[BC] Rising Ratings and Higher Costs for WJIB

[Rich Wood]

------ At 05:42 PM 2/5/2007, Mark Humphrey wrote: -------

>Is the public interest actually served by allowing licenses for "our"
>airwaves to become so expensive that some owners need to run 20+ spots
>per hour just to service the debt?

Probably not, though I don't see any changes in my lifetime. Radio is 
still working well when well managed and programmed, so I don't see 
its death any time soon. High mortgages and Wall Street pressure 
coupled with uninspired programming (partially caused by uninspired 
record companies). inane positioning clutter and high commercial 
loads are all internal industry problems leading to an industry 
that's moved away from showbiz to audio wallpaper. I can't think of a 
single station in my market that would cause me to sit in the car 
when I get home just so I won't miss something. The closest for me is 
Car Talk.

At the original WJIB, Boston, we had a spot load of 8 units, not 
minutes. There are few stations that could survive on that today 
without astronomical rates. Just prior to working for 
IDT/TalkAmerica, a public company, I've worked for a series of 
family-owned companies. At XTRA and WOR we could do what made money 
without the pressure of enormous debt and next quarter expectations. 
That's not to say there weren't some bad programming decisions, but 
we didn't have Wall Street dictating what we did. I left XTRA with 
some terrific ratings against a huge competitive promotion campaign. 
It took quite a while and a lot of money spent by Group W's KJQY to 
get us to change format.

Rich

Rich Wood
Rich Wood Multimedia
Phone: 413-454-3258