WHAT IS THE REASON FOR RADIO?

[Surfer]

Isn't broadcasting a business?  Don't businesses need to make money to survive?  Most businesses will do whatever they have to (legally, of course), to survive.  Radio is no different.  Cutting costs, cutting people, running packaged programming.  It's all designed to stretch the dollar.  Just like my wife cuts coupons.

Just a thought.

[SirRoxalot]

The problem is that when you cut costs, cut people, and run packaged programming, you take away the advantages that radio as a business was built on - immediacy and localization. Take those two elements away, and you've got the same canned spam offered by satellite and on-line services. In fact, you give them the advantage of being able to tailor content to individual users instead of individual markets. If all you provide is generic pap, radio loses.

Too many people in management treat radio like making widgets. Cut the cost of making widgets, and profits will increase - at least until the quality of the widgets starts to decline. Unfortunately, when you cut costs in radio, you too often cut revenue as well, which means that profits actually decrease. Ask Citadel. Or Regent. You can't cut your way to prosperity. It would be like the movie industry cutting production costs because TV came out. What did they do? INVESTED in their product, to differentiate it from TV. Movies provide an experience that even home theatre can't duplicate. Radio needs to do the same thing.

[Bill Wolfenbarger]

When it comes to the major market broadcasters, I am seriously disappointed that the big groups are using technology to marginalize their on-air product.

But in the case of small rural broadcasters, we've had to use some form of automation to be viable, for years.  Automation has been around for over fifty years.  International Good Music (IGM) was able to save small market broadcasters from extinction.  As computers entered the picture, many small stations were able to expand their operating hours to 24/7.

Small rural stations that operate 24/7 are in many cases better equipped than the major market stations in providing immediate notifications to the public.  We operate with live/local morning shows, aided by network programming, strong local news, and always within five minutes of airing important events at any time, day or night.  We do this all with a very small staff.  We use technology because we have to, the big guys use it because they can.

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The Original Post on this thread started out sounding a bit like the lead-in to talk show about business on FOX NEWS or MSNBC.  But as the message was fleshed out,  it asked... and it dealt with...  really valid issues.

Think for a minute about a bank.  People organize a bank for ONE PURPOSE...  too make a profit.  That's classroom Business 101 lecture material.  If you are old enough to have gone to the Saturday afternoon Westerns at your home town theater, you were exposed to civilization in it's raw form.  A village with maybe a dozen merchants,  maybe a dozen saloons   ( grin )  and three churches.  And off to one side, the livery stable.  A place like that needed a bank.  Even if the merchants and saloon owners had to pitch in the start-up money to get it going.  Whether it made money was not the issue.  The saloon owner did not want to deal with the thirsty customer wanting to pay for his whiskey with live chicken.  There needed to be some form of accepted currency where you you could take your chicken to the grocer and he could give you some form of currency you could take down the street to buy a new bandana, get the shoe replace on your favorite horse, drop something in the church collection plate, and then while the parson wasn't looking,  sneak around the corner to the saloon.  Whether anybody made a profit at running a bank was not the original issue.  Having a liquid, fungible form of currency was the need.  In keeping with the economic concepts that are a part of our nation, banks were nurtured and fertilized by allowing private ownership and profitability.  (In the lifetime of many of us,  the hometown Savings and Loan was still a viable institution... and they tended to be not-for-profit cooperatives,  mutual associations. 

So, sometimes there are other reasons why a business activity exists other than JUST profit.

Many hospitals are not-for-profit.  When you wander through the rice belt and the wheat belt,  many of those rice-dryers and grain-elevators are not-for-profit business operations.

(Yes,  I know...  that hospital and that savings and loan and that grain elevator must generate more income than expenses or it is dead in the water.)

I don't know where the OP would have gone with this conversation had the essay been longer.  The world ONLY was not used. But in this day of political debates over the principles of free enterprise vs. the principles of when socialism becomes the proper description of some modified business format,  I offer this observation:  No matter how much or how little profit an operation makes, when broadcasting ceases to meet some kind of community need and becomes ONLY a cash and profit engine,  maybe we are doing something wrong.

I guess a fully automated station playing oldies by the Beach Boys beats taking a chicken down to the ticket window at the Anniversary Concert Tour and trying to pay for the ability to hear the music.

The threads I find most interesting, most useful, and maybe most productive for the industry, are those where the participants seek to define a balance between "programming with life" and "programming gone stale and tepid" with an overabundance of passion on the profit side.



 

[ellenparks]

All good points for a business such as a McDonalds, CVS Pharmacy, Home Depot etc.  There is no reason why you can't put one on any corner if you have the money and time ,,,that's good old Capitalisum. 

But, radio is different by virtue of the fact that you can't stick one anywhere.  If you did interferrence would wipe them all out.  In fact this is what happened in the early 1930's and resulted in the Federal Communications act of 1934 being passed Up to that point, as today, there were thousands of people who wanted to broadcast and operate their stations in attics, garages and elseware.  The act said that there weren't enough frequencies to go around so new criterta was adopted to weed out the weekend broadcaster.  ( up to the passage of the act the FRC which preceeded the FCC had to issue a license to anyone who requested it)

To get a license after 1934 the FCC said you had to serve the public interest as well as meet the new lwas demands.

 The argument here seems to be that serving the public interest and making money are mutually exclusive.   That wasn't the case a few years back.  We ran Public service announcements for nonprofits on most stations I heard, we did local news etc. 

The problem is two fold 1)  While the law still says you must serve the public the FCC gives little concern to whether you do so or not and thereby gives tasid support to not doing so and

2) Many broadcasters have it in their head that " It can't be done,,can't afford it ".  Really?  then isn't it interesting that you can schedule spots including bonus spots and etc and call that the cost of doing business but when you are ask to serve the public it's too costly. 

My observation is that like a kid who tries all kind of excuses to not go to bed many broadcasters try excuses to remove regulations not because they can't live with them but because it's not popular to suggest that ANY LAW is good.

Still, the bottom line is:  you started, built, bought your station with the understanding of what you should do as a responsible broadcaster  to make it go i.e. public service, local news etc like everyone else.  If you didn't intend to run it  that way you shouldn't have started it.  There are still thousands of people who couldn't get that license you hold.  It's not JUST a Business It's a priviledge not everybody gets .

[KeithE4]

To get a license after 1934 the FCC said you had to serve the public interest as well as meet the new lwas demands.

Define "serve the public interest."  If a station is listened to and liked by a good portion of the population, it is serving the public interest by being a popular station.  In other words, the public (and

The argument here seems to be that serving the public interest and making money are mutually exclusive.   That wasn't the case a few years back.  We ran Public service announcements for nonprofits on most stations I heard, we did local news etc. 

Local news is not necessary on every station.  If your target audience wants local news, then by all means provide it.  If your target audience wants music, then play music and quit talking.  Both types of stations serve their audiences as well as their advertisers and owners.

And you ran PSAs when you had a possibility of selling that time to an advertiser?  I find that very hard to believe.

Still, the bottom line is:  you started, built, bought your station with the understanding of what you should do as a responsible broadcaster  to make it go i.e. public service, local news etc like everyone else.

Again, it's not necessary for every station to run local news, any more than it's necessary for every station to employ disk jockeys.  I'm speaking as a listener here, but if I'm listening to my favorite music station and some DJ starts babbling or they insist on running 5 minutes of news that I already know about, I'm changing the station.  I may not return for awhile.

If you didn't intend to run it  that way you shouldn't have started it.  There are still thousands of people who couldn't get that license you hold.  It's not JUST a Business It's a priviledge not everybody gets .

It's still a commercial business.  Commercial businesses exist for exactly one reason:  To make a profit for its owners.  There are zero exceptions to this rule unless the station is run as a rich man's quasi-hobby (and there are some).  But if that's the case, then it really isn't a commercial for-profit business, is it?

[TheBigA]

The problem is that when you cut costs, cut people, and run packaged programming, you take away the advantages that radio as a business was built on - immediacy and localization.

Those "advantages" were taken away when OTHER media became more immediate and more local.  Radio needs to reinvent itself, because the old exclusives have gone away.  It's foolish to act as thought people don't have cell phones or don't have other sources for information. 

The reality is that even with all the cuts in radio, the usage of radio has remained largely unaffected, which says to me that the people have adapted to the changes in radio, and understand "the reason for radio." 

[TheBigA]

To get a license after 1934 the FCC said you had to serve the public interest

That language was included in all private-public partnerships at the time.  You'll find those same wording in regulations for water, electric, and gas.  It was also equally as vague.  However, in the years since the original Act, the government has created their own services for the public.  The government now is responsible for weather, traffic, and emergency information, not radio.  The role of government was very different before WW2. 

With regards to public service announcements, you'll find that radio still does a lot of this.  More importantly, radio stations do a lot of local charity work in their communities.  If you go look at the public files of these stations (and I have), you'll see how much money these radio stations have raised for local charities, how they've co-sponsored local non-profit events, providing free publicity, staffing, and even office space.

The main thing to know is that broadcasting isn't self-regulated.  There is an agency responsible for doing the regulating, and certifying that the owners and stations are complying with the laws.  To the best of my knowledge, no one has had their license revoked for not serving the public interest.  If the FCC isn't doing their job, that's not the station's problem.  It's up to the police to enforce driving laws, it's up to the IRS to enforce tax laws, and it's up to the FCC to enforce broadcast laws.

[TheBigA]

It would be like the movie industry cutting production costs because TV came out. What did they do? INVESTED in their product, to differentiate it from TV. Movies provide an experience that even home theatre can't duplicate. Radio needs to do the same thing.

We'd like to see your plan.

Historically, when TV came out, it needed content.  TV companies wanted to air movies.  At first, the movie industry said no, because they didn't want to make themselves obsolete.  Instead companies like Disney saw TV as a source for revenue.  They sold TV rights for their content.  That often brought them more money than what they could make at the box office.  Today, movie companies have diversified revenue streams, from TV, cable, video, streaming, and merchandising.  But the movie industry isn't live or local.  It creates permanent product that can be bought internationally and used over and over.  Radio airs once and is done.  How do you suggest making radio more like the movies?

[TheBigA]

While the law still says you must serve the public the FCC gives little concern to whether you do so or not and thereby gives tasid support to not doing so

I think you mean tacit support. 

That's your interpretation.  I believe the FCC feels it has to pick and choose its fights.  There was a reason why the government entered into a public private partnership with broadcasters in 1934.  The reason was because the government didn't want to spend the money to run all the radio stations.  In other countries, the stations are owned by the government.  Here, they're privately owned.  In exchange for the use of the airwaves, the broadcasters can make money.  As much as they want.  They have never been restricted or limited in the money-making aspect.  And there is no connection between the amount of money they can make, and the public service they provide.  Read the rules. 

Regardless of what the FCC does, it's their job.  Just because you personally don't like the situation doesn't mean you can put on your sherriff's badge and arrest broadcasters.  The fact is the FCC recognizes that the role of the broadcasters has changed since 1934.  The FCC is responsible for a lot more than just radio now.  Their responsibilities have changed too since 1934.  I think we're all grown-ups, and we all need to adjust to these new realities, and quit trying to act like it's still 1934.