First We Kill the Bean Counters

The outlook for public radio? This post on MinnPost.com would seem to indicate things still aren’t all so rosy, at least for Minnesota Public Radio — and, by extension — all of public radio that’s intent on chasing the flaky ratings purveyed by Arbitron: MPR’s three local stations — News (KNOW-FM), Classical (KSJN-FM) and The Current [...]

Underwriting Mean Time

Tom Taylor’s blog on radio-info.com carried this note about the effect PPM is having on when stations play their ads. Not only does PPM change the kind of music played — witness the flocking to AAA music preceding the advent of the PPM in various markets — it also affects when stations are now playing [...]

Pandora’s Box

The Infinite Dial featured a good post the other day that lead off this way: If you read the news today, what else could you think but “Oh boy”? Facebook doubled in size in one year, from 250 million to half a billion users. Netflix reported 42% year over year subscriber growth, climbing to 15 [...]

Lies, Damn Lies, and IT’S TIME TO UPGRADE

Greg Smith’s latest posts on hdradiofarce.com contain some interesting nuggets, among them about the tacit acceptance by the FCC that HD radio on the AM band could wipe out “skywave reception,” the long-distance pickup of signals from far away so often part of the heartland’s listening experience: “AM-HD Undergoes Radical Redesign” “It, in effect, signals [...]

Said & Done

Bits and pieces from the week’s postings • This post on radioworld.com has Sangean giving up on the manufacture of a portable HD radio. The comments themselves are quite interesting. In the google group, Milspec390 commented: “During the ’80s and ’90s, our small company sold quite a few Sangean receivers. The radio room here features [...]

On the Wrong Track

In this Inside Music Media post, Jerry Del Colliano quotes radio consultant Alan Burns, who concludes “radio is in danger of losing its future adult audience”: Note Burns said “future adult audience” not young audience which radio has arguably already lost. This notion is not new to those of you who meet here at this [...]

Long Tail Silly

In the wake of a horrible year in radio, with losses nearing 20%, and a long decline in the fortunes of public radio, stations of all stripes have been flip-flopping all over the music spectrum trying to come up with the saving sound that will reverse local fortunes. For WUMB in Boston and KUT in [...]

What Were You Thinking?

Public Radio Today 2010 There are many takes on the new Arbitron Public Radio Today 2010 publication, some of which may be surprising to radio listeners in places like Gainesville, whose WUFT recently lost its classical programming. This post on televisionbroadcast.com, for instance, is titled “Classical Music Still Feels at Home on Public Radio,” though [...]

Public Radio Stations as Bob-FM

Jeff Boudreau of Boston posted up about the new Facebook site “NPR Ate My Local Public Radio Station” (link on right), where you can commiserate with others whose stations have been assimilated into the borg. He also discussed what has been the hot topic for Jerry Del Colliano’s Inside Music Media blog of late — [...]

The CPB: Bull in the China Shop

Google alerts can turn up some interesting information. This one unearthed a PDF from 1997 that contains information relevant today. A Cato Institute paper entitled “With Friends Like These: Why Community Radio Does Not Need the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” by Jesse Walker, contained the following nuggets: Congress created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to [...]

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