In article ,
Bob Campbell wrote:
Walk into any dept store/Walmart/Best Buy/whatever in the U.S. How many
radios are for sale these days? How many were for sale 20 years ago? 40?
60? There is a definite downward trend.

That's because the big box stores are operating under different principles
than what anyone over 35 would expect. It's not longer "find out what
the customer wants", but "stock what you make the most money selling
and intimidate the customer into buying it". (I think the buzzword is
"Directed Marketing"). The idea is that the store's buyers and the
importer/manufacturer's marketing department know the customer better
than the customer does, and can manipulate them into buying something
that isn't really what they want, because it's fashionable, (and there
isn't an alternative available there anyway).

I also suspect that part of the higher profitability is that the cell
phone providers, pay for play music down-loaders, and satellite Radio and
TV companies provide "sales incentives" (derived from their subscription
fees) to the big box chains which causes them to deemphasize any equipment
that gets free broadcasts.

So radios have been exiled to lower end discount stores, and the
drugstore chains (that don't have a conflict of interest between
the subscription based services and the customer).

Mark Zenier
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)