The Globe looks at the future of AM radio

[Garrett Wollman]

<<On Thu, 10 Nov 2011 01:46:25 -0500, "Don" <Donald_Astelle@yahoo.com> said:

> It's not a question of how it is now...it's a question of the future.

> Older and older people.....

> Less and less people on AM.....

> Era music.....that less and less people will remember....

I'm having a bit of trouble parsing this series of sentence
fragements.

Bob has already altered his playlist significantly to appeal to
younger demos; WJIB plays more traditional oldies and far fewer
instrumentals than it did fifteen years ago.  He's actually got a good
business model: sweep up after the commercial stations decide that
their demos are no longer attractive.  Since he doesn't care about the
ratings and has no station debt to service, he can serve demos that
other broadcasters don't consider worth their while.  The people who
aren't even aware of AM are mostly under 45, so he still has a good
twenty years to go, in audience terms.  He may have problems if
broadcast radio, generally, goes away, in favor of the
streaming-only/Pandora/iPod model of entertainment.  Ten years ago, I
thought this was imminent, but it hasn't happened yet.  I still think
it's going to happen, but terrestrial radio broadcast has two things
going for it: an enormous installed base, and the fact that the
spectrum it uses is pretty much worthless for anyone else.

-GAWollman