L.A. Radio.com to shut down

Sad news from Don tonight about the only accurate remaining source for L.A. Radio information shutting down. I have enjoyed his quality work & knowledge, contributed to the site, bought his first book and now to read this. I was just as stunned when Radio & Records shut down!

Doesn't Don announce this every couple of years?

AM FM listener said:

Doesn't Don announce this every couple of years?

Click to expand...

Yes. I hate to say anything negative because I think Don is a nice guy (although I have never met him in person), but it has long been past time to take these seemingly annual announcements seriously. It has now been several years since he admitted to himself that this was a hobby and not a business, and like any hobbyist, he may be taken away from what he loves by real life from time to time, but he will always return to it. He always has.

By the way, there is nothing on his site right now that would indicate that this is happening again.

ChannelFlipper said:

By the way, there is nothing on his site right now that would indicate that this is happening again.

Click to expand...

If you paid your $15 Flipper you would know about it. Don is getting up there in age and has devoted a ton of time to his site while keeping very active with the L.A. Radio community. In any case no this is not a ploy to raise rates , he's not DirecTV. Thanks Don for the almost 20 year run!

Don has not gotten much support from the radio community. When he sold annual subscriptions to LARadio.com, many subscribers were giving their sign-on password to other people. One former station manager, who I will not name, shared his password with one other person and eventually there were 18 people using that same password. Eighteen! So Don lost 17 potential subscriptions. Former KRLA historian Bill Earl and I are investigating the possibility of keeping the site going and seeking contributions from Jim Hilliker, Michael Hagerty, Robert O'Brien, Richard Wagoner, David Eduardo, K.M. Richards and others. It depends on finding a server with reasonable rates. Does anyone have any suggestions? Or is anyone else considering taking over the site? Of course we're assuming that Don will be willing to allow us to use the LARadio.com name. If not, we could simply launch a new site with a new name.

I have an alternate plan! (Said in my best Maxwell Smart voice.) Would it be possible for Frank to set up an LARadio forum on the RadioDiscussions site? Maybe allow only two or three people (via a special log-in) to post news and the rest of us would be able to submit e-mails which those two or three people could post to the site. This way, there wouldn't be lengthy discussions about the "same ol' subjects" and the site would resemble the original LARadio.com.

LARadioRewind said:

Would it be possible for Frank to set up an LARadio forum on the RadioDiscussions site?

Click to expand...

Seems to me anyone could use this forum in that way. Lots of people do that on other local boards. Just not this one. No special log-in, but it's subject to comments.

I---and probably almost everyone else as well---would prefer that any new LARadio forum on this site would be run the way Don Barrett runs LARadio.com. He and one or two editors control the site. No one else can post to it. Otherwise, the site would soon fill up with lengthy debates and discussions and arguments. Kinda like some of the KRTH threads on this site.

Don will shut down LARAdio.com but he plans to move the archives. I don't know if he's selected a site but I think AmericanRadioHistory.com would be ideal. David, what'cha think?

Three years ago when it appeared likely that Don Barrett would shut down LARadio.com, Orange County Register radio columnist Gary Lycan and Daily News/Daily Breeze radio columnist Richard Wagoner each expressed an interest in maintaining the site. Lycan died in April of 2013 and was replaced by some guy named Don Barrett. I e-mailed Richard to see if he’d still be interested in helping to keep the site going. I’m awaiting his reply.

You know how Doug McIntyre does a morning show in L.A. and a one-hour show in the afternoon for WABC in New York? Maybe Don should give Allan Sniffen the keys to LARadio.com and see how far that goes.

DToTheJ said:

Maybe Don should give Allan Sniffen the keys to LARadio.com and see how far that goes.

Click to expand...

What makes more sense is Joel Denver. He's in LA, he's a longtime LA talent who launched AllAccess.com almost 20 years ago.

DavidEduardo said:

I'm not sure the model used for AllAccess translates into a single-market local news site.

Click to expand...

There's a part of what LARadio does that's exactly what AllAccess does, in reporting format changes, personnel moves, and that kind of thing. No reason why it couldn't expand to music formats, other than the personal choice of the owner. Obviously, as Don discovered, his model doesn't translate to the way the web has changed. Joel doesn't charge for membership, and he still manages to do a good job reporting radio news. Maybe a new owner will see revenue angles that Don wouldn't. But I think it's asking a lot for someone to take on a site that the original owner is closing for financial reasons, with the intent that the site remain exactly the same as it was. Anyone else who runs it will encounter the same exact problem he has.

Which, ironically is the same problem some radio owners encounter. They want to run a station that reflects their love of a genre or the medium, but it's not very commercial, and they don't want to change the format to make it more commercial, and meanwhile the users won't pay for it. Very frustrating for content creators.

Don Barrett is halfway through the one-a-day countdown of the top ten results of his annual poll to determine the favorite radio personalities in Los Angeles. On July 6, the countdown will resume with the #5 vote-getter. On July 10, Don will reveal number one and that will be his final regular column. He will have a special farewell column on July 13.

The mostest favoritest Los Angeles radio personality this year: Vin Scully. Congratulations, Vinny! He is in his 66th year with the Dodgers.....and a few of us can even watch him on Dodgers baseball telecasts. Don will publish more e-mails on July 11 and 12. On the 13th and 14th, he will publish messages from some of the people who have assisted him on LARadio.com. His own farewell message will appear on the 15th.......and then what? Will his archives move to AmericanRadioHistory.com? Will anyone launch a new LA radio site? Enjoy your long-overdue retirement, Don!

Steve, you should consider bringing your "Rewind" feature here, possibly every Friday. I always wondered with your Broadcast training why you didn't pursue a career in Government Broadcasting at double your salary after entering Federal service. Once a career employee under FERS or CSRS it would have been possible although the PO is a grantee organization. They had guys making $100,000 who just unscrewed 10 Inch tape reels

I've posted a few Rewinds here on days when Don did not run a column. Perhaps we could have a thread just for Rewinds and related comments from others. I used to include celebrity birthdays and music trivia and the top songs and tv shows for a particular date but this year Don wanted only a single paragraph relating to Los Angeles radio. As for my broadcast training, I knew of only two classmates who got jobs in radio. One went to Kemmerer, Wyoming. The other went to Sandpoint, Idaho. Both worked a night shift. I didn't feel like working overnights in a town several hundred miles away so here I am, still living in the city I was born in.