How is small market Georgia radio doing?

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

In casual conversation I have said to my friends something similar to what Art Sutton said.  It has been years since I have been in the business (though I tried to acquire a station in recent years) so when I say it,  it doesn't ring with authority.  When Art says it, you can go to the bank with it.  His bank account and solvency are on the line... every day...  in the here and now.

When I travel back to my hometown for funerals and weddings and class reunions, we travel through areas where I used to go out on the street and sell radio.  We climb down off the super-slab now and then and tour some of these towns and with my mouth hanging open, I mutter:  "And I used to sell advertisng in THIS!"  The towns are as cute or ugly as they every were,  but the business district is just plain DEAD looking.

Now let me venture beyond small markets and beyond Georgia.  I also travel through some much larger cities where I have worked radio, and where I thougt I wanted to work radio back in the day.  It may not be quite as obvious but larger markets have also changed for radio.  The big banks in town are now managed from New York or Chicago or where ever.  Even in the cities the car dealerships are owned by corporations based somewhere else.... just like corporate radio.  I remember being on the streets in Indianapolis when H.H. Gregg was a one store operation and guys like me walked in off the sidewalk and told our story in hopes of walking out with some of his ad dollars.  (Mr. H. H. Gregg himself was on the floor of that one store!)  There were something like 8 stations in town and I worked for one ranked maybe 5th or 6th.  I also did business with some really corn-ball mom-and-pop operations.  It may be tough finding business today in small town Georgia, but I suspect going out on the streets of Indianapolis or Louisville or Dayton today doing direct business (no agencies) with the 9t or 13th or 17th rated station in town is a nightmare compared to previous years.

Bring back the 80 acre farm  (my dad had one of those) with the farmer still mumbling about wishing he had his team of horses back,  bring back the hometown banks with 10 or 12 employees and the owner sitting right there in plain sight,  bring back the Detroit built automobile that will have to have the engine rebuilt after 60 to 80 thousand miles,  and maybe we can hope to again see radio stations with live dee-jays in little county seat towns.

Along with Art Sutton, there are other entrepreneurs across this county who continue to deliver a heroic qualit and style of radio considering the business and social conditions of our day.  Find one in your area.  See what he/she is doing.  Make that your gold standard and don't be belly-aching about how much better they should be doing.

[JackieSteele]

Vibrant small towns just 10 to 15 years ago may still be ok but the retail mix of the community has totally changed and that has really limited the revenue potential for a host of small town stations. Places like Ashburn, Sylvester, Nashville, etc just don't have enough advertisers left to support a station. Larger small towns like Thomasville, Moultrie, Americus,  etc dont have enough radio advertisers left to support more than one good local radio operation. In many of these places, if it weren't for automation systems and he ability to run stations with fewer people, lots more would be dark.

x1000.  Even back when our cluster made an honest effort to stay live-n-local, we had to rely on automation for a good majority of the day because there's just no other way for a 1kW'er to survive.  But like everything, there's a curse with the blessing.  The bad thing about automation is that it becomes addictive.  What started out as a way to make do in the off hours gradually crept into other dayparts.  At first it was "we don't have to figure out how to pay an overnight guy," but morphed into this convoluted stream of "don't have to pay a morning guy;" "don't have to pay a sales force;" "just grab a few national dollars or a combo deal with the FM, and we'll still be in the black if there's no sales cost or talent cost."

Not that I'm a master of running radio... lord knows there's plenty of people out there who actually know what the hell they're talking about.  But it always hearkens me back to the retrofuturism of the 30s-60s.  The original thought was that technology and automation would mean we'd only work two hours a day.  But that glowing futurism failed to count on corporate nature.  If you can get everything done in ten hours a week, then corporate can cut the work force down to 25% and pile on 4x as much work on the folks that are left.

As I've said before... I worked in a radio station for about 14 years... but I only did radio for about half of them.