Posted by KCJackson on November 05, 2009 at 20:29:00:
In Reply to: Re: Board Reflections for November 5 posted by Craig on November 05, 2009 at 18:57:42:
There are several reasons why radio stations slowly dismissed news...
- As FM music stations came on board, they used the theme of "less talk, more music" to get listeners. In its heyday, WABC had news every half hour - there was no way for them to compete with FM if they continued that practice. Thus when WABC went talk and WHTZ/WPLJ took the top 40 audience, they knew that news outside of AM drive was already undesirable.
- The smaller suburban stations indeed had to cut costs, so news departments were replaced by feeds that could either be played or read by the existing air staff. There's only so much ad revenue to be made from local car dealers when the larger metro stations can grab larger clients thanks to their wider coverage.
- Thanks to the explosions of both cable TV and the internet, people have come to prefer their news visually. Even WCBS and WINS often direct listeners to their websites for "more information" on a story so that the actual radio can keep a certain pace. So for something like election coverage, people want to see the bar graphs and numbers so they can process them in their minds - when it's given as a live-read from a radio voice, the substance is often lost very quickly.