Should a radio station have to provide coverage of local news? Programming that originates using local employees? Staffing at 2 AM when a chemical train derails in Minot North Dakota? [Note: Clear Channel did have a person working at the station when it happened who was unable to reach police to find out what to do].
FCC commisioner Michael Copps is back on this campaign. How many NPR stations have little or no local news or original programming? How about stations carrying the Catholic EWTN 24 hours a day? ESPN or Fox News? Do “Public Service” programs that involve interviewing the head of City Water Department really provide any value to the public?
How should the government decide who gets the license to use the frequency in an area? Why is FM radio (which only reaches line of site – typically 35-50 miles) regulated by the Federal Government at all? Why not let states control the licensing of FM stations?
I miss local radio. Sometimes I wonder how there used to be enough going on in even the smallest towns to create several daily newscasts and locally produced programs that didn’t feature quack medecine or old people calling a chiropractor. But, I can’t justify returning to the days of requiring a human to baby sit the transmitter and board in the studio…name a line of work that hasn’t seen strides in automation with the growth of computer power…I mean, other than government, that is.
The plan seems like yet another thinly disguised way to “save or create” jobs by the feds? If the listeners wanted local radio, local radio would exist. It is gone and so is the buggy whip. If the speaker doesn’t like it, he ought to try buying a station, staffing it 24/7 with a news and entertainment staff (plus sales, operations and engineering) and set the benchmark higher. There are plenty for sale.
ArtStone…I wish there was a way to edit out my spelling errors. Haste.
As is painfully obvious, I have a huge blind spot for typos. After 60 days, then I can see them right away. I’m not fond of WordPress, but I’m not interested in spending the time to master it.
Radio is a reflection of how America has changed. A lot of it has been driven by private equity firm money – most major areas of retail are national brands – Lowe’s, Home Depot, Office Max, Walmart, Dunkin Donuts, Applebee’s, Target, Best Buy, Starbuck’s, Whole Foods, Costco, etc. Unless you go to really rural America, national brands dominate most retailing – they aren’t interested in localness. With the growth in consumption of cable TV, perhaps “local” isn’t even meaningful any more to sell stuff. Glenn Beck has realized it doesn’t make sense to do “road tours” when you can beam out the show via satellite to theaters and avoid the complications of being “local”.
There’s also the issue of the technology changes since the old days of radio. Back then you had AM stations– a few big ones in a market and, to fill in the gap, a bunch of small daytime-only stations in the rural areas. The latter didn’t have to have overnight programming because they could just sign off at night instead. A station like that could be run for less.
Now, you have virtually every station expected to be on 24/7, plus a lot more stations on FM. Even the old daytimers are getting FM translators. That’s a lot more time and space to fill and that fracturing is another reason for me to believe that there’s no way you could possibly go back to the old days. There are a few good local stations in rural America and the ones in my area do it very well, but national syndication and network products play at least a small part.
That being said, if a station is doing nothing but parroting some national network that nobody’s listening to, is it worth hogging up the air space?