Recently drove across the state of Georgia and took a route through rural areas beginning in the Ashburn area and ending up outside of Athens. Drove through Ashburn, Rochelle, Hawkinsville, Cochran, Sandersville, Sparta, and Greensboro. It is absolutely amazing how much decline has occurred in these areas over the past 20 years. The only areas of prosperity are found in places where a lake was built creating a unique recreational attraction. Greensboro and Milledgeville are examples; although Milledgeville being the more blue collar of the two has suffered more economically. A place like Hawkinsville once a very vibrant small town, were heartbreaking and took on the appearance of a third world nation. Empty buildings all over the downtown area; even homes in some of the fancier neighbors looked tired and with little maintenance. Poor Cochran wasn't much better. I wondered why the college there hadn't provided more stability to the local economy until I read it was merged with a college in Macon and it appears much of the student body was in Macon. Probably the greatest decline most recently appeared in Sandersville. Although some distance from Augusta and Macon, Sandersville always had a leg up with its local kaolin industry. Not sure what happened but lots of chain store locations are now empty and downtown was a mere shell of what it was just 10 or 15 years ago. You really have to get north of Interstate Highway 20 before you start seeing obvious signs of growth. All this has a huge negative impact on the small town radio stations in these areas which have also have to live with a lot less revenue. No wonder so many have gone out of business. Used to be said there are two Georgia's; Atlanta and an hour's drive from the Atlanta airport then the rest of the state. I think the rest of the state can be divided into one area of hope, another prosperous or stable; and the rest is just beyond help. Sad situation and the impact its had on the radio stations in those areas is devastating.
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The Decline of Small Towns in Rural Georgia
- Thread starter MediaMan
- Start date
Decline has been felt everywhere, unfortunately. If there are still local businesses in the area, let them know you support them. Kimball, Nebraska (my father's birthtown) was once home to 5k people, and to be on topic here, 2 radio stations. Now those numbers are 2.5k and 0, respectively (until Vic Michael builds a new one in a couple of years.) Anyways, in the heyday, there was lots of shopping and some decent entertainment, but now Kimball is down to their last grocery store and half of downtown is boarded up.
I have seen this demise of small town America not only in some of Georgia but in Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. One small city I once visited on the Texas border, Presidio, was once a town of 5,000 where the streets were bustling with traffic, busy sidewalks and wall to wall stores with people coming in and out. Granted this was 30 years ago and I suspect when 9/11 happened it spelled doom to Presidio. Today there's a scattering of businesses with the highway generally bypassing the heart of the town. It looks old, unkept and worn out. Many other towns such as in Iowa once had bustling downtowns a couple of decades ago but now have the bank and post office surrounded by a downtown of crumbling or boarded up buildings. More than half the population is gone.
Business in the towns is no longer viable with Dollar General moving in or Walmart in the County Seat. In one small town of 1,200, a locally owned convenience store shut down because Dollar General took so much of his business. As he put it, he was doing okay until they opened and he lost his core customer. It seems lots of convenience stores have a small group of customers that buy several items a day, every day, in multiple visits a day to 'their' convenience store. That small group usually accounts for several hundred dollars a day in high profit items.
Not long ago I drive through Leuders, Texas, once a pretty nice place. Today every building in the 2 block downtown is either in ruins or boarded up except for the post office. I could point out dozens of other places much the same way. You'd think the city would raze the buildings or order them repaired but they haven't the money because of the lost tax base. Barstow, Texas, once a fairly bustling place is stuck trying to find money to repair their water system but now with zero retail businesses and zero sales tax revenue, they don't qualify for many of the financial help sources.
Business in the towns is no longer viable with Dollar General moving in or Walmart in the County Seat. In one small town of 1,200, a locally owned convenience store shut down because Dollar General took so much of his business. As he put it, he was doing okay until they opened and he lost his core customer. It seems lots of convenience stores have a small group of customers that buy several items a day, every day, in multiple visits a day to 'their' convenience store. That small group usually accounts for several hundred dollars a day in high profit items.
Not long ago I drive through Leuders, Texas, once a pretty nice place. Today every building in the 2 block downtown is either in ruins or boarded up except for the post office. I could point out dozens of other places much the same way. You'd think the city would raze the buildings or order them repaired but they haven't the money because of the lost tax base. Barstow, Texas, once a fairly bustling place is stuck trying to find money to repair their water system but now with zero retail businesses and zero sales tax revenue, they don't qualify for many of the financial help sources.
Sounds about right to me, sadly.
These small towns literally can't afford to save themselves any longer, so they hold on as they slowly lose their core residents. Sometimes, I've noticed a small town get lucky and a new store will pop up, but it's not often. Small towns that are close enough to big cities will actually grow because of the urban exodus due to high prices, but those small towns that are 60 miles away from one another are doomed, eventually. Hopefully, the people that are left over in these towns are loyal to these towns because the ruralness works for them. But eventually, the tough ranchers and cowboys will get old, and then their kids will tell them to "come live with us!", and there goes your small town.I feel like we kind of hastened this. It wasn't nessecairily preventable by all means, but imagine if we didn't have interstates, or the internet. Small towns would do pretty good, I think. At the same time however, those things have saved certain small towns that would otherwise be unreachable.
Just to add: I frequently drive through several small towns each week to visit my wife's parents. These are towns that I know from my childhood. As the examples above from MediaMan, gr8 and Zantenna reference, there has been a terrible decline over the past 15-20 years in many small towns. Specifically, the ones that I noticed were Danielsville and Royston. Neither one was ever that big, but the decline is certainly evident from the empty and boarded-up stores. Royston has an AM daytimer that has been there forever, and a translator with it. I don't see how they survive. Hartwell, to MediaMan's analogy, has a nice lake next to it and has grown slightly, and the AM station there now has a translator and sounds decent. They also have a bustling downtown environment but it is still a small town. I will note that some small markets have seen a bit of growth simply from the fact that, thanks to the pandemic, many people have learned that you can live in a smaller less crowded town and still work in Atlanta remotely. The cost of land and housing in a lot of those small markets is increasing similar to the suburbs of the bigger cities. I recently checked the cost of land between Athens and Commerce and the prices are considerably higher than I expected. Also, look at land and housing in the small towns in the N. GA mountains - they are also expensive now. Those price increases can only be sustained if there are buyers willing to pay for them.
As others have said, the decline of small towns is widespread and it's for various reasons. The "rust belt" and its decline, for instance, is well-documented. Those were areas where young men could graduate high school, marry, get a job in the same factory or mine their fathers worked in and support an entire family on a single income while performing unskilled (for the most part) labor. If they lost their job in one factory, they could often walk across town and find work in another. All that is gone for the most part. Some of those towns 'reinvented' themselves and brought in light manufacturing or other employment, but most just went bust. They refused to change, or they'd convinced themselves that better times would return, or were convinced that their unions would somehow find a way to save them, etc. but in the end most of those towns are shells of what they once were and in some cases are nearly ghost towns. EPA regulations changed the way many of those factories, especially those that were fired by coal, had to operate, the high cost of unionized labor hurt them as those industries could manufacture in other areas or countries for far less, and the aging factories themselves became problematic as they were inefficient compared to newer systems, equipment and designs. Aside from the rust belt, agricultural has also greatly changed. One doesn't see farming done primarily on a bunch of smaller, independent, family owned and ran farms anymore. Many spots where they used to raise livestock and grow produce became more valuable for the land it was sitting on. The changes in manufacturing in agricultural alone have had immense impacts, and of course, caused a bit of a domino effect as the companies, banks, stores, etc. they once supported also got impacted with many closing up shop.
That said, where smaller towns and older industries and farming methods have declined, other opportunities elsewhere have opened up in other industries and areas of business. However, the days of someone coming out of high school and getting a blue collar job that supports them through to retirement and allows them to support a family, are long gone - but it doesn't stop local, regional and national politicians from pandering to those folks and promising them better days will return if they'll only vote them into office.
That said, where smaller towns and older industries and farming methods have declined, other opportunities elsewhere have opened up in other industries and areas of business. However, the days of someone coming out of high school and getting a blue collar job that supports them through to retirement and allows them to support a family, are long gone - but it doesn't stop local, regional and national politicians from pandering to those folks and promising them better days will return if they'll only vote them into office.
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Absolutely. A lot of those radio stations were started when there was more local business, and people stayed in their home towns. Now, 40 years later, the entire economy and society has shifted. Things were driven down by the crash in 2008 and now covid. People look at radio and ask why there's less local talent, and more syndication, and the answer is there's less money. Local radio needs local business, and when that goes away, the radio stations suffer.
I was speaking with a friend about Macon, and we were talking about the rebirth of downtown, with museums and cultural institutions. But then it hit me that those new things are non-profits, not local business. So maybe it drives some tourism, but that's transient business, not the kind you can build a radio station around.
So yes, this is a big problem, and I see it just about everywhere. There's a concentration of wealth that's happened over the last 25 years, and a lot of people are left behind.
My Dad was able to take a 4th grade education to a factory job at Avco New Idea (yes, same Avco of Avco Financial and the WLW Radio and Television stations. He was able to invest in real estate and sell cars on the side. Our lives weren't extravagant, the family did OK. My town and county seemed to whether the changes one way or another. That factory took up several blocks. Last time I was there, the factory was gone but divided out into smaller manufacturing places and offices. The county seat that houses my first station (AM with translator) and FM now) seems to be doing well. Both towns are clean with no "bad section". My first station was sold to an employee and will be continuing its full service format. A lot of sponsors from the past are long gone, but apparently have been replaced. It's still a huge farming area. It's more fortunate than many small town areas. There's another FM in town too.
If small town America would revive themselves wouldn't that require the city to spend a few years in Bankruptcy. Note cities have gone into Bankruptcy in the past because of previous recessions that took place.
www.gobankingrates.com
8 U.S. Cities That Went Bankrupt
20 Places That Have Gone Bankrupt
These places are victims of poor financial planning.
www.gobankingrates.com
8 U.S. Cities That Went Bankrupt
This is not news news. 10 Years ago I had occasion to drive around much of Minnesota. Once you were out of commuting range of Minneapolis or unless you had a reason for being (e.g. a college or university), your town was mostly boarded up. In West Texas, the rise of corporate farming doomed a lot of small towns. It was a shame to see all those lovely farmhouses boarded up and decaying. It is unfortunate, but it appears that much of rural America is dying.
Dang I never knew small towns in Texas are dying off. But this is taking place as the bigger cities in the state like Austin, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston are marketing themselves as a place where Ex-Californians can get "An affordable home, educational opportunities at UT and decent workplace". Also in recent years there have been talks from Tech Companies, Investment companies and VC's to either move the CEO's and boards seat to Texas or move their entire staff to Texas or allow work from home operations from Texas depending on how companies are carrying out their plans.
How many small rural towns simply get converted into suburbs? Maybe that's another factor to rural America's decline is that some places became no longer viable to farming and had to be converted to suburban housing and industrial parks.
My theory is that most small towns will disappear, but the ones that hold on will ironically be gobbled up by the big cities until the US is one big Judge Dredd mega city. Their population will shrink at first, and then double in size. Look at Wellington, Colorado. It was steady, albeit somewhat going down until recently, and then a bunch of people moved there beginning in the 1990's.
That's pretty reasonable. I still have a lot of hope to that the kids of the 2050's will be able to experience rural life to some degree. A town that is 25 miles from the nearest city will get swallowed up faster (probably by 2045) than one that is 75 miles away (probably by 2100).
Universaal broadband would help.
True and more educational funding in small towns.
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