Wall Street Week/Fortune

[Douglas J. Broda]

At 08:26 PM 2/12/2005 -0500, SteveOrdinetz wrote:
>  Bill O'Neill. wrote:
>>Once Sirius/XM is integrated into AM/FM/Sat radios, with a seamless click 
>>of a preset, local radio will have to choose to either be history or to 
>>do the very things that no satellite or national signal can possibly do - 
>>be excruciatingly local as well as being accessible to less affluent 
>>advertisers.
>
>
>"Excruciatingly local" for the sake of being local isn't gonna cut 
>it.  You still need to do GOOD radio...be a station people actually want 
>to listen to...."howdy folks" radio with lost dog reports and hour-long 
>interviews with candidates for sewer commisioner circa 1963 isn't gonna 
>fly.  It was bad radio then, it's bad radio now.  And if you set the ad 
>rates so every mom & pop greeting card shop in town can advertise on your 
>station how are you gonna afford to pay your airstaff without 30 min/hr. 
>spot loads?

Of course lousy local radio won't do it. It will need to be local and 
interesting, at least much of the time.

I'm not blind with nostalgia to the point where I think all the local/live 
stuff we had once was good. Some of it was atrocious, or, worse, boring. 
But I also recall that quite a bit of it was good, and a lot of the good 
stuff (and the innovation) went away because getting stuff off the bird 
made more sense to the bottom line. Sat radio, if it continues to grow, 
creates the very risk that terrestrial broadcasters will have to spend more 
money to get that audience than they do now, and that's why it scares them 
enough to create those ads.

>

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Douglas J. Broda
Attorney at Law
80 Ferry Street, Troy, NY 12180 USA
(518) 272-0580
doug@dougbroda.com