Ok, I’ll admit. I’ve never listened to the radio this early in the morning. So sue me.
It started when I turned on my stereo expecting to hear my beloved hard rock, when on comes talk radio. I checked everything, all was fine. It must’ve been a problem on their end. I skimmed through a few other stations and realized they were all off.
I got frustrated and called my rock station and told them they were broadcasting something that wasn’t even theirs. The DJ told me about how every station has to do it and it’s the law. Then he hung up.
My question is: What is the purpose of this? Was he just pulling my leg? (theyre known for not being serious) What about people who are awake at this time and wanna hear some tunes?
No, he was not lying, all (US) stations I have ever heard early on Sunday morning run local talk shows. In the interest of “serving the public”, US broadcasting stations have to devote a certain amount of time to “community service and issues”. -Or something like that. It’s actually a law, written somewhere. They can meet the requirement by running local talk shows, and they run them when listenership is lightest, which is early Sunday morning. For a long time, television stations had the same requirement, and did the same thing: run lame-o public-access/local issues talk shows early Sunday morning. Withthe advent of cable-TV I don’t know that this is still a requirement, but many still do it. - DougC
What do you mean by “they were all off”? They were signed off (not broadcasting anything)? They were all 10KHz off their broadcast frequency? They were all a bit nutty?
I don’t listen to radio much at all any more ever since I started walking to work, but when I did listen it was always fairly early and I never heard a station change its format, even for a few hours. What was the talk program about? Was it at least related to hard rock (say, an interview with Ozzy)?
If it was a talk program about local (to your community) issues, it might be related to the Free Radio Berkeley issue. Not that I’m following it very closely (or at all) but what I understand is that stations of the rich & powerful are giving up a certain amount of airtime to local small potatoes issues. Thus, they can claim that micropower broadcast stations don’t have anything to complain about when they say the Little People aren’t being given a voice on the airwaves.
In the United States, radio stations traditionally had to provide certain levels of community affairs programming. However, with the more recent telecommunications acts these requirements have been dropped, and commercial radio stations no longer have to provide any news or community affairs programming. (They aren’t even required to provide entertainment, either – it is perfectly legal to program 100% commercials. And what you described as a “talk show” may have been a disguised infomercial, commonly used for nutritional supplements).
However, radio stations are owned by business, and, perhaps shockingly, they are allowed to run community affairs programming any time they feel like it. So, even though it is not legally required, some stations persist in running from 1/2 to a full hour of community affairs programming each week. However, in view of the discomfort this causes many listeners, most stations run these programs around 6 AM on Sunday morning, although I’ve noticed a trend lately to move the programs back to 5 AM.
It appears that, with the start of Daylight Saving Time, you work up earlier than usual, and unfortunately were subjected to the community affairs program. You could try complaining to the Federal Communications Commission, but I don’t believe they have the power to ban this sort of programming. So, unfortunately the guy at the radio station was not telling you the truth – it was just something they say to placate crank callers.
It’s true, the laws concerning Public Affairs programming have been changed. But many radio stations are owned by companies who have “always done it this way.”
The thing has been logged there for umpty-ump years and someone in the news department (who has been given the title Public Affairs Director) schedules local big wigs to come in on Thursday to tape the Sunday program.
If the talk is local it’s likely that the program not only covers the “Public Affairs” area but also the “stroke the client” area, too. This is where the General Manager and Sales Manager may frequently influence the choice of guests. In some cases the attachment may be obvious: your local Shriners may be pushing their annual Vidalia Onion sale (check to see if a Shriner also owns the appliance store that advertises heavily on the station). Ditto Rotary and other organizations.
Sometimes the influence may be a bit hidden. If the program concerns the upcoming events of the local Junior League, look for WIVES of local heavy advertisers.
radio station licenses have to be renewed from time to time. when it came time for your renewal one of the things that was looked at by the fcc was, how well is the station serving the communication needs of the community it is in.
that is why stations ran community service stuff early in the morning and especially religious stuff on sunday mornings.
A few years ago when I worked in retail we were doing inventory overnight, going from 9:00 PM Saturday through about 8:00 AM Sunday morning. We had the radio on the whole time and they played music throughout the night and the following morning. This was about 5 or 6 years ago. The station has since changed ownership and format, so maybe they lost their broadcasting license due to non-compliance with such a law.