Re: let's be civil...

[SteveOrdinetz <steveord@xtdl.com>]

At 02:06 AM 4/23/98 -0400, Donna Halper wrote:

>
>Umm, with all due respect, I think community oriented full-service radio CAN
>still work, if done right.  I believe there IS a need for a station to be
>competitive in the area of news and investigative reporting, some sports,
>some older music that still sounds good...
>....I clearly recall all the money the old
>WHDH used to make doing full-service, and that was true right up through the
>mid 1980s. 



I wonder how many people would put up with that today.  People's attention
spans are not long enough to sit thru the clutter....a 10-12 min newscast,
a ball game on a "music" station...try to do that today and just see how
fast your audience starts dial surfing....our lifestyles are busier than
they were in the 60s & 70s when those stations were in their prime.
Formats are being niched tighter and tighter...what's WBMX's target
demo...women 24-29 or something like that?  I doubt WAAF expects to attract
anyone beyond men 18-24.  I frankly don't see this trend changing any time
soon.  As much as I enjoy full service radio, 10 min newscasts twice an
hour, a couple of 5 min sportscasts an hour and a ton of
commercials...starts to wear thin after a while.  If WHDH was still making
tons of money doing full service, my guess is that they would have kept
doing it...same with WBZ.




>
>The big question for all of us as the population ages is:  what does TODAY'S
>50 year old want?  We know what they used to want, but the boomers are quite
>different from the older adults of generations past... 


My guess is that whatever we want, we won't be looking for it on AM,
especially one with a, er, less than flamethrower signal.  Music radio on
AM died for a reason...it's easy to blame corporate attitudes, but the fact
of the matter is that fewer and fewer people were willing to listen to
static-y AM reception for music. Remember, we were the generation that made
the move to FM in the first place...thinking you can get us (or anyone
else, for that matter) back to AM is like launching a drive to bring back
B&W tv or dial phones.

------------------------------