As implied by yourself, your radio experience isn’t the experience of most people, who live in developed areas. That smaller markets have a lesser experience when it comes to terrestrial media has always been true. If you want that to reliably change, move from the sticks.
See previous explanation. Also, you conveniently ignored the MANY qualifiers in my statement. I’ve got several college radio stations in my area that ARE 100% live. Why does your shitty (and apparently limited) experience invalidate mine?
Yeah, like apparently you don’t understand how quickly things can get rural around here when you drive in the right direction (this ain’t the eastern seaboard), or how far radio waves can travel.
Sorry that your radio stations are all ClearChannel or their ilk. That’s not the case even in rural TX. It’s common here on a road trip hear someone basically running a show that is basically local classified ads on their station - no, these are not ads, the classifieds are the show. You get ads between the ads. It’s done live, as a call in show.
The real energy and value in FM radio is on the left of the dial: Public radio and college stations. The dichotomy is not between local versus everywhere else in the world, it’s local versus generic: Anything that’s local to some place and staffed by humans who have good taste is more interesting than a computer substitute.
There are hundreds of these stations. Almost all markets have an NPR affiliate, there are colleges everywhere. These provide more of a service to music fans than the pandora algorithm could ever provide.
I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t grow up with radio. Do you think that what Lou Reed said in “Rock and Roll” is just ragtime? It was 100% true. Remember how good the music was then? Could it have had anything to do with radio?
I don’t any more. I took the liberty of describing my attitude from a prior disposition, which would still be my prevailing attitude under the circumstances.
Ehh, I’m not seeing how it does. If you were talking the areas around Bismarck or Fargo, where a far greater number of people in ND live, then I think that might be a more valid comparison.
And really, it doesn’t appear that the Minot situation isn’t as clear-cut as the wiki entry would lead you to believe. Even Clear Channel stations have to participate in the EAS.
scabpicker: Your link purports to discredit the consensus story about Minot, but it fails to. All it does is offer excuses and then proceeds to whine about how Clear Channel is getting stick, as if the Minot thing were the only reason to hate Clear Channel. Not very impressive.
Nope, not the case at all. The situations aren’t comparable to mine because they aren’t comparable markets. That’s what I am saying.
Plus, it doesn’t really matter much if I care or not. The market has always served low population areas less well, and probably always will. It also gets under-served in the case of Police + Fire protection. In Minot’s case, their Police didn’t make sure their EAS worked, so they couldn’t interrupt local broadcasts in an emergency. The NWS had made sure theirs worked, and had broken into broadcasts in Minot before and after the train derailment. I don’t see how my caring is going to make the Minot PD any more competent at their job.
Does CC/I Heart Radio suck ass? You betchya! Can you blame Minot on them? No, not really.
I started working for a media company a couple of years ago, and it is interesting to see the inner workings, as well as the opinions of both people inside and outside of the company about the various medias (radio/ tv/ newspaper/ digital). People inside the company, and most outside of the company, know that the traditional media streams are dying a slow death. It’s been more noticeable in print of course, but radio and tv have definitely been impacted. Radio is especially vulnerable because of aux inlets, bluetooth radio options, streaming services, etc being built into cars, and options like Pandora being easily accessed during working hours, the times people often listen to radio.
Where we are really seeing this is not in listernership numbers, because those remain relatively stable, but in the inability to sell advertising on radio. This is not some little 6th in the market in their genre station either, it’s the leading area country station, and a recent Marconi award winner. We can still sell tv ads well, but radio is just taking a beating.
I only listen to podcasts in my car. As for terrestrial radio in the car, why would I want to subject myself to: 30 minutes of commercials every hour, hearing the same some repeated once every two hours, and a playlist of songs with only 20-30 songs?
That’s interesting. If listenership is stable, why is it so hard to sell radio ads?
I would imagine certain radio formats will die off more quickly than others. Alternative rock is already diminishing on the FM dial. Any format that skews young seems more likely to have their listeners find other sources.
That’s why I’m constantly switching stations when I listen to the radio. I do not have the patience to put up with stupid commercials or with songs I hate.