First off, a little after 6 in the morning, I got a message from an old friend of mine from my youth who told me he was in town and wanted to get together. He had me pick a place and I selected a local joint that I haven’t dined at in a few months that was also in my friends old neighborhood. Gene lives out of town and I wanted to treat him to a local favorite, not a national chain.
Before I left to meet him, I realized I needed an update on the website and found this article I wrote 4 years ago but never published and it is still very appropriate today. The rest of this piece I composed in 2018…
Who do you trust more to give you wisdom and advice… a nationally known celebrity spokesperson or your best friend?
Fred Jacobs and his brother are specialists who formed Jacobs Media in the 1980’s and take credit for the Classic Rock Radio Format. The other day, Fred wrote about some of the results of a study they conducted pertaining to the Local factor. Over the years due to deregulation the broadcasting world became a different animal than it was previously.
Ownership rules changed which allowed national media companies to form an own hundreds of stations. On the radio side, they were able to cut staff and have the same morning show playing in several cities. Actually they could eliminate all their local staff and fill the airwaves with syndicated programming 24/7.
The upside at first was a higher quality radio program at a lower operational cost. The downside was that the local feel and flavor disappeared.
Fort Wayne, Indiana currently has over 20 radio stations. But if you look closely, several of these stations are licenced to neighboring towns. Columbia City, New Haven, Woodburn, Decatur, Churbusco, Huntington, Roanoke, all of these small towns and more had their own radio stations at one time, or perhaps they are the town that the Fort Wayne stations are really licenced to serve.
These small town stations were bought and moved to Fort Wayne and are now part of a larger radio station group(s).
Similar stuff happened in local television too. WPTA, originally was an ABC affiliate licenced to Roanoke, Indiana. During the past couple of decades, I’ve watched as multiple changes have taken place. It used to be WANE was 15 and CBS; WPTA was 21 and ABC; WKJG was 33 and NBC; WFWA was 39 and PBS; and WFFT was 55 and Fox.
Consolidation and reorganization has changed this line up to a degree too. Most of the Fort Wayne audience was unaware that for awhile, some of our local TV newscasters were also anchoring a newscast in Detroit on a station that was owned by the same company. This was about 10 years ago.
I want to return to my original question and share what Fred Jacobs discovered and how that applies to us in Fort Wayne.
Fred’s article is about Public Radio but we can draw some conclusions that also apply to commercial radio and actually all media.
This graphic really caught my eye and was this inspiration for today.
For my podcast listeners, I’ll share what I’m looking at.
In response to the statement, “One of radio’s primary advantages is its local feel”, nearly 70% agreed or strongly agreed.
All generations agree that local is what makes radio worth listening to. Even the youngest surveyed, the Millennials, 4 out of 5 of them. had the highest preference for local content. 7 out of 10 News Talk radio listeners want local content too.
What’s so important about local? I’ll ask my question again:
Who do you trust more to give you wisdom and advice… a nationally known celebrity spokesperson or your best friend?
See how this all fits together?
One more reason why my radio station, WOWO radio continues to dominate in Fort Wayne, Indiana
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