<font color=brown>
<font color=red>"<u>Here's</u><font color=brown> an interesting article in CNN Money." <font color=black>
Interesting but I don't see the connection between the article and your comments. The article is about all "traditional media" not just radio. The gist of it is that traditional media is running a p.r. campaign to convince people they aren't stodgy.<font color=black>
As for your comments: <font color=brown>"If broadcast radio has any shot of competing effectively against satellite radio, ipod's, and other technologies, it has to do more than just throw money at the problem."
<font color=black>Excuse me for stifling a laugh, but since when has radio been known to "throw money at problems?" The opposite may be true. Radio may need to
start spending money on it's problems. (I know that's easy for me to say but I have ideas on where to cut too: Cost of sales is way to high and mostly misspent.)
<font color=brown>"It has to start attracting listeners, i.e., treating them like they really matter, and not the advertisers."
<font color=black> Hmm. Who could disagree with this? It's like being in favor of Mom and apple pie and against pollution and war.
<font color=brown>It also means being truly live and local, and not getting by running on a machine for most, if not all, of the broadcast day.
<font color=black> Why should it be live and local? I'm not being facetious. Nor am I saying I disagree with it, I just wonder why I keep seeing this opinion expressed over and over with nothing whatsoever to back it up. On an AC station, automation often beats live and local shows. In my experience, advertisers tend to favor live and local more than listeners do. They perceive it as a more valuable advertising environment and sometimes even want to buy live testimonials. If advertisers favor live and local, and listeners reward automated middays with higher ratings, isn't that favoring advertisers over listeners?
And why are the words
live and local always linked? What about live and not local. Or local and not live? Nationally syndicated talk shows often, maybe even usually, beat local talk shows. (Especially in smaller markets where the talent is often, uh, spread thinly.) They are live but not local. Personally, I prefer live but I don't care if it's local or not. But I don't assume that because it's my opinion, that it's everyone's opinion.
My prescription? If I were running radio stations with autonomy (almost no one does, despite protests to the contrary) I'd start with a blank sheet of paper every year and demand solid reasoning on every aspect of the operation. It's not consolidation and change that's killing radio (it's actually not dying but could be a lot better) it's conventional wisdom and lack of innovation.