Only 88 independent radio stations left in the USA, only 13 in Canada

Don't discount the independent Mom'nPop low power stations in Rural America that are doing well because they are connected to their communities, which was the original intent of the AM band.
 
That was a typo I meant WNKO, and they are not primarily internet streaming their station can be heard all over central Ohio I listen to it every day
Just to be clear, I wasn't saying WNKO was primarily a streaming station... I was referring to WWGO 107.1 out of Marion. with them only having a 27 watt transmitter, I don't see how you would even get a signal in Waldo, let alone Orange Township, Powell, or Westerville, to say nothing of points further south into Columbus...

there's a small station 30 min west of me WERT, I can get the daytime signal(250 Watts) OKAY, not great...but at night when they cut power to 29 watts, it doesn't come in at all. (I'm only ~18 mi away "as the crow flies", ~22 mi "as the car drives")
 
Just to be clear, I wasn't saying WNKO was primarily a streaming station... I was referring to WWGO 107.1 out of Marion. with them only having a 27 watt transmitter, I don't see how you would even get a signal in Waldo, let alone Orange Township, Powell, or Westerville, to say nothing of points further south into Columbus...

there's a small station 30 min west of me WERT, I can get the daytime signal(250 Watts) OKAY, not great...but at night when they cut power to 29 watts, it doesn't come in at all. (I'm only ~18 mi away "as the crow flies", ~22 mi "as the car drives")
Its cool that "WERT" keeps broadcasting after dark when they only have 29 watts authorized. Most stations in that situation **** down with sundown.
 
Most of the dial has been bought up by i-heart-radio and similar outfits. They're way over leveraged and constantly going bankrupt. But eliminating competition isn't hard if nobody stops them and if they buy the last independent in town they can finally realize their goal of having commercials on every channel simultaneously. The FCC used to have ownership limits but the big guys whined that they couldn't keep the lights on so the FCC caved.

I used to work at an independent TV station. We were owned by one guy and his LLC that shared an address with his condo in Arizona. It sucked! If a piece of equipment broke he'd try to buy a replacement on ebay then call us up for the model numbers *again* because he found something obsolete that was one digit off for 1/10 the price. He sold our building out from underneath us then leased it back then stopped paying on the lease, so a competing station moved in and literally put up a chain link fence down the middle of the engineering rooms.

The efficiencies of scale come in by using centralized offices for traffic/billing, DJ/content creation, production, and master control. Listeners might get lucky to have local on-air talent that might even be live for the morning show.
The air waves are a government monopoly.
 
Well this certainly explains why radio sucks any more....

I think the FCC relaxed ownership restrictions in the 90's which led way to this corporatization of radio.
 
Clear Channel! They own 1207 stations! That's 18% of all radio stations in the US. I know they bought all the stations in my area.
 
Most of the dial has been bought up by i-heart-radio and similar outfits. They're way over leveraged and constantly going bankrupt. But eliminating competition isn't hard if nobody stops them and if they buy the last independent in town they can finally realize their goal of having commercials on every channel simultaneously. The FCC used to have ownership limits but the big guys whined that they couldn't keep the lights on so the FCC caved.

I used to work at an independent TV station. We were owned by one guy and his LLC that shared an address with his condo in Arizona. It sucked! If a piece of equipment broke he'd try to buy a replacement on ebay then call us up for the model numbers *again* because he found something obsolete that was one digit off for 1/10 the price. He sold our building out from underneath us then leased it back then stopped paying on the lease, so a competing station moved in and literally put up a chain link fence down the middle of the engineering rooms.

The efficiencies of scale come in by using centralized offices for traffic/billing, DJ/content creation, production, and master control. Listeners might get lucky to have local on-air talent that might even be live for the morning show.
In the declining years of any industry this typically happens. Someone overpay to merge and consolidate, hoping that they can reap big profit, then to pay for the big debt that leverage the buyout they have to cut expenses, lower qualities, and finally customers left, and they basically shrink down to a fraction of their former selves.

In this day and age I am still surprised that stations are not like TV, with national program but local news (yet the local news are likely sourced from a local TV station to share the expense), and the whole thing runs from out of town. I mean it is one direction broadcasting not internet server that need fast ping time round trip. As long as they are in US they don't need to worry about any legal issue.

Seriously, it would be a matter of time when they are brought up to free up 5G / 6G new data band, those FM bands are low frequency and can penetrate very well through buildings, and you know people will not fight back when they say it is the same frequency FM radio uses when they are fighting the 5G causes cancer nonsense.
 
Someone needs to make a business case for free-to-air satellite. It's pretty dumb to have over-the-air networks deliver video content to local affiliates via satellite who then flip the same content around and broadcast it on a really good share of the spectrum.

Many of the subchannel programmers like MeTV are unencrypted if anyone cares, but they don't hype the fact. You can fit a LOT of signals in the sky if the receiver has to focus a dish within two orbital degrees. For that matter SiriusXM could do free ad supported programming.
 
I like AM radio. Its what I had as a kid and I still listen to AM stations especially at night. I get DeMoine, IA pretty regular. Last night I listen to Coast to Coast AM on 1510 WLAC out of Nashville. Other nights i can hear Cleveland ,OH at 1100AM. Skip still works and you can tell if a storm is coming by the crackle of the lightening. There is an independent AM station here in Benton ,KY that still has a swap shop daily and a show on Saturday morning where you bid on discounts to get oil changes and restaurant discounts and show tickets at discounts. That's what radio should be is a service for their listeners. They also play a variety of music.
 
  • Like
Reactions: GON
Back
Top