1069_KIFR said:
How would TV and Radio, especially here in the Bay Area, would be today, if De-Regulation did not take place. The competition would be fierce, no multiple owners. I think it would exciting radio, the way it should be.
There will always be debt service. I detect 3 phases in station ownership, or in ownership of any kind of business, really. Phase 1 is the founding owner. A station built from scratch costs little to run, so the owner can indulge his/her formatic fantasies. Thus, the Bay Area had many classical stations, the first fulltime jazz station, a couple Western music stations, etc.
Then comes Phase 2 when the founding owner dies or retires. In Phase 2, the guy who buys the station has borrowed money and has debt to pay. Since stations are sold based on cash flow, the new owner's intent is to squeeze as much money out of that cash flow as possible, leading to reductions in staff and increased commercialization. There are occasional exceptions, such as when Ron Cowan bought KJAZ from Pat Henry. Cowan had plenty of money and indulged his own jazz fantasy. But, unfortunately, KJAZ under Cowan didn't make any money, so he sold.
Then there's Phase 3. In this phase the station that had started out as a success and had been run down by its second owner, is presented to the newest owner as either a basket case or a soulless cash cow. In this phase either the new owner squeezes the cow and loses the audience, or they take the basketcase and try to turn it into something totally different. In the case of KJAZ, the owner following Cowan tried to squeeze the cow by combining it with other stations to serve as a satellite of KSJO. This didn't work, so the next owner reformatted the place entirely as a dance music station.
Similar kinds of things have happened at other stations.
This is *without* deregulation. With deregulation I think everything winds up in a perpetual Phase 3, the soulless cash cow or basketcase.
