RHF wrote:


- Show quoted text -

DE - yes, Yes. YES - We Know - We Don't Count ~ RHF

- - - and the Art {Hobby} of AM/MW Radio DXing
is Obsolite due to Technological Advancement
-ie- IBOC Broadcasting.


We haven't counted since long before IBOC. Truth is, Radio has been
disregarding us for decades. At least by degrees. Now, they don't even
hear our voice.

David isn't the one who makes these policies, or decides which
numbers are to be excluded, he's only telling you what the reality is in
the Radio biz. It sucks. And I"m not saying that it's right. Or even
that it needs to be that way. Everything that you, and Ace, and Brenda
Ann have said are legitimate concerns from the listener's perspective.
I'm right there with you.

But the industry just doesn't care. They don't have to. They churn
out their sausages, their sausages sell. They take their money and go
buy expensive toys. They don't care.

They don't have to.

And like the ever declining level of customer service in every line
of business, these days, this thinking is so commonplace and so
prevalent, that the public has simply come to accept it as the norm. In
some cases, they even accept it as the right way.

Look at Microsoft. And the huge number of people who will defend them
and their contemptuous business practices to the last drop of their own
blood. They don't care. They're simply too big to need to. So, people
who have had it, exit the Microsoft world for Linux. Or Solaris. Or
FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and in some cases, UNIX itself. Or the blossoming Mac
world. And like Microsoft, Radio is seeing an ever increasing number of
dissatisfied listeners who exit to their iPods. Or CD players. Or
satellite radio. I put a Peripheral iPod Interface in my car. I may go
two, three weeks without tuning in. I have one colleague who took the
radio out of his Highlander entirely. We don't listen to the radio when
we go to hamfests. He's the one who took my job, when I left CBS.

And we are not alone in our circles.

It's only dinosaurs like us who understand the shortsightedness of
the thinking, and the waste of potential that radio reflects, today, and
the hazards of limiting communications availability and choice, that
care anymore. It's only dinosaurs like us who understand the
shortsightedness of putting all of it in the hands of one single company
who can make decisions about the entire communications business,
exclusively toward profit, with only token resistance from the stewards
of the public trust that care the primary focus of the broadcasting
companies, today is their stock price. Nothing else is as important.

And we are in short supply.

The business has done its research. And is convinced that what it's
doing is the only way. Now, the reality of this research is that
questionaires can be designed to produce exactly the desired outcome. I
was involved in this kind of directed research at CBS. And I've been
involved in focus group sessions that were also subtly directed to a
desired outcome. And for a time, they worked. And the station flourished
despite the chicanery. But then, again, we didn't have a head-on
competitor. When one came along, the shortcomings of the research were
apparent in the extreme, and they kicked the **** out of us with minimum
wage disc jockeys and the lamest promotion department in the business.
But they did what we wouldn't, and the listeners migrated in droves.

They didn't last. Mel Karmazin opened up the treasury and we simply
outspent them. And locked up every venue in the region for live
concerts. And locked up demographic specific sponsors into exclusivity.
Like Survivor, we outspent, out played and out lasted them. And when
they were gone, only we remained. Haggard, and battle worn, but
literally, within minutes of the announcement that they had spun the
Wheel, we were back to our old ways. The corner office didn't care.

It didn't have to.

And most stations, today, are positioned so they don't have to face a
head-on competitor.

They can make just as much money doing things the way it's doing them
as they can doing things the way that would include us in the service
commitment. It's just less expensive and more risky to do things our
way. And every analyst on Wall Street will tell you stockholders don't
like risk, or expense.

And no advertiser wants to roll the dice with their money on content
that may be contrary to its interest. As Howard Stern learned, again,
this past week on Sirius.

The hard pill to swallow, here, is that Radio, in the US, has always
been about the money. Always. Since the first grain elevator operators
built amateur licensed transmitters to report their market prices,
programming has only been there to hold listener attention between
commercial messages. The public service commitment written into the
rules came late. And from the outset was seen as an unfair burden to
broadcasters who could make much more money without it. Today, the
public service commitment is barely a token, and Radio is STILL
listening to the advertisers...the ones with the money. And everything
you hear on the radio is geared to that end. If public service could be
made profitable, things would change. But it's not. And in that light,
yes, Roy, we don't count.

It's not right. But it is reality.

They don't care. They don't have to.