Re: My "rant" about WCCM Sale

[SteveOrdinetz <steveord@wavewizard.com>]

Marc Lemay wrote:
>
>Do I blame the ownership of WHAV (then Steve Silberberg) for the demise?
>No.  He continued to put out quality local programming in AM and PM drives,
>as well as weekends, to the best of his ability and budget.  

<some snippage>
>I blame radio itself...for fragmenting listeners to the point of no return.
>Further, I blame the Greater Haverhill business community for not supporting
>their local radio station. 


I'm not sure if "blame" is the right word to use here.  They were merely
another victim of a changing society.  People increasingly live in a
city/town, but are less and less part of it.  They are less likely to know
their neighbors, less likely to know or care about the "local" radio
station, especially if it's a low powered AM.  Why listen to a city council
meeting on the radio when you can see it on public access tv?  The roots of
this go back to the late 70s/early 80s when the listener migration from AM
to FM was becoming a stampede.  Lots and lots of AM stations were losing
out because they were on the wrong band and/or had a less than great
signal.  WBZ, Kiss 108, whatever were a lot slicker sounding than these
suburban AMs, could be heard outside of the immediate COL and attracted the
listeners.  I don't think it's fair to condemn the business community
(though it was a bit hypocritical of them to get all up in arms because
WHAV dropped local sports)...my guess is that response to their ads
dwindled to the point they weren't cost-effective anymore.

It's always sad to see a station that really tried to do a good job bite
the dust, I've worked for a few such stations myself, but in many of these
cases there just wasn't much any of us could do.  Look at the number of
regional dept stores that have failed in the past few years...Bradlees,
Caldor, Richs, Stuarts, Ames is just hanging on.