Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeffhs
Commercial radio is a very competitive business, where numbers are everything. It may well be that many talk radio stations, especially in very large markets, are finding (sometimes after only a short time as talkers) they are being eaten alive by their competition--especially in huge markets such as New York or Los Angeles. That seems to fit the four stations you mention rather well.
BTW, if two of the four stations sound as good as you say, I wonder if they weren't music stations before they were ever switched to talk; if so, their licensees/owners did the right thing putting the music back. There is entirely too much talk radio on the AM dial in most major cities today as it is. (How many AM talk stations can you hear in Paragould? I would guess quite a few, as you aren't that far from Jonesboro or even Little Rock.) An example of this was when one of the active rock FM stations in Cleveland was switched to talk a couple of weeks ago. Really! The AM radio dial in northeastern Ohio is already full to overflowing with talk/sports/news-talk stations (there is only one AM music station left, WWMK 1260, the Radio Disney station); now there is one (just one) FM talker where Cleveland's first hard-rock station used to be. I certainly hope the other 20+ local FM stations don't get ideas from this and start flipping right and left to talk, although, since Cleveland is the home of rock and roll (the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in the downtown section of the city), I don't think any more of the city's music stations will be abandoning their formats any time soon.
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The AM and FM bands here are extremely crowded. The AM band is full of the nonsense that one associates with AM these days. So, hearing MUSIC was a pleasant surprise. Most of the stations around here have been on the air since before WWII, so they started off being music stations. With the exception of two NPR stations (Jonesboro and Memphis), I gave up on FM years ago. It's now full of Clear Channel classic rock stations or *what passes for country music these days* stations.