[BC] Survey says....

[WFIFeng@aol.com]

In a message dated 12/10/2005 8:50:25 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
hykker at grolen.com writes:

> Or at least the few that could afford to do so.  A lot of these daytimers 
>  and/or graveyard channel AMs are are shoestring operations now...where's 
>  the money gonna come from to migrate to this new band?

In many cases, by selling the (now very valuable) land that thier multi-tower 
arrays occupy. In some cases, they could buy quite the upgrade with those 
funds.

>  AM towers are not 
>  always situated ideally for FM either.

This is true, and many of them are under 200', anyway. If a group of stations 
pooled resources, they could build a shared-site FM system.

>  And who's gonna buy receivers for 
>  this new band just to hear syndie talk, brokered ethnic or paid 
>  religion...few of which draw much of an audience anyway. 

The very same listeners who currently support them, of course.

WFIF (my employer) is a Daytimer. We carry Christian talk & teaching programs 
and a little music. The station continues to be supported by our very loyal, 
dedicated audience, sending money to the programmers who, in turn, purchase 
airtime. Were we to go 24 hours, and all people needed to do was buy a $20 radio 
to get us, I can see many of our listeners happily making a run on the local 
Electronics stores. If, for example, their budget was such that they couldn't 
afford $20, they could just withold one month's donation from whichever 
program they normally supported, to get the radio. Then they could again support 
their favorite program, again, the following month. It would work. I know it 
would.

In fact, some of them may already have a workable radio- one that gets "TV 
Sound". Plus, I'm sure I could get plenty of people to bring me their disused 
analog FM radios, and I could "tweak" them to pick up the new frequency fairly 
easily. (They'd have to understand the tradeoff of losing the "upper end" of 
FM, of course.)

For over 18 years, now, I have fielded calls from saddened listeners, 
lamenting our early sign-off every fall and winter. Caller-after-caller, 
year-after-year, asks why we cannot be 24 hours. (Those are obviously *new* listeners.) 
Should the Heavens open, and we find a way to go 24 hours, there will be a lot 
of happy people, of that I am certain. For example, when we resume our 6am 
sign-on in March, every single year for the past 18, I get calls from very 
grateful people who are rejoicing that they have us on the radio, again, when they 
wake up. When you offer programming that the people *want*, they *will* support 
it. The proof is in my paycheck every two weeks.

Willie...