Re: the simplistic argument of employment at small stations ...

["Mark Laurence" <laurence@sprintmail.com>]

Dan Billings wrote:

> I do not dispute that there are less on-air positions in radio today than
> in years past. 

I would dispute that.  I think there are a lot more radio jobs today 
than there were in the 70's and 80's.  There are fewer jobs per 
station, but there are two or three times as many stations per 
market, especially in the smaller markets.  

When I was a kid in Worcester, we had 4 AM's with a full staff, but 
even those stations signed off around midnight.  The 2 FM's were 
automated and staffed largely by their AM'ers.  There were probably 
20-25 full-time on-air jobs in the whole city.  Now there must be at 
least 30, but they're divided up among about 10 stations.  

I worked in Bangor in the 70's and there were 3 fully staffed AM's and 
1 automated FM.  Now how many stations are there in the market, a 
dozen?  15?  Even if some are operating with one or two full-timers, 
there has to be more radio employment now than there was then.

No question, in the past few years there has been a shrinkage of 
jobs due to consolidation and automation.  But to a large extent that 
is just making up for the huge expansion of the number of stations in 
the 80's and 90's.  

Mark
laurence@sprintmail.com