"Brenda Ann" wrote in message
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"David Eduardo" wrote in message
t...
Then the bad news is for AM... its obsolescence is now assured. I'll
bet, if
the night issue is either real or is not reparable, that a decent LA AM,
for example, has probably lost $8 to $10 million in stick value because
of the fact that there may be no future at all for them.

I still maintain that all AM plants should be sold to local owners that
actually WANT to do with the stations what is SUPPOSED to be done with
them. Serve the public interest!

In the LA area, stations like 830 and 930 are decent facilities, owned
locally. The first, bought for in excess of $40 million, is a money faucet
emptying into the ocean. 930 makes a little money, but not much.

Most AMs sold lately in the LA area, like 900, 1190, 1230, 1280, 1390, 1430,
1580, are brokered or brokered ethnic. Since none of these has a decent
signal, an issue you ignore, they can do nothing else.

Unless a station, whoever owns is, can cover its market, there will not be
enough listeners to sustain a quality operation. Eventually, you have to
accept that, local or owned by a Martian, a station has to get revenue to do
any format. A local AM format, which means talk, is horribly expensive and
can not be sustained long by inexperienced local operators... every bigger
broadcaster today started out as a local broadcaster. Only the good ones
survived and grew (our roots are with KGBT in Harlingen, TX, a 60-year
Spanish language broadcaster that always servid its communities) while the
majority, resold and someoene else gave it a stab.

There are 4000 different licensees for the stations in the US. No company
owns even 5% of all stations... nearly all are locally owned, and most of
the groups are some guy or woman who owns a couple of stations in a couple
of adjacent communities.

You can not serve any intrest if there is no income.

I would personally love to be able to operate a station this way, with
possibly a minimal profit, but in the public interest, as a public
service. And not narrowcast to only certain demographics. Small town
radio was done this way for many decades, and obviously was able to make a
profit and stay on the air.

And in big towns, there are so many staitons serving specific interests that
generalist staitons, tried over and over again by well meaning fools (who
are soon separated from all their money) get no listenership or so litttle
they do not produce any results for advertisers. It does not even work that
way in little places, like Prescott or Traverse City or Lake City or Manatí,
PR, any more.

The problem with radio in the US these days is it is done the same way the
Koreans do small businesses:

If one new business (say, a store selling cell phones) does well, then 10
or more duplicates show up (this happens often even in this small town).
Of course, the town can't support that many cell phone stores, so most of
them end up going out of business. US radio is doing precisely the same
thing: a format does OK, so you have several stations in a market that
pick up the same format. This makes none (or perhaps only one) really
profitable.

That was the case in the 50's into the 70's. Post consolidation, there are
more formats in every market than there ever were. An example I use often is
Cleveland, OH. 1960: 3 Top 40's, 3 MOR's and two R&B stations. No FM
listening at all. Today, there are 5 kinds of rock format alone, from
classic rock to alternative. There are several African American formats, a
hot AC and a soft AC, an oldies station, a country station, a sports
station, several talkers, a gospel station, a smooth jazz station, and
several more.

Generally, nobody goes after the same format any more... direct format
battles are no-win and costly, and you simply divide the existing audience
in two pieces. Stations look for niches, the holes between stations, and
fill them... giving a new alternative in the process. Since there are more
formats than stations in every market, only the most appealing get picked
up. HD offers the second tier of formats a home, and they can be successful
there.