profile you're in Ft. Worth, the #5 radio market in America. I'm right on the edge of both market #s 19 + 34, so I know what "Bigger Market" radio sounds like. Crash Cash perfectly describes it in his post in relation to Market #34, Orlando. Yep, CC, I know each one of the stations you mentioned and pretty much, all they have become are Corporate Clones of every Clear Channel, Cox and Infinity stations in the country. Even their freakin' websites all look the same! :blink:
this is a big market. it's messed up. it's my exposure to TR so i can't speak for mom-and-pop shops.
Which is, I'm sure, 100% true, and just as much, truly a shame, because there ARE companies, like the one I work for, that SUPERserve their audiences, although mom-and-pop shops might be an oversimplification. My company, for example, operates 21 stations from Providence, Rhode Island, to Burlington, Vermont, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Norwhich/New London, Connecticut, to Lakeland, Florida. The company is closing in on 50 years in business, but has been able to sustain, even grow, because all 21 stations are "local" stations. When I joined the company 25 years ago, there were 5 stations in the chain. Adding another 16 in a quarter century speaks well for this mom-and-pop shop.
The corporate homogenization of radio is what's killing it, not the empty-headed, blathering DJs, the political biases, spot loads and tight playlists, or the emergence of non-traditional radio from satellites or the internet.
For example, as I noted earlier, "my" radio market, Lakeland/Winter Haven, is market #94. I think I said earlier in the thread it was #98, but I just checked
Arbitron's market rankings and discovered we'd moved up. Combined, the Tampa and Orlando radio markets total 4 million listeners. My little pissant market is 500,000 listeners, directly between, and receiving signals from, two top 35 radio markets, yet our anchor station, facing that kind of "broadcasting power" has been the #1 station in the market for over 30 years. It hasn't been the music, talent or playlists that made and kept us #1, it IS that our station is also
our listener's station.
As the "iPod Shufflers" age and become the preeminent consumers, this may change...but I assure you, terrestrial radio will "not go lightly into that good night." Apologies to Dylan Thomas.
Oh, and a couple of final notes.....
Feel no need returning to Sirius, I prefer local blabbermouths on air like RadioHowie; looking forward to listening to RH 3/13!
Don, I'm not on the air much, anymore. I got kicked "upstairs" a long time ago. Other than local high school football broadcasts, which is MUCH more fun than college or pro ball, and an occasional visit to a couple of our morning shows as "Captain Happy" (I used to be "Grumpy Old Man") I am not a regular "air talent". I did enough of that in the first 30 years of my radio career. The last 13 years in the biz have been in operations, as in, keeping the fuckers on the air.
