Before terrestrial stations are asked to pay up, a serious accounting of where the current funds end up and how they are distributed and spent may be in order. 

Certainly not in every case, and probably not in the majority, but from my experience, precious little 'funding' actually made it's way to the radio stations after all the.. ahem.. 'taxing' and 'salaries' that were involved as soon as the government freed up the money.  

Unfortunately, not an enquiry any level of government is willing to go within 100 miles of.  It's a lot easier to write endless cheques, wring hands at the failure of the funding to make a difference, then write a bigger cheque next year and blame everyone except the system in front of their noses.  Meanwhile, the people who could benefit from the service and participate in it are left with nothing more than an automated jukebox.

As I said, certainly not the majority, but enough to taint the well.  

 

Hi Jon,
As you're aware, I enjoyed you doing talk, and I wish you'd do more.  I get it..  time .

Someone many years pointed out that 98% of everything we do in radio, we do for our peers.  Let's face it, nobody sits in their kitchen marveling at  our ability to hit posts, or tunes away when there's a second of dead air.  I believe that attitude has hurt the evolution of radio, we had DAB, and we rebroadcast our FMs on it; we have the internet, and we put jock pictures and rebroadcast our stations on it, or subscribe to new services and use that as content.   I was never a better manager than when I was in a position where I didn't care about the money.  I knew I could quit and be a security guard, so it was the job that kept me going, not the compensation.

I understand the Pandora's box, but how can radio ever be expected to truly evolve when more responsibility is rewarded with more income, to a point where the Lexus and the kids in private school aren't worth giving up for a risky decision?  At 640, I put Gary Bell on-air because I knew if it went South, and I had every reason to believe it might, I figured we'd both get fired and go work at Dominion.  If I had been making serious coin, I would never have taken that chance.   The people I worked with weren't making much either, but damn we had a fun time making radio, and I'm not pretending that helped anyone pay the rent, but it went a long way to 'wanting' to show up for work.

How can radio as we know it ever hope to survive when the people making decisions can't or won't risk their career on a hunch and instead fall back on consultants or inaction?   

Or will we just see an endless stream of Ed Sheeran, Gotye, Time and temp and repeat, while out of work radio people yell about 'their' amazing solution being the magic bullet, which is same old, same old with generally a wider playlist and them picking up a paycheck.
 

They should have done one with St. Mikes kicking the crap out of the smart kid before the show started and realizing they were screwed.

RadioActive wrote:

By the way, while I wasn't a huge "Reach For The Top" fan, I'm grateful for its existence. Otherwise we never would have gotten to see what may be my all time Favourite SCTV sketch, Night School High Q. Still hilarious all these years later. 

Lord, that old blue KSN character generator. has 2 font sizes, too big and too small.

Forward Power wrote:

Here in the Ottawa Valley, Cogeco's "YourTV" continues to run their own version of RFTT, "Valley Reach", produced at YourTV's Pembroke studio. And even Barrie's CKVR had a local version of "Reach"... here's a full episode from 1984, hosted by Gail Keary, with long-time 'VR weatherman Bob McIntyre on the intro.



 

https://youtu.be/XbfIhV01V1Y?si=bs0Rmzd8JPVBoitY&t=853

 

Whatever.

Another 'online' 'station' that believes all you need to do is play the music you believe everyone wants to hear, and it's that easy.  (BTW They don't.)  It's online, Spotify can do a much better job with your playlists, and if you're that concerned about news, check out a dedicated local news source every 20 or 10 or 90 minutes.

What I love most about 'online' radio is if you take a few seconds, you can see the real listening audience, not the hype on their (for some reason, always 'our') website.

Stream Started: Monday, Jan 1st. @ 00:15
Maximum listeners:  34 
Current listeners:  4 (including me)

ig.

[edit] I'm not shitting on online radio, Of course, there's a place for it, but 'finally' getting to play PD at your own "radio station", isn't it?  If I had an online station giving out Friday night's lotto numbers, it would kill every other terrestrial and online station on the planet.  It's about content.  About finding something that people can't get from a playlist, and that will be some type of spoken word format, not music.  Music is just too subjective and only worked when there was no real competition in the market for it.    The Toronto Fire scanner feed on Broadcastify regularly has more listeners than any online local server, and the NY, Chicago and LAPD streams are regularly in the thousands, if not tens of thousands when something big happens. 

Whatever the answer is, it sure as hell isn't playing 'Nothing's gonna stop us now' and thinking you're unique.
[/edit]
 

This bruh!!  No cap.
Thought the same thing.
yeech.

newsguy1 wrote:

Is that Blair and Rubino picture for real?
Two WASP Canadians making fake gang signs?
Don't tell me -- they be down with their bad selves, bruh!
Please.

RadioActive wrote:

 There's nothing really remarkable about his review other than he chose to put Classic 1220 in it at all.

I'm sure his offer of his consultation services has already been made.

I just noticed this today.  

https://broadcastdialogue.com/veteran-newsman-and-programmer-ted-farr-signs-off/

When I became PD @ 640 he became a great friend, confidante and mentor.  He patiently explained the reasoning behind manglement decisions, became one of my most valued sounding boards, and was just a fun guy to talk to about radio, scotch, or anything else.   So many amazing nights spent at Ruth's Chris or the Octagon with him, Murray Johns, Pat Cardinal, Doug Rutherford, Rene Roth and the rest of the gang.  The glory days of contra .  I'd sit there and listen, drinking it all in.  I'll bet there's one hell of a reunion taking place, with everyone talking about how great the WIC days were.

Ted was a true 'radio guy' through and through.  Lived it and breathed it.  

I'm sure he had an awesome reunion with his son who he missed terribly.

#RIP
 

RadioActive wrote:

"Distribution by internet is more cost-effective and more robust."

The only way this is true is if you own an ISP.  Otherwise, it becomes like those 'finger trap' toys.   The more you pull, the tighter it gets...  The more successful you are, the more streams you need to provide and, therefore, the more expensive it becomes, and it can get VERY expensive.

Online radio is still unicast.  Each listener gets a discrete stream.  And till the ISPs agree, it will remain that way.  Most large companies like it that way because they can zero in on listener information, location, hours, etc.

From personal experience, I had a fun online radio hobby; there was a solid 2-300 listeners 24/7.  I have a VPS, so it never came close to killing my bandwidth, and it cost next to nothing, other than server costs and an annual $100 to Socan to at least keep it partially legal. 

Then Microsoft decided to feature it on the front page of their 'recommended stations' listing, and it all went to hell. 

It went from hundreds to thousands, and eventually, I got a note from my ISP telling me my cap had been shot to smithereens.   That was when I pulled the plug on it.  I could have restricted the server to a few hundred, but what's the point? And I certainly couldn't afford the 7 to 8 thousand that suddenly hopped on a stream.  (Not sure how many since that's all the concurrent connections my account / ISP could support).

My 2¢.