If radio is "dying"...

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

If you searched among the 50 or so LPFM stations you would no dought find me WLRE-LPFM. I only play gospel music on Sunday's from 7am to noon the rest of the time our format is traditional to modern country music(real country most of the time). You would not want to ask me about money as that would be a real downer since we are not allowed to do commericals we can no longer afford to cover local ballgames, community events, and church events like we use to with live setups. We have two translators covering us to help our coverage and so long as we can keep going(March will be 10 years) we will never quit unless we have to.

Yes, you are already on my list of people I want to converse with. There is an icon on my desktop that allows me to pull up your stream so I can decode what it is that you are doing. I got talked into driving across town three days last week to listen to a distinguished PhD give a lecture series. If that hadn't happened, I would have already been found in your eMail in-box. So far I have about ten stations on my "Follow these folks" list.

Your stream has a good, clean sound. Your inability to fund some of those programming elements has drained a little something from your sound. As the economy rebounds and as you and I network with others facing the same challenge, maybe new resources can be found.

 

[Gatekeeper007]

Our website and e mail is down right now due to some major changes in our server system, we hope to get it back up soon.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Our website and e mail is down right now due to some major changes in our server system, we hope to get it back up soon.

Sorry about the server issues, but glad to hear that the site will be back soon. After my recent post, I decided it was time to send you a private eMail. I wanted to review your site again before writing,..... and the site was GONE! I was fearful that the financial crunch was to the point that you might have abandoned the site.

 

[amfmxm]

If you searched among the 50 or so LPFM stations you would no dought find me WLRE-LPFM. I only play gospel music on Sunday's from 7am to noon the rest of the time our format is traditional to modern country music(real country most of the time). You would not want to ask me about money as that would be a real downer since we are not allowed to do commericals we can no longer afford to cover local ballgames, community events, and church events like we use to with live setups. We have two translators covering us to help our coverage and so long as we can keep going(March will be 10 years) we will never quit unless we have to.

The difference between "commercials" and "underwriting" is strictly in the writing of the announcement, so please don't allow that to be an excuse for not covering ballgames, community events & church events.

The easiest way to think about "underwriting" scripts is as an equivalent to "institutional advertising"--you can tell the audience all about the advertiser/underwriter ("They've served the Elloree community since 1947 with a full selection of men's wear and ladies' apparell... open Friday nights til 9 and Saturdays til 5... at 123 Main Street") but can't talk about their "Mid-Autumn Sale"... can't call them "South Carolina's biggest & best"... and can't say "Come in today."

There is no limit on the length of an underwriting spot--30's & 60's are okay--and you can charge whatever the market will bear.

Keep in mind that these non-commercial restrictions on the language you can use in your announcements only applies to for-profit advertisers. You can LEGALLY sell regular commercials (this is true) to non-profits--like hospitals, mutual insurance companies, schools & colleges, churches, county fairs, festivals.

It sounds like you've been doing a great job for the Elloree/Santee area, but it also sounds like you've been unnecessarily restricting yourself by not taking full advantage of what the rules DO allow you to do, quite legally.

For what it's worth, you are hardly alone in restricting your station way beyond what is required. This is very common among non-commercial stations. For every station that abuses the rules there are 50 who starve to death because they've accepted some urban legends about non-commercial operation--or plain old bad advice--instead of researching what the rules actually allow.

 

[DudeFan]

Right on AMFMXM.

Gatekeeper, I tried emailing you awhile back about one of your available translators closer to Columbia.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The difference between "commercials" and "underwriting" is strictly in the writing of the announcement, so please don't allow that to be an excuse for not covering ballgames, community events & church events.

The easiest way to think about "underwriting" scripts is as an equivalent to "institutional advertising"--you can tell the audience all about the advertiser/underwriter ("They've served the Elloree community since 1947 with a full selection of men's wear and ladies' apparell... open Friday nights til 9 and Saturdays til 5... at 123 Main Street") but can't talk about their "Mid-Autumn Sale"... can't call them "South Carolina's biggest & best"... and can't say "Come in today."

No, Gatekeeper phrased his frustration in such a way that I think it does not reflect what is really going on there in South Carolina. I have been listening to WLRE some until he took the server down for maintenance. The reason his station in on my list of "Role Models" is because he does run aggressive copy that skates as close to the foul line as he can without running over it. If you were listening to his station as you drove into town, you would know of some businesses that you might want to visit. His endorsement announcements are the most local and pro-active content on the station. And they do carry the kind of message you gave as an example.

Maybe sales people from stations in neighboring towns are poisoning the well, telling business people that endorsements are useless. Maybe Gatekeeper and his people simply face that same doubters-block that can trip up anyone representing any kind of station: The prospects convice the sales rep the endorsements won't do the job before the sales rep convinces the prospect they will do the job. We all know that happens in transactions where traditional full-blown commercial are being sold.

This part of the revenue problem probably cannot be gracefully identified and solved in a public forum but whatever advice we can offer will be useful to LPFM folks everywhere.

 

[Gatekeeper007]

The comments that everyone has given is very helpful it does give me some ideas that I had not thought of to work on. I still don't believe radio is dying at least not completely as some would have you believe. It is changing due to economic hard times, techonolgy that allows for more unmanned if not most hours of operation with less people in the jock's chair, but the lose of personality that each station once had due to their talant both on and off air can not be replaced by modern techonolgy no matter what that may be, at WLRE we may be automated but we still have alot of personality mixed into the station. I will say that due to the amount of listeners we have which is quit large for our coverage area I don't complain about that just that alot of the business owners who have moved down to the area from up north over the last ten years don't listen to country music and seem to think that just because our station is little and plays country music that it has no value to them even thou we have the majority of listeners in this area and we have proven this to some of the business without a dought but others just don't get it no matter how many times I tell them it doesn't matter what you listen to it matters what everybody else is listening to which why we play the format that we play, never the less the light for them never seems to come on.