Re: AM (was Re: LPFM Rules)

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

Great question. My short answer is: Boston's an unusual situation.

Now the long opinion (Me? Brief? Never.)...

Boston has more diversity and quality in talk than most major markets, and
may be unique in arguably having more than it did years ago. Who's close?
Maybe San Francisco and New York (though I think that neither has more
depth or breadth than it did years ago.) Talk is the pits in LA, Denver's
gone in the tank compared to years ago.... and most critically (to a
high-50s market resident like me), the loss of local talk in markets
outside the Top 20 is brutal. Most of it's gone, and what's there is 95%
from the right wing, usually with hosts who make Rush seem overly polite to
callers who have differing views. (That's not a knock on conservatives --
it's a knock on lack of diversity among hosts.) And they usually aren't
very good at it.

*Musical* diversity, OTOH, isn't served IMO as well as it should be in Boston.

At 12:40 AM 2/3/00 -0500, Chuckigo@aol.com wrote:
>
>is it simply our percerption that there is a loss in either quality or 
>variety?  at most, in the not so distant past, Boston, in particular, had a 
>few stations doing talk, but only part-time (WEEI/WHDH/WBZ). 
> then, when WRKO went all talk, it jumped in with both feet, giving the
local 
>area hosts well versed in the area and the issues.  yes, through budget cuts 
>and such, the "bird feed" became a staple.  but aren't we still kind of
where 
>we were just a short time ago?  instead of Jessup, Benzaquin, The Huddle, 
>Glick and Brudnoy, we have a few different hosts, all capable of holding 
>forth on their areas of expertise and interest.  Plus, we still have David!
>   seems to me that we've got more talk variety than ever before, and 
>unfortunately, as is the nature of the beast, the hosts we might perceive as 
>high-quality are more often than not up against each other.
>

------------------------------------------------------------------
Douglas J. Broda
Broda and Burnett
Attorneys at Law
80 Ferry Street, Troy, NY 12180 USA
(518) 272-0580
djbroda@mindspring.com