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:

> 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.

If your listeners can only hear a few other stations, then diversity makes
sense since your audience will necessarily include a lot of people of
disparate tastes, and none of your listeners are likely to find their
needs entirely met by one of your competitors. In my opinion this is why
"full-service" radio was so successful prior to about 1980.

On the other hand, if your station has many competitors, they'll likely
try to superserve small audience segments with fairly narrow tastes, and
you won't be able to survive unless you find your own audience segment to
superserve. A station trying to cater to several different segments may
find it impossible to win any of them, since each is likely to have
another station catering to it exclusively. What good will it do to play
an hour or two a day of, say, modern rock, when there's someone else on
the dial playing it 24 hours a day? 

> 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.

Unless it is the only station that people at the college can receive, it
will have to compete for listeners with other stations whose target
audiences include significant numbers of members of the college community. 
To do so successfully it will have to find some common interest which most
members of its target audience share: college sports? news analysis? talk
shows on themes of interest to members of the college?  It can't simply
divide its time and resources in a hopeless bid to become all things to
all people, or it must fail. In the words of Londo Mollari: "only an idiot
fights a war on two fronts; only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of
idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts."
 
Of course, if the college pays your bills and doesn't particularly expect
anything in return, then you can do anything you like, and it won't matter
how many people are listening. But in that case you'll never really learn
the art of winning and keeping an audience, which is really what radio is
all about.


Rob Landry
umar@nerodia.wcrb.com

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