Portland, Oregon is a radio-rich town-18 am stations and 27 fm stations. It used to be you would listen to a local station in the morning to find out what’s what with the local news, weather, sports and traffic, but unfortunately many of the formerly local morning show have given way to syndicated shows from unidentified locations. Out of the 45 stations available only 13 are live and local in the morning, and it’s only going to get worse. Stations that used to advertise “All Live! All Local! All The Time!” have gone the way of the dodo in this town, and I wonder how bad it’s getting elsewhere.
Local radio still exists? We switched to satellite radio years ago and never looked back.
Which is of course another reason it’s dying out.
I’d say that and internet/internet radio are the big factors. They offer alternatives to the Clear Channel homogenization of the airwaves. About the only local stations that are still worth anything are various college stations.
In Indianapolis, yes. A number of stations have gone to automated playlists without DJ’s, others have changed formats to either Christian or Country, and a good many others have shut down completely. I don’t find any figures at the moment, but I used to have a choice of a dozen-or-so stations, and now I’m down to three (well, four, counting NPR).
I think local radio is dying out but I also think that there are some bigger stations that will be able to provide local content. For a lot of smaller stations, it’s just so much easier and economical to go with a satellite service for programming.
It’s going to be about bottom line. A lot of stations are being purchased by larger companies that don’t care about serving the local consumer as they are about making money. In Chicago, the Loop was a popular rock station for decades, was bought by some company headquartered in St Louis, who then got rid of their more expensive talent and went to a more generic rock programming. I haven’t listened to the Loop since Johnny B left (the second time).
I have not re-acquired the local radio habit since we moved here, but I had my three or four faves back in Sacramento. The number of choices shrank and shrank, both in terms of basic programming (I centered on classic rock and newer-but-not-Billboard-100 stations) and in terms of presentation; as already noted, too many are going to syndicated programming 24 hours a day. I hate morning shows and drive-time blather, but I like the idea that I’m listening to a human who lives in the same area as I do, not a generic voicedroid.
I’d say that yes, the costs of maintaining local talent and the overwhelming pressure from the media consortiums like Clear Channel mean that local radio is going to disappear in all but the densest urban coverage areas.
Satellite radio sucks, BTW. Had it for six months on my Odyssey because it had the receiver and we wanted options on our cross-country relocation, but we quickly found out that most of the channels have incredibly short playlists. We heard the same comedy bits over and over. The Jimmy Buffett channel plays about 15 songs, albeit in an endless array of different concert performances. The general rock and jazz stations repeat every 3-4 days. I let it lapse and haven’t looked back.
We still have plenty of radio stations here in the Detroit area, but it seems like they’re all becoming increasingly indistinguishable from one another. Basically, they’re all minor variations of one of 3 themes: Rock/Pop, Rap/Hip-Hop, or Young Country.
I’ve noticed that the quality of the on-air talent has dropped noticably. The older, well-known and popular DJ’s and morning show hosts are retiring and/or being forced out, and replaced with new people that again are pretty much interchangable cogs. I’m sure it’s a question of the bottom line, with the new people being willing to work for much less money than the older ones.
Do you know haw many of these new people are actually local, as opposed to broadcasting(either live or taped) from a remote location to several cities?
I’m in the Chicago market. Lots of local radio.
I mainly listen to 4 stations on my ride into the city in the morning.
[ul]
[li]WDRV (97.1 FM) - “The Drive” [/li][li]WLUP (97.9 FM) - “The Loop” [/li][li]WKQX (87.7 FM) - “Q87.7”[/li][li]WERV (97.1 FM) - “The River”[/li][/ul]
I mainly listen to “The Drive” and “The River” around my neighborhood because they are the stations that play music I like (classic rock) with the clearest signal. As I get closer to the city, I switch to “The Loop” and “Q87.7”. The Loop mixes in more modern music with their classic rock and Q87.7 is more 90’s “alternative” mixed with newer rock.
Q87.7 is mostly music. Maybe a traffic report thrown in, but that’s about it.
The Drive is mainly music as well, but they do have a short news section (Chicago area and Nation/World) about every half hour.
The Loop spreads their news around the commercials and music, but they do have a news section about every half hour where the morning team (Chicago based) jokes around and comments on the top news stories in the main papers.
The River is very local. It broadcasts out of Aurora, IL, a western suburb. Most of their news revolves around Aurora and the neighboring suburbs. I live much closer to Aurora than I do to Chicago, but I still almost feel excluded by The River and much more included in the Chicago broadcasts. About halfway to Chicago, the signal for the The River fades out and I end up switching to either The Loop or Q87.7
I used to listen to the oldies station and fell in love with Doo Wop. All of the oldies stations in Chicago went to syndication, dropped the 50’s and early 60’s music and added disco and Huey Lewis. The syndication channels did hire some local talent for their afternoon shows, though. So I can still listen to Dick Biondi and John Landecker. But the music they play now sucks.
(side note: Some radios don’t go down to 87.7 anymore. In fact, my car radio only goes to 87.9. But I have an HD radio and I can get 87.7 as a 2nd HD channel on 101.1 - which makes sense since Q87.7 plays the kind of music 101.1 used to play)
Well, if the Eagle in Houston is any indication of how hard they’re trying to build or retain listeners then surely it’s doomed. They play classic rock and have some amusing DJs but awhile back I started noticing that their songs would skip maybe 3 or 4 times a song. Live talk came across fine but seriously you can’t get a player that doesn’t fuck up every single song several times? That’s annoying as hell. Periodically I’ll check back in to see if it’s fixed, then switch to another because it’s not.
This local radio may well be dying out because it’s been doing this for one - entire - year.
Now that you mention it, no. I’ve been (perhaps naively) assuming that they were local talent.
The Eagle (or, based on how their “puking” station ID guy says it, “Theee Eeeeeeeeeagle”) is, in fact, a syndicated classic-rock format, and can be found in a lot of cities.
For that matter, “The Drive” is also a syndicated format, though the Chicago version at least sticks with live DJs and formatting.
WRIF (Detroit) just dropped their Drew & Mike morning show, which means I no longer have a reason to listen to WRIF.
What did they replace it with?
Interesting. Do all the broadcasts skip?
I can’t believe my classic rock radio station is going to succeed or even wants to succeed if they can’t play a single song w/o screwing it up. Their purpose for being can’t get any more basic than that. I want to support them but not at that cost.
It’s not satellite or syndicated programming, and if it’s a syndicated “format” there’s not a lot of similarities among the stations that use the name. Can you cite a syndication reference? KSEG in Sacramento was 100% live, local talent AFAIK.
I know that there are dozens of different groups of similarly named and formatted stations across the country, but I always assumed it was informal or “you ain’t in my broadcast zone so I don’t care.”
It’s a franchise, pretty much like McDonalds. The kids behind the counter may be local, but the product is the same no matter where you go.
Well damn, I might have to start listening to WRIF again! (I couldn’t stand Drew & Mike. Well, actually, I couldn’t stand Mike; Drew was OK.)
I remember a few years ago they fired their popular afternoon DJ, Arthur Penhallow. From what was said, it sounded like the radio station wanted him to take a pay cut, and he refused. So they canned him. That’s about the time I stopped listening to WRIF.
Is there really so little demand for local radio? I’m not a huge radio listener, but in the morning while I’m getting dressed, making lunch, etc I do like listening to the morning DJs discussing local news and events. It’s a nice way to hear about upcoming events in the area (concerts, food festivals, etc) as well as hear some discussion about local news stories. Plus, I’m a huge dog lover, so I enjoy listening to one of the station’s weekly talk with the local SPCA about adoptable dogs. I don’t really have any interest in listening to nationally-syndicated DJs.