Seattle's "Rock" Station

[CTListener]

What we have today is about half of all stations with lower gross annual income than the average Pizza Hut.

Funny you mention Pizza Hut. In much of the Northeast, pizzerias and Italian restaurants in general have been immune from domination by national chains. In many cities and towns, it's the independents -- from homegrown restaurants that have expanded to a half dozen or so in other towns, to the comer mom-and-pops, the Sal's and Tony's and Roma's and Little Sicily's that everyone in town knows are the best places to go for pizza, pasta and subs/grinders/heroes/hoagies -- that thrive. Pizza Hut and Olive Garden are minor players here. Same goes for seafood. I don't think Long John Silver ever even tried to get a foothold in New England, and like Pizza Hut, Red Lobster is a minor player made irrelevant by entrenched local seafood places.

Do you see the same thing with Mexican restaurants in your area, or is there room there for both the local favorites and Chipotle's?

 

[boombox4]

Well, I was trying to give guys like BTurner and Bossbill some props for hanging in there, making the best go of it they can. Even if I had the ability (which I don't. I'm a process peon -- I was a production guy), I couldn't make something like that work, and I know it.

I've read enough on RD to know that it's tough for any stations that aren't top rated FMs in bigger metros.

So points taken by all.

 

[The New Chico]

"We're from the government and we're here to help..."

Nothing, but nothing, happens in government without somebody doing a ton of lobbying. Somebody or many somebodies in the private sector decided that we needed a whole lot more stations, and later that we needed a whole bunch of media consolidation. "Government" makes a great punching bag- either they sit on their hands and "aren't meeting the needs of the marketplace" or they enact new regs and then it's "why couldn't they left well enough alone?"

Not saying government is perfect- no institution made up of people is. But new rules just don't come out of thin air.

 

[The New Chico]

"The point was Walmart isn't the devil, anymore than any of the other massive retailers that have driven the smaller retailers out of business. Costco doesn't exist to help mom and pop keep their store open. They put them out of business just like every other massive retailer does."

Actually, there is a huge distinction between Walmart and Costco/Target.

Walmart focuses to a considerable extent on exurban and rural locations, where they can indeed pretty well use their power to destroy the local retail economy.

Costco and Target are largely suburban, in locations where they mainly compete with other big box stores. The local retail economy in places like this tend to be niche retailers who often locate close to the Target or Costco in order to leverage that foot traffic.

Walmart pays their folks so poorly that they famously issued instructions on how said employees could access the welfare state in order to meet basic health care needs. Target is far from perfect in terms of labor practices, but they DO start pay considerably over minimum wage and they pretty much always have. Costco employs folks who stay with the company for much longer than the average time in retail and provide profit sharing at year two. When Costco has a job fair folks are lined up for blocks.

Target sends 5% of post-tax profit into the local communities they serve via their charitable foundation. Walmart does not. Costco has made a huge investment in sustainability and inclusion, such that one of the "doing well by doing good" funds I invest in includes Costco in their portfolio. Lord knows Walmart isn't included in that fund.

Not sure I would call Walmart "the devil" but it is disingenuous to lump these retailers together as "all the same." Both in their corporate operations/philosophies AND how they relate to the destruction of smaller market radio. "Both sides are equally bad" arguments let the actual bad player off the hook. Which is why folks who are not arguing in good faith (or have a weak argument) tend to use it A LOT to try to make their point.

 

[Kelly A]

Funny you mention Pizza Hut. In much of the Northeast, pizzerias and Italian restaurants in general have been immune from domination by national chains. In many cities and towns, it's the independents -- from homegrown restaurants that have expanded to a half dozen or so in other towns, to the comer mom-and-pops, the Sal's and Tony's and Roma's and Little Sicily's that everyone in town knows are the best places to go for pizza, pasta and subs/grinders/heroes/hoagies -- that thrive. Pizza Hut and Olive Garden are minor players here. Same goes for seafood. I don't think Long John Silver ever even tried to get a foothold in New England, and like Pizza Hut, Red Lobster is a minor player made irrelevant by entrenched local seafood places.

Do you see the same thing with Mexican restaurants in your area, or is there room there for both the local favorites and Chipotle's?

Oh Cheese and Rice! Please don't change this into a 'what's my favorite dining experience since the 70's-thread. Talk about stupid AM stereo, giving away logo'ed radios, and placing AM modulated stations on the FM broadcast band had been 'alternate universe' enough for one week.

 

[CTListener]

Oh Cheese and Rice! Please don't change this into a 'what's my favorite dining experience since the 70's-thread. Talk about stupid AM stereo, giving away logo'ed radios, and placing AM modulated stations on the FM broadcast band had been 'alternate universe' enough for one week.

lol, you're right. And I complain about thread drift frequently. Color me hypocrite.

 

[bobdavcav]

I'm surprised nobody has complained about how this thread has drifted way off its topic. It started with KISW playing a few songs that weren't really rock, now it's veered into how retail has affected radio. I notice the restaurant thing you mentioned with Mexican places down here. There are lots of them, but as I recall only one local chain, no Azteka.

 

[Kelly A]

I'm surprised nobody has complained about how this thread has drifted way off its topic. It started with KISW playing a few songs that weren't really rock, now it's veered into how retail has affected radio. I notice the restaurant thing you mentioned with Mexican places down here. There are lots of them, but as I recall only one local chain, no Azteka.

Welcome to Radio-Discussions! Are you new here?

 

[TexasTom]

The US economic rot started long before 1982, when US trade policy allowed Japan to dump their goods into the US and start the migration of US industry overseas (and south of the border, which started long before NAFTA). Unions in the US became lazy and corrupt and killed themselves, which didn't help the middle class any.

There was a lot more going on than that. Looking at consumer television and video equipment, a huge issue was that the big U.S. consumer electronics companies (RCA, Zenith, Magnavox, GE) got extremely complacent by the seventies. The transistor was invented here in the U.S., but those U.S. companies had gotten used to designing televisions that used vacuum tubes and didn't want to adapt to the new technology -- so they left it to the Japanese to develop solid state televisions and bring them into the U.S. market. The Japanese competed on quality, reliability, and technological advancement. As a high school student, I saved my money to buy a small color TV in 1977 -- and I bought a Panasonic not because it was cheaper than the big U.S. brands, but because it was better and likely to be more reliable. Considering that it finally died just a couple years ago, I'd say it lived up to that promise on reliability. I might have thought about a Sony (renowned at the time for having the best color TV picture quality of anything available), but the Sony was beyond my budget -- it not only cost more than the Panasonic, but also more than those American brands. So Panasonic competed on reliability, and Sony competed on both reliability and picture quality. RCA, Zenith, Magnavox, and GE competed based on market inertia and building consoles in fancy wooden cabinets.

And when VCRs came along, RCA, GE, and Magnavox all bought theirs OEM from Panasonic's parent company, and Zenith sourced from Sony. They didn't even bother to try to come up with their own VCR technology, although RCA eventually came out with a videodisc system that was technologically and functionally obsolete years before it hit the market.

So at least for consumer electronics, it was neither product dumping or unions that killed the American companies. No, the American companies did that to themselves through incompetent management, poor business decisions, and lousy engineering.

 

[boombox4]

Not sure I would call Walmart "the devil" but it is disingenuous to lump these retailers together as "all the same." Both in their corporate operations/philosophies AND how they relate to the destruction of smaller market radio. "Both sides are equally bad" arguments let the actual bad player off the hook. Which is why folks who are not arguing in good faith (or have a weak argument) tend to use it A LOT to try to make their point.

As it affects radio, they're all the same. When it comes to small local businesses, they're all equally bad, if only because of the volume of goods they sell along with their ability to undercut in pricing, and the fact that they're national chains, operating out of some corporate office in a big metro somewhere, maybe 2000 miles away.

The box stores -- all of them -- were so effective against smaller and local business because they were like a mall within a store with centralized, cost-cutting national distribution operations. This applies to every box retailer. One stop shopping for everything, at pricing that the little guy couldn't compete against because the little guys couldn't order goods by the container-load.

Walmart killed businesses in small towns across the rural USA only because the other two other dominant box store giants generally never bothered to locate where rural and poor people live. KMart located stores in smaller places, but they even seemed to avoid the little towns where Walmart located. As you admitted, the other big box stores mostly stick to the burbs. They go where the money is.

Walmart had a worse effect on small town, local businesses, which obviously affected small town, local radio. I think that fact is undisputed. KellyA even talked about this sort of thing from his direct experience. Bossbill, too.

Look, if people hate Walmart for some of their other practices, too, fine. Go ahead. I'm no Walmart fanboy. But I'm talking about how all of this is affecting the little guy, and how it is affecting radio. I just saw a local grocery store go under. Another one went under during the Great Recession and the building's been empty ever since. Everyone is going to Costco, Walmart, Target, Kroger instead. Take your pick. And none of those national, centralized operations are advertising on the local, suburban radio station.

 

[boombox4]

There was a lot more going on than that. Looking at consumer television and video equipment, a huge issue was that the big U.S. consumer electronics companies (RCA, Zenith, Magnavox, GE) got extremely complacent by the seventies. The transistor was invented here in the U.S., but those U.S. companies had gotten used to designing televisions that used vacuum tubes and didn't want to adapt to the new technology -- so they left it to the Japanese to develop solid state televisions and bring them into the U.S. market. The Japanese competed on quality, reliability, and technological advancement.

-snip-

So at least for consumer electronics, it was neither product dumping or unions that killed the American companies. No, the American companies did that to themselves through incompetent management, poor business decisions, and lousy engineering.

What you say is true, but it still is part of what caused the rot to start, and that was during the 1970s.

And it wasn't just in electronics, but also in auto manufacturing. The American electronics manufacturers got lazy, the national unions got lazy (both my parents were union workers), and the automakers also got lazy.

It's obviously a complex issue, and I'm not sure how it affects radio, except a lot of the electronic devices mentioned here were radios and TVs. I also recall a lot of car sales spots on radio during the late 70s, 80s, etc. Didn't matter which brand. Usually it was the local car dealers doing it -- so whatever automaker upheaval was taking place didn't hurt their advertising on radio here in Seattle.

 

[Kelly A]

And when VCRs came along, RCA, GE, and Magnavox all bought theirs OEM from Panasonic's parent company, and Zenith sourced from Sony. They didn't even bother to try to come up with their own VCR technology, although RCA eventually came out with a videodisc system that was technologically and functionally obsolete years before it hit the market.

As it was in Great Brittan, the U.S. seems to be good at innovation, just not production. Countries in Asia seem to be better at producing high quality products cheaper. That's just the way it's been since WWII.

So at least for consumer electronics, it was neither product dumping or unions that killed the American companies. No, the American companies did that to themselves through incompetent management, poor business decisions, and lousy engineering.

Was reading an article from Moss Motors (British car parts supplier) about history of production of the MGB sports car after the merger which created British Leyland. British Leyland had formerly competing brands; Triumph, MG, Jaguar, Austin and Land Rover all under one merged ownership group. A huge problem with the consolidation wasn't that the marques were consolidated, but the management infighting all trying to climb the corporate ranks while all along the way, trying to hurt what they felt was a competing brand. For example; managers that came over in the merger from Triumph, removed fans from a hot MG factory production line in an attempt to harm production of MG and promote Triumph. All this backbiting trickled down to the production workers, who had found going on strike was the quickest resolution to a problem. Eventually, all the internal management squabbles created production and quality control problems to all the marques under the BL tent. The British government tried to intervene on many occasions (too big to fail), but the damage caused was too great and British Leyland went bankrupt.
U.S companies like to consolidate too, but for some reason over time, similar things seem to happen as occurred at British Leyland. You'd think we would learn lessons from prior failed business structures, but the people factor keep sabotaging an otherwise good idea.

 

[seatownmedia]

As for threads veering off topic, it is totally normal and understandable. And the reason is pretty simple. Most posters don’t have time to go back to the original poster. They are reacting to recent posts. This will never change in this format.

 

[TexasTom]

And it wasn't just in electronics, but also in auto manufacturing. The American electronics manufacturers got lazy, the national unions got lazy (both my parents were union workers), and the automakers also got lazy.

I certainly can't agree with any of that. The U.S. auto companies were producing some real junk when the Japanese competition started getting serious, especially in the small car segments. No one would have chosen a Chevy Chevette over a Toyota Corolla based on the quality of the designs. And in this instance, the unions did contribute to the problem -- there used to be a running joke about not getting a car that was built on a Friday (when the workers were looking forward to the weekend) or a Monday (when they were recovering from the weekend).

As long as the car market in the U.S. was dominated by the Detroit automakers, the companies could get away with designing shoddy products and the unions could protect workers doing shoddy work because it wasn't as if the customer had any real alternatives.

 

[Saladressing]

It's great that there is still one place where hard rock gets played on the terrestrial Seattle airwaves.

 

[boombox4]

It's great that there is still one place where hard rock gets played on the terrestrial Seattle airwaves.

KISWs metal HD2 channel is very cool, too. And speaking of rock, the alternative HD2 on another station actually gets ratings, so rock seems to be fairly alive on the airwaves in Seattle, which is a bit remarkable in that it's a fairly large US metro and rock is sort of fading away from the top nationwide, and has been since 2008 or so.

 

[semoochie]

KISWs metal HD2 channel is very cool, too. And speaking of rock, the alternative HD2 on another station actually gets ratings, so rock seems to be fairly alive on the airwaves in Seattle, which is a bit remarkable in that it's a fairly large US metro and rock is sort of fading away from the top nationwide, and has been since 2008 or so.

Do they have a translator?

 

[bobdavcav]

No, I think the only HD to Translator in Seattle is 103.3, which I think is still running ChannelQ.

 

[boombox4]

Yeah, I think Metal Militia is only on HD2 KISW. Not even a stream I could find (I was looking for a playlist). Sangean has an HD radio for less than $100 US. HDR-16. Pretty good on FM and HD. I use mine to hear Metal Militia, the Blues channel on the Sound's HD2, and sometimes the Classic Alternative one I mentioned.

 

[semoochie]

No, I think the only HD to Translator in Seattle is 103.3, which I think is still running ChannelQ.

I show the referenced Alternative HD2 with 0.2, which is an indication that far more than one person are tuned in! I don't know if you can hope for more than that without a translator.