I received a very passionate letter recently, from reader Evelyn in Sylmar:
“First,
understand that I am a true OLDIE. That includes taste in music.
However, what I miss terribly is not radio music of ANY kind. What I
miss is something other than music and news!
“In
my old listening days, L A's radios offered interesting and intelligent
and purposeful TALK. Like, for instance, Clark Howard and Dave Ramsey,
and going back even further, names I can no longer recall (which could
be said about almost anyone' s name nowadays). So now I have only KFI's
Saturday morning legal beagle to look forward to....and I DO.
“You
appear to present only a music (if it can be called that) profile. Is
that because you are still too young to appreciate entertaining and
practical information? Well, not all of us out here with home radios are
that young and cold to the sound of a speaking voice: Why do we not
have any of these choices available to us?”
Interestingly,
I have the same lament as does Evelyn... one of the reasons I tend to
gravitate toward music more and more these days is the dearth of what I
consider informative talk radio programs. For a time I found political
talk radio interesting, but I’ve grown tired of the constant negativity,
and in many cases the truth-stretching and occasional outright lies
stated by some hosts to further their agenda. And no, I am not referring
to Rush Limbaugh.
But
the question is one I have as well ... what happened to the informative
brand of talk radio, as opposed to what you might call Agenda Talk?
Bruce Williams ... Hilly Rose ... well, the good news is that there are
still shows around like that; you just have to search for them.
You
mention a few. Bill Handle’s morning program on KFI (640 AM) is superb,
though I know you are actually referring to his Saturday morning Handel
on the Law program that airs from 6 to 11 a.m. KFI weekends, in fact,
are full of entertaining non-political shows including Leo Laporte
(technology, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays) and Ric Edelman
(investments, 2 - 4 p.m. Sundays).
Dave Ramsey and Clark Howard can still be heard on KEIB (1150 AM) 3-6 and 6-9 p.m., respectively.
Phil Hulett can’t be heard on local radio any more, but you can catch his “Phil Hulett and Friends” talk about almost anything but politics via his online feed at philhulettandfriends.com. Recent topics ranged from dinosaurs to relationship skills to lemonade stands.
I’ve
noticed that these and similar shows seem to have a buzz about them as
of late, and I personally believe they will be the future of talk radio.
Not that political talk will completely go away, but I can see an era
in which we return to more generalized, informative shows on stations
that tend to be more balanced in perspective. Stations dedicated solely
to politics just don’t cut it with audiences any more.
But
it will take a while and it will require stations to do some real
marketing and promotions to let people know about the programs ... does
anyone else find it interesting that radio stations do such a bad job
promoting themselves when they are in the business of promoting
businesses through their advertisements?
All Digital Radio
The
National Association of Broadcasters released a white paper that
discusses the feasibility of an all-digital broadcast service on the AM
band, looking at the engineering problems involved. In general, the
study found that all-digital can work, can reduce interference compared
with today’s analog or analog-digital hybrid system, and can increase
fidelity.
The problem, of course, is that moving to all-digital would render millions of radios obsolete.
Much
of the paper was technical, so I asked one of my engineer friends to
comment. His reply could have been written by me: “My personal opinion:
AM owners and engineers need to realize that most of the problems with
AM aren't technical, they're programming problems. Look around the
country ... if there's some compelling programming on an AM radio
station it still gets ratings.”
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