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

["Douglas J. Broda" <dougbroda@mindspring.com>]

At 08:26 AM 3/7/99 -0500, Rob Landry wrote:

>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.

I may not be a broadcast pro, but I'll go halfway with you on that one.  It
seems axiomatic that you can't learn broadcasting in the classroom, but it
seems just as axiomatic to me that you can gain a tremendous advantage and
substantial skill from practical broadcasting experience at a college
station. Look at the many great pros who hailed from Syracuse and Fordham
(to give two examples). I don't think they were good because of what they
learned in the classroom, but what they learned on the air is another matter.

And that's why the training ground vs. serve the student interest is a good
debate. (Again, I'm not including the major NPR stations, etc., licensed to
colleges, as I'd hardly consider them "college stations.") Serving the
student interest may not train one well in practicum... as a DJ, maybe; as
a sportscaster, definitely; but as a newscaster? I doubt a student vote
would include a heavy news presence!

>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.
> 

Hmmmm. Why? For decades, targeting different shows at different niches on
the same station was considered high broadcast responsibility. It's not
practical today re ratings, but the goal of a college station isn't ratings.

Besides, a college isn't like a city that has many groups of interests in a
large population; it's a group assembled together that, if the school meets
common academic goals, intentionally builds and breeds diversity in a small
setting -- one that usually has only one station.

I don't know how effectively you can mix thirty formats, as some college
stations try (OK, that's hyperbole), but I do think that you don't need
just one at the college level. For example, a station that is modern music
evenings and nights, multi-focus public service weekend mornings, and has a
variety of outlets for ethnic and regional programming... that's not too
broad to be cared about, and it's broad enough to serve diversity.

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