“Full Service” radio is radio jargon not necessarily understood by the general public, and a full service radio station is one the least likely to stream on the Internet, hence up until now I named the format “Local News / Talk / Sports”, but that’s misleading as most of them also play music.
Local full service is mostly an AM format as it reflects the standard operations popular in the 1960s. As the owners hit their 90s and die, the stations tend to die with them.
A full service station is almost completely focused on their local community. Here is kind of the checklist for being in this category. The more on this list the station matches, the more it fits the category:
- Live Morning Show hosted by a man who has never lived outside of the town other than maybe going off to college or the military
- local newscast mostly consisting of paraphrasing headlines from the local paper
- obituaries sponsored by the local funeral home
- today in history
- birthday list
- last night’s lottery numbers
- minute long features like The Osgood Files
- little or no national advertising – McDonalds ad will be from the local franchisee, not Chicago
- Tradio or swap shop callin show to undermine classified ads in local papers (CraigsList? EBay?)
- little or no syndicated political talk programming during daylight hours – but maybe Rush Limbaugh
- on Friday nights, live coverage of high school sports
- Sunday mornings, local church services
Once the morning show is over, the variation starts – many play music with a live local host – many are country, oldies or Nostalgia. Perhaps a public service show hosted by a woman targeted at the good housewives still at home while the man is at his job doing the real work of the family. Maybe an hour of some religious programming or gospel music. At Noon, a half hour of commercials with some local news in between.
If at 9 AM, they just flip on the satellite feed and call it a day, the station more likely is listed under the Satellite feed, as doing only a 3 hour a day show is hardly “full service”