wrote:
wrote:

The League needs to recognize/concede that it has a serious
marketing
problem and address the problem the same way other businesses do in
these situations. They have a product line which isn't selling to a
large sector of their potential buyers. Why? Nobody actually knows.
And
nobody will know until the League finds out why the Techs aren't
buying
their wares.

Here's one big reason:

The League is a *national* organization. Focused mostly on national,
international, and regional issues, and not so much local ones.

Now if a ham's focus and interest are national or international, the
League can have a lot to offer. But at the local level, how much the
ARRL can offer someone depends entirely on who the local folks are.

Which is almost entirely a function of the quality of the leadership of
the local clubs and the time and effort they have available to put into
the clubs. Which the League can't control or do anything about no
matter how they reshuffle the organization and event charts in
Newington. Beyond that the facts are that the League has only managed
to sign up ~20% of all licensees in this country nocodes thru 20wpm
Extras and some uncounted huge number of those aren't members of local
clubs either. There's nothing new about any of it, this whole topic
area has been massaged into oblivion many times in the past and it'll
come up again after this minor cycle of angst peters out.

As a prime example, look at QST. How much of it is devoted to purely
local stuff? Not much - the mag would have to be huge to cover ever
locality in any depth at all. So why should someone whose main
interest
in amateur radio is the folks within, say, 50 miles, shell out $40/yr
for a membership?

That question has already been answered by a several hundred thousand
zipped-up wallets.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm quite firmly convinced that the ARRL can
and needs to boost it's support amongst the Techs but I'll stick with
my proposal vs. Hans' proposal.

73 de Jim, N2EY

w3rv