Since the very beginning, Radio has justified its use of the airwaves in part because it serves a need to provide the public in its community with reliable information during an emergency, which newspapers can’t do. The same idea is being used to try to push a mandate that all cell phones have an FM radio receiver.
About a week ago, I was listening to WRKO-AM in Boston. Howie Carr was currently on the air. He was talking about something relatively inconsequential, like the latest goings on in Hollywood. His news department stepped in and announced that there was a tornado warning in the Boston area.
A somewhat irritated Howie returned to whatever was he was talking about. A couple minutes later, his producer announced it was confirmed that there was a tornado on the ground in Concord, maybe 10 miles to the west of the WRKO studios and the city of Boston.
This annoyed Howie Carr even more – and then he started getting reports that people are calling the station to tell him that the transmitter was down. His response to that news was to tell his listeners that if they really want to get a reliable signal, they needed to download apps to their cell phones. Of course, since the transmitter was off, nobody would’ve heard that advice except the people already listening on their cell phones. He repeated this useless advice several times.
One of the problems with transitioning from local radio to national syndication is situations like this – if Howie’s show was heard in Montana, they don’t care about breaking news in Boston. wRKO would need to dump out of their network feed of Howie and begin local coverage – but that may not be possible unless the equipment and personnel are segregated.
Howie obviously cares about the safety and security of his audience, as long as they “SHUT THE HELL UP – SIT DOWN – LISTEN, AND DO NOT INTERRUPT THE MASTER MIND AT WORK IMPARTING HIS WISDOM TO YOU!”
On the same show, he complained that callers to the chump line were leaving messages about other fill-in hosts on the radio station (presumably WRKO), and it was such a pain in the ass to have to click the delete button on the voicemail – and he would appreciate if people would stop doing that.
Chumps.
In the words of Larry King – when your listeners become the enemy and you’re afraid to pick up the phone to answer a call – it’s time to think about another line of work.