• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Is a radio station in financial trouble when it airs lots and lots of PSA's?

vchimpanzee said:
WHVN in Charlotte NC came back on the air after being off for several months, and it took several more months to sell the station. I couldn't pick it up at home but I wished I could have. No commercials. Just PSAs. Someone on this site said they weren't helping and, in fact, I was told if you could hear PSA's on any station during a time people were likely listening, it wasn't doing well.
Click to expand...
Before the radical changes in radio regulation of the last three decades, including Docket 80-90 and the ownership cap limitation removal as well as license renewal requirements, we had to promise a certain number of PSAs per day and per week to get a license renewal.

Some of us realized that a 10" liner counted for as much as a 60" recorded Red Cross PSA, and did them all "live and local". And then we pretty much quit doing them at all. But for decades, those PSAs were very much a part of securing license renewal... just as newscasts and the "Sunday Morning Shows" were.
 
b-turner said:
Pretty much if you're hearing a PSA or one of those spots like Direct Quote, you have a station covering break that does not have all of it's commercial time sold. Per inquiry ads generally pay very little...in my case pennies per airing. You might catch more PSAs at night when breaks must be covered by the local station. I'd say a station filling breaks from 6am to 7pm especially on weekdays is hurting financially. In fact, the fewer commercials 6a to 7p weekdays, the worse off the station is.
Click to expand...
Like a said, there were no commercials. The format was very conservative standards (something they had on a co-owned station before they gave up on fund-raisers and went back to a talk simulcast, and then Billy Graham's organization bought it) and people on this site said the purpose was just to put something on the air so they wouldn't lose their license for being silent too long when the owner was trying to sell it.
 
That is likely true. You cannot be silent beyond a year as a matter of law per the FCC.

I remember guarantees of X number of PSAs a week, percentages of News, Public Affairs, lots of 'other' programming, etc. We used to do a 60-90sec news headline but the log said 5 minutes. Same with the 10-15 second weather showing 1 minute in length. Sunday we started early to get all the promised programming played. And we aired it then because our listeners didn't care to hear it. We intentionally played it at a low listening time.

I recall a 24 hour FM loading up 5 minutes of news twice an hour, weather at :15 and :45 and a dozen 30 second PSAs an hour Midnight to 6am. The exception was 4-8am Sunday was public affairs and such. During the day the station had headlines every 2 or 3 hours and weather hourly.
 
b-turner said:
That is likely true. You cannot be silent beyond a year as a matter of law per the FCC.

I remember guarantees of X number of PSAs a week, percentages of News, Public Affairs, lots of 'other' programming, etc. We used to do a 60-90sec news headline but the log said 5 minutes. Same with the 10-15 second weather showing 1 minute in length. Sunday we started early to get all the promised programming played. And we aired it then because our listeners didn't care to hear it. We intentionally played it at a low listening time.

I recall a 24 hour FM loading up 5 minutes of news twice an hour, weather at :15 and :45 and a dozen 30 second PSAs an hour Midnight to 6am. The exception was 4-8am Sunday was public affairs and such. During the day the station had headlines every 2 or 3 hours and weather hourly.
Click to expand...
I remember a competitor, Bob Hope's WBMJ, took the supermarket tabloids and did "Radio Rock Confidencial" once an hour with brief Spanish language condensations of those gossip-and-Bigfoot stories... and they logged it as "news".
 
DavidEduardo said:
I remember a competitor, Bob Hope's WBMJ, took the supermarket tabloids and did "Radio Rock Confidencial" once an hour with brief Spanish language condensations of those gossip-and-Bigfoot stories... and they logged it as "news".
Click to expand...
I would’ve listened to that if Bob Hope had been reading them!
 
Mark Roberts said:
What far and away does more to undermine broadcaster journalistic integrity than anything else are the hours and hours of slanted right-wing rabble-rousing talk shows and their hosts that promote outright lies.
Click to expand...
Mark, I think you need to be more specific. Not saying you're right or wrong, but this kind of "painting with a broad brush" adds nothing to the conversation.

Why not go over to the Politics forum, give examples, and make some specific points?
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.
Back
Top Bottom