Re: The NAB, part 2

["Bill O'Neill" <billo@erols.com>]

- -----Original Message-----
From: Donna Halper <

>It is a bit ironic that when the Chairman told an anecdote about radio's
>great ability to do public service, he used as an example a station that
>held the entire community together during a recent hurricane-- the irony
>being that the station only did this after their satellite went down and
>they had to go on the air live...
>
>An interesting convention, at a very pivotal point in radio's development.
>Anyone want to predict what will happen next?  Even more consolidation?  Or
>will some stations return to doing more live programming?  I'd be
>interested in your predictions...
>

Very well expressed.  I was cleaning out my garage this afternoon (really)
and came upon a box of cassette airchecks and started popping them into the
garage radio for a listen.  (Can you say 'Blackmail Material?"  (Yes, I may
have sounded bad but never had illusions to the contrary.  Even if I sounded
good, I would have to blow my self-deprecating cover.  But I digress..)

I discovered the tape from "Hurricane Bob 8/16/91".  (WCAP Lowell 980 kHz).
The air qual. is bad, in light of the wind and lightning and generator power
at the xmtr and age of the tape.  I had just taken over for Joe Corcoran
(PD) who had been on for well over 12 hours, having done his AM drive shift
then blowing out the network talk and just taking calls all day with the
news dept. in full go as well.  I took over at 7 pm and just kept going and
going.  The callers sounded, bluntly, scared.  Some were joking about eating
all of the ice cream in their freezers before it would melt and we joked
about the flavors, etc.  Others asked about polling the beer type and stock
levels for the duration, etc.  Others actually called in outages (they were
rampant) and newly fallen trees, standed motorists, etc.  Mass Electric had
said they were listening (as they were to other stations) to hear first hand
reports.  And they joined in liberally with updates as did local police and
fire.  But, as in Donna's post, local radio did its best by not serving off
of its regular menu as well as doing what bigger stations can not and will
not do:  being LOCAL.

When the dung hits the rotary oscillator, locals crave local information
falling all over each other to find AM and hoping for a friendly (hopefully
competent) host to speak with to help put things back into perspective.
Potential audience?  TSLs?  Given that most other signals were dark, balance
with the reality that "no battery?  no radio" the audience was huge.  But,
from the business office point of view, the slots were not sold out.  You
can't anticipate storms (although you can smartly pre-sell storm coverage
and bill as it happens $$$)  The listener reliance bump was brief after the
storm and then it was (no) business as usual, as with most stations who had
a brief light in the storm to shine.

You could say that local radio has become the opposite of fair weather
friends.  Can we really blame the market for that?   What impresses me about
WCAP's involvement during the hurricane seven years ago (at the risk of
patting myself and colleagues on the back) was that it had the ability to
blow out network and actually DELIVER the local service.  I am now convicted
to the fact that there are some "hard-drive repeaters" out there who
wouldn't know where the studio mic pot was if they were smokin' it.

Bill O'Neill

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