[BC] getting it back

[n3drb]

>So what do you think the broadcasting business should do to get our
>audience back?

I'm coming at this from a listener perspective as I'm not in the business. That may invalidate my opinion to some here. So be it. 

I remember listening to (as Everclear put it) "the AM radio" when I was a kid circa 1973. The thing that stands out in my mind the most is that all the stations sounded different. Even if they played the same general type of music, they all had a different sounding 'personality'. I think when radio started to go downhill is when radio stations started to be owned, operated, & programmed by people who didn't care about the medium of radio or broadcasting in general and have never looked at any broadcasting outlet as anything more than money factories to be milked until the money runs dry. 

They program every station the exact same way, they all sound the same, and there's no reason to listen to any one station in a given market no matter what they play, because they sound just like the station that directly competes against them owned by some other conglomerate. 

1. Consolidation of ownership by broadcasting cartels is not good for broadcasting. The more power is centralized, the more removed and isolated the decision makers become from the communities they supposedly serve 'in the public interest'. 

2. The programming of these same stations by 'consultants' who pimp themselves to the cartels who buy the crap they spew about what new gimmicky format quirk they can dream up, sucks. Since the cartels don't care enough about broadcasting in the first place to know this, the same rehashed crap with slightly different variations airs across the country over and over again ad nauseam. 

3. Which leads to my assertion that terrestrial broadcasting is becoming inbred - meaning that there's little to no new input from those outside the business, and any culture of business or business model that refuses or unduly restricts the price of entry into that business by fresh ideas and models suffers as a result. 

4. I remember when the NAB shot the hell out of the original LPFM proposal by it's lobbying to make the LPFM's as neutered as possible (for example removing the 1KW power limit)  to "protect" existing FM's from supposed interference threats to 50 KW stations - a study that was later proven to be based on crap. same old game of protect the empire. A inflow of viable commercial LPFM's up and running at low cost of entry and operating cost able to have at least the chance to be self sustaining by charging something for time would have shaken things up a bit and introduced some new blood into a game that really needs it. 

5. As I said, I'm just a concerned listener and not in the business, so some of you are gonna poo on whatever I say. That's OK. 

6. You guys are delusional if you think audio processing is attracting or turning away ratings. Look under my #3 above. There's technical & engineering inbreeding too. 

why not embrace and extend, instead of exclusion and protection?