Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Daniel Avery" data-source="post: 248305" data-attributes="member: 27">The &quot;consolidation&quot; of local radio stations in the US has resulted in some interesting issues along these lines.&nbsp; Once upon a time we had a lot of radio stations owned locally--that is, a mom-and-pop kind of operation that served the community well because the owners were locals.&nbsp; As the conglomerates bought up stations all over the country, a lot of the DJ&#039;s were laid off and replaced with syndicated programming that might be produced to air in hundreds of markets.&nbsp; Even the &#039;local news updates&#039; could be recorded many miles out of the locality.&nbsp; One &quot;weatherman&quot; could be doing segments for hundreds of stations.&nbsp; It makes the programming bland and you never really know if that DJ is a real person or some sort of computer-generated voice/AI monstrosity.&nbsp; You also waved good-bye to on-air interactions with the DJ&#039;s (calling in requests, etc.) because the only employee at the station might just be a broadcast engineer hooking up the satellite feeds.We had a weatherman on a station airing out of West Palm Beach who would regularly butcher the names of the local landmarks, which revealed (to those who didn&#039;t already know) that this guy was recording a segment from far away, using weather data he likely got off weather.com or some such.&nbsp; We&#039;d also get those laughable &quot;Fast Weather&quot; updates where they prattle on about a low chance of rain--as the whole town is underneath a thunderstorm at that very moment.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Daniel Avery, post: 248305, member: 27"] The "consolidation" of local radio stations in the US has resulted in some interesting issues along these lines. Once upon a time we had a lot of radio stations owned locally--that is, a mom-and-pop kind of operation that served the community well because the owners were locals. As the conglomerates bought up stations all over the country, a lot of the DJ's were laid off and replaced with syndicated programming that might be produced to air in hundreds of markets. Even the 'local news updates' could be recorded many miles out of the locality. One "weatherman" could be doing segments for hundreds of stations. It makes the programming bland and you never really know if that DJ is a real person or some sort of computer-generated voice/AI monstrosity. You also waved good-bye to on-air interactions with the DJ's (calling in requests, etc.) because the only employee at the station might just be a broadcast engineer hooking up the satellite feeds. We had a weatherman on a station airing out of West Palm Beach who would regularly butcher the names of the local landmarks, which revealed (to those who didn't already know) that this guy was recording a segment from far away, using weather data he likely got off weather.com or some such. We'd also get those laughable "Fast Weather" updates where they prattle on about a low chance of rain--as the whole town is underneath a thunderstorm at that very moment. [/QUOTE]

Verification

6 + 4 =