Re: NorthEast Radio Watch 3/5: We Will Never Make Fun of Boston Weather Again...

[Rob Landry <umar@nerodia.wcrb.com>]

On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Douglas J. Broda wrote:

> What is/are the purpose(s) of the station? To serve the college community?
> To serve a greater community? To train its staff vis-a-vis real world radio
> jobs? To have fun?

I was assuming all of those, actually.
 
> Unless the station's got deep ties with an academic program in
> broadcasting, that's not so simple a call.

I'm probably going to upset a lot of people by saying this, but I don't
believe broadcasting should be taught as an academic discipline.
Broadcasting is a trade, in my opinion, and is best learned on the job.

> And even if you decide what the goal is, it's not easy to define how it's
> met. (Is "serving the college community" met by playing the music a
> majority likes? By providing diverse programs for a diverse college
> community? By trying to teach the community?)

I would argue that to serve a community one must define a target audience,
then provide programming which attracts and hold that audience. If the
tastes of the audience are diverse, then a station may be justified in
adopting a diverse format. However, college station programmers often make
the mistake of thinking they can reach several different audiences, each
of which has fairly narrow tastes, by dividing the station's broadcast day
or week into uncoordinated segments, each of which targets a different
audience. That doesn't work; such formats effectively target only members
of one audience which also belong to all the others.
 

Rob Landry
umar@nerodia.wcrb.com

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End of boston-radio-interest-digest V2 #324
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