[BC] Small station program quality

[Mike McCarthy]

I know of one mom/pop station which actually is a decent station.  Not just 
because I worked for them for 10 years.  They actually have something to 
offer to their community.  Granted the format is rather blah.  But the 
local public loves them, they are sold out regularly, they have a decent 
plant with generators, and they pay their bills on time.  What more can you 
ask....?

They were nearly driven under a year or two into their odyssey because a 
big fish which went in as a stock holder (because they were MX'd out 
because of local ownership) and offered a consultant who suggested a format 
which had no chance of succeeding.  Luckily, the locals who were majority 
owners tossed the guy out  9 months in and switched formats to something 
which the market could sustain. Big fish tried to get them to switch back. 
They stuck to their guns despite dire predictions of the big fish.  We 
didn't know at the time, but the big fish was trying to get the banks to 
call in the loans which the locals had taken to build.  Banks said no since 
they had quickly paid up all the back interest and some of the principal 
from increased revenues the new format brought.  Big fish started sucking 
air...and went away quietly selling their shares back to the locals who had 
told the big fish to sell or shut up.

Too bad there aren't more little fish like that....

MM

At 03:53 PM 2/14/2006 -0700, hykker at grolen.com wrote
>Robert Meuser wrote...
>
> > Many mom and pop stations have represented the worst in this business.
> > They were
> > under financed, unprofessional and technical disasters. Larger companies
> > have
> > brought them up to decent standards. There are fewer death trap
> > transmitter sites.
> >
>
>Not to mention bad programming.  I can count on the fingers of one hand
>the number of mom & pop stations around that have anything on worth
>listening to.  While the idea of local progamming is good, and with most
>of us being of a certain age nostalgia sets in, but most of these tend to
>be pretty low-budget sounding.