Last week, when I was returning to Kansas City from Buffalo, I was scanning the radio dial in Nowheresville, Illinois. I came across a passable radio station that played a mix of album-oriented classic rock and alternative rock from the early 1990s.
Not too strange, until I heard the commercials, for State Farm Insurance, farm implement dealers, and old folks’ homes.
After the commercial … hospital admittals was read. Hospital admittals, as in “Eleanor Krumpenberg, 83, of East Nowheresville, was admitted to Nowhere County Regional Medical Center on September 3.” Huh?
The reading of hospital admittals went on for about ten minutes, and it was followed by … obituaries! Five minutes of death … who died, when, how old they were, survivors, funerals, wakes, and so on.
After the obituaries, it was “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
A lot of small little towns in the middle of nowhere have the strangest radio stations. I was told of a radio station in the great plains somewhere where the whole station was a old grandmother talking about the people in the town. The whole channel was basically saying that a farmer’s field had been partially eaten, or a certain member of a town didn’t go to church. Very strange stuff.
Mmm, not hospital admissions. School lunches, though. And obits. School happenings. Church suppers. Insterspersed with patriotic/old gospel music (Sunday) or polka music (the rest of the week). Oh, and they have a recording of the monks out at St. John’s reciting Hail Mary around supper time.
I used to listen to a '60s era Heathkit shortwave that my dad built. One night I was spinning the dial and came across some classic rock. I like classic rock so I stayed on that station to find out where the signal originated. Never did find out because when the DJ came on, he was speaking Spanish! The combination of classic rock (in English) with Spanish speaking DJs was a bit odd.
Elmwood, you didn’t mention if the obits were sponsored.
I’ll bet they were. I’ll even suggest the sponsor was the local funeral home.
Small town stations in stand-alone stiuations have to do a lot of different things to get the cash register to ring.
A little 250-watt affair I worked for in the 60’s sponsored buildings on fire. We had a small radio tuned to the volunteer fire department frequency. It would go off everytime a fire call went out.
The DJ on duty would write down the location given and wait for the siren to go off at the fire station. When it did, we’d go on the air and say where the firemen were headed…brought to you by the local State Farm agent.
Even sign-off was sponsored by a mattress manufacturer (“The next 5 hours of peace and quiet are brought to you by the better sleep people…”).
Small town radio stations, like the one you heard in Illinois, are vestiges of the type of radio that used to exist nearly everywhere before FCC deregulation in the 80’s. Before then, to keep their license, radio stations had to set aside a portion of their broadcast time to serve the community interest. Thus, practically every station used to have a world, national, and local news on the hour, traffic reports, public service announcements like winter storm school closures, religious programming, and shows dedicated to local public affairs. However, since deregulation and the subsequent wave of corporate mergers, such programming has almost disappeared in most markets.
Because the Illinois radio station you mentioned serves a very small market, it has likely avoided being merged into the Borg Collective (a.k.a. Clear Channel) so that all traces of local character and independence are eliminated. Thus, it is probably one of the last that takes its obligation to serve as a voice of the community seriously.