This seems to be a thread that won't stop, so I decided to give it its
own home, even though it is old news by now.
For those who joined us late: WQRS-FM, Detroit's commercial classical
music station, converted to a rock format late last week.
Previous ranting can be found in the Music conference's Radio item,
response #77 -- resp:music,25,77 for you Backtalkers --
and in the "I'm Bummed, Man" item in Agora, beginning at response #345 --
resp:agora,6,345
I'll stick in some of the most recent discussion from Agora for
seed material...
-----
#361 of 370: by Autolycus (rogue) on Sun, Nov 23, 1997 (18:44):
Why would they care about protest letters? They were not getting the
audiences advertisers want.
"I'm a classical music fan. I listened to WQRS. Put classical back on the
air or I will boycott your new rock format station." Compelling...
#364 of 370: by Steve Gibbard (scg) on Sun, Nov 23, 1997 (23:23):
How do radio stations figure out how many listeners they have? Protest
letters may make them aware of listeners they didn't know about. OTOH, it
may do nothing.
As far as I can tell WQRS's new format is just trying to clone some of the
other successful radio stations in the area. I imagine it may be a tough
sell to get people to switch to them, or at least to get people to stay
with them during commercials when they can just flip to another
identical station.
#366 of 370: by Rane Curl (rcurl) on Mon, Nov 24, 1997 (00:24):
Apparently WQRS thinks they will be "different" by having some nuance of
difference in the rock they sell - like the differences between granite,
diorite, gabbro, rather than the differences between limestone, shale
or sandstone.
#367 of 370: by Patrick Gibson (gibson) on Mon, Nov 24, 1997 (01:12):
rane is that written in stone?
#368 of 370: by Leslie Smith (arabella) on Mon, Nov 24, 1997 (01:48):
The company that bought WQRS also recently performed the same
stupid manoeuvre on Philadelphia's former commercial classical
station, WFLN. My mother is crushed (she lives in Philly).
The local NPR station, which used to broadcast a lot of classical,
has swept all that away in favor of nationally syndicated talk
shows, much like WUOM here in Ann Arbor. Basically, radio sucks,
and continues to suck even worse as we lose what few interesting
and individualized stations we used to listen to.
107 responses total.
((( more late responses from Agora -- krj )))
#369 of 372: by Mike McNally (mcnally) on Mon, Nov 24, 1997 (02:33):
re #361: You're correct that they probably don't care a lot about the
loss of a small number of vocal listeners compared to the audience they
seem to think they'll pick up but one hopes, at least, that a lot of
pissed off music fans could have a say when it comes time for FCC license
renewal.
#370 of 372: by No en tu mano! (omni) on Mon, Nov 24, 1997 (10:41):
Actually, public comment doesn't have a factor in radio station
re-licensing. That's reserved for TV stations.
#371 of 372: by Autolycus (rogue) on Mon, Nov 24, 1997 (11:13):
#364: They figure out number and type of listeners via a survey company,
I believe. Kind of like Nielsen's for TV. With regards to cloning
other successful radio stations: 20% of 1,000,000 rock listeners
is more than 80% of 100,000 classical music listeners. Add to that
the age of the listeners and it makes sense.
#369: Vocal listeners don't buy any more of the advertisers' products than
non-vocal listeners. Vocal listeners don't show up any more on the
ratings than non-vocal listeners. Vocal listeners in this case are
simply people complaining about what has happened after the fact.
They have little or no leverage financially or politically.
If a classical station makes a lot of *business* sense, people should start
one. It would be the only one around.
((( Agora #105 is now linked to Music #101. )))
People might *want* to start a classical music station. According to the Detroit Free Press' initial article on the WQRS conversion, the classical station was making about $2 million a year in profit, and had the #12 audience share in the Detroit radio market. (From memory, but I think those numbers are correct.) However, if I were to get together with a few like-minded listeners and open a classical radio station, men with guns would come to shut me down...
I believe I read the same article you did. I don't believe it was clear that it was making $2 million in net profit.
You don't address what I think is Ken's more significant point, which is that radio broadcasting is not a free market that anyone can enter at will and test the strength or weakness of the product they offer. Instead it's restricted, by the laws of physics and the regulations of the FCC, to a relatively small number of competitors who operate with the blessing of the federal government.
Modern radio is slave to the drive time commercials. Sound like time to start a public radio station.
Re#6: What mcnally said.
What's interesting to me is that with all the talk of how media is becoming (or has the potential to become) more personalized, almost the opposite is happening. The economics seem to be driving it to become more "mass-oriented" than ever before. Having said that, it seems that people really don't want classical music. WUOM is the best example of this. After changing their format from mostly classical music to mostly news and talk, the amount of money pledged to the station increased dramatically. They set another new record during their fall pledge drive with recently ended. If there are enough people to support a classical music station, someone will figure that out sooner or later, buy a station, and make some money at it.
#5: And those people are motivated by greed and fear (those two evil words
again) and will do whatever is most profitable for them, including
selling their station to people who want to broadcast classical music.
Look -- if the station was making $2 million a year, you can buy a
station for, say, $5 million, spend another million on miscellaneous
stuff and have a return on investment of 33% a year, assuming no
debt. That is a huge return. If you leverage the deal with debt, you
can increase your ROI even more. You don't have to start one from
scratch.
Just because the bandwidth is regulated it does not mean it is not a
free market. There are barriers to entry but they are not overwhelming.
A plant to manufacture memory chips costs over $1 billion. The cost of
developing the next Intel chip is going to be about $10 billion. Those
are severe barriers to entry.
PS: I don't think WQRS was making $2 million a year in net profits.
#8: The question is not "whether or not I can make money with a classical
music station" but "whether I can make more money with a classical
music or rock music station?" If you can make $1 million a year with
a classical music station and $3 million a year with a rock music
station, which would you run?
This is from the November 17th Free Press article. My copy is from their web site: "The station reportedly turned a $2-million profit in its first year under Greater Media. (((that would be 1996, I think -- krj))) However, Steve Schram, vice president and general manager of WNIC, termed that as 'just not that much' for an FM station with a powerful signal in what is currently the country's 11th-largest ^U radio market based on ad revenue. "In the October Arbitrend rating, the station had a 2.2 rating, down from a 2.4 in September, in listeners age 12 and over. The station drew a high-income, well-educated but older audience and ranked only 18th in Detroit's very competitive radio market." I think that article also sums up the motivation for the format change: the new format at WQRS is to "complement other Detroit properties owned by Greater Media, a New Jersey-based broadcast group -- album rock WRIF-FM (101.1) and classic rocker WCSX-FM (94.7)." So Greater Media can now to go Anheuser Busch or the Michigan Lottery and say, "We can sell you a comprehensive ad package, with a classic rock station, an alternative station, and a hard-rock station." The listeners? Screw the listeners. They only exist to buy beer.
Rogue slipped in with #9. The barriers to entry seem pretty overwhelming to me, given that they are completely unrelated to the inherent cost of operating a radio station. Witness the recurring issue of pirate radio stations, run out of a van somewhere. The inherent cost of entering the radio market is peanuts -- probably a few thousand dollars, if that. But the price of that government license is in the millions, many orders of magnitude more.
re: resp:9 part#8 -- which you would run probably depends entirely on your motivation. If you're doing it for the money, you'll go with the higher earner. If your doing it for the love of the music, then you'll go with the format that pleases you as long as the gross profits are acceptable to keeping the station going.
we have plenty of classical radio stations in NYC... back in Georgia in my hometown, the biggest outcry over a format switch was when the local country station switched to a 24-hour Elvis Presley format. (Im not making that up...it became all Elvis and Elvis covers all the time...on christmas they played Elvis singing christmas carols for 24 hours!) They stuck with the all Elvis format for two years until the station changed ownership and went to top 40 rock. I hear its back to country again now though.
re #9: You're assuming that he can make $3 million with a rock format. That's yet to be determined. It's already a pretty crowded market.
#10: I hate to state the obvious, but advertisers do see the listeners'
only as consumers, of beer or whatever. Remember the golden rule:
Those who have the gold make the rules. The advertisers have the gold
in this case and they make the rules.
#11: Assuming the bandwidth for radio is limited (probably an accurate
assumption), someone has to regulate it. Because the bandwidth is
limited, it is valuable to businesses. You seem to harbor some
bitterness towards the government for making money from the licensing
of the bandwidth. Would you rather have anarchy on the radio waves?
Seeking rents from this licensing is only reasonable -- as a matter
of fact, if the government gave bandwidth away, the same liberals
bitching about barriers to entry would be bitching about how the
government is subsidizing corporations by giving away bandwidth -- owned
by "everyone" -- for free (very legitimate argument). Do you have
an idea what you are talking about?
#12: You just don't get it. If Mother Theresa were running a charity in
Calcutta, only a fool would ask her if she's making a profit or
what the return on investment is. If a corporation were running a
for-profit radio station in Detroit, only a fool would bring up the
issue of "love of music" when talking about major decision making.
We know what Mother Teresa's motivation is; We need not question it.
We know what a corporation's motivation is; We need not question it.
But if I as an individual or as part of a consortium of individuals bougth the radio station (which could happen), then my motivations would not necessarily be to make pots of money. It would be to get the music I liked out there (I've always wanted an all-folk statin, but I'd share with the classical-lovers out there) and to make enough to make running the station reasonably profitable.
Hmm... I work for a for-profit corporation. I also do stuff I enjoy. There are probably other businesses where I could make more money, but I wouldn't find it as interesting. Certainly some companies do whatever they have to do to maximize profits, regardless of whether it's what they like doing. Other people or companies can have different motivations, or overlapping motivations. I don't deny that in most businesses, as long as there is nothing harmful about what a company is doing, they should probably allowed to do what they want, or what will bring in the most profit. I see radio as somewhat different because it is a scarce resource, limited to those with government licenses, and there is a finite amount of licenses. It may well be that the most money can be made by having all the radio stations havin gan almost identical format, but in radio licensing the government should also be taking the greater public good into account, and mandating some variety.
You know, I love polka music, and aside from a segment or two on "A Prairie Home Companion" you just don't hear it on the radio anymore. I think the FCC should mandate that each station carry a one-hour show of polka music per day. OK, OK. It's a bit of an exaggeration, but I think I made my point. re #15: If you reduce everything to money, Jemmie, you must live a pretty dreary existence. It used to be that the government awarded radio-frequency bandwidth on the basis of what would promote the most public good, not what would bring in the most money. While these two goals are not mutually exclusive, I'm not so sure that the recent bandwidth auctions have promoted the public good.
re #9: > Just because the bandwidth is regulated it does not mean it is not a > free market. There are barriers to entry but they are not overwhelming. Umm.. Sure. I'll just get together a bunch of friends, we'll pool our and buy a transmitter and start broadcasting, then.. And when the FCC comes to shut us down because all of the broadcasting licenses in this area are already allotted and no more competitors are allowed to enter the market I'll just explain to them that Jemmie said it was OK. Why do I get the idea that Jemmie's idea of a "free market" is one that's free to operate the way he likes? > A plant to manufacture memory chips costs over $1 billion. The cost of > developing the next Intel chip is going to be about $10 billion. Those > are severe barriers to entry. Yes, and if I had $1 billion dollars I could presumably build a chip fabricating plant. However, a billion dollars wouldn't guarantee me a radio station in Detroit unless someone else agreed to sell their license. If the other owners were all billionaires who wanted to keep their radio stations the government wouldn't let me broadcast, period. Surely you can see the difference? re #15: > Remember the golden rule: Those who have the gold make the rules. > The advertisers have the gold in this case and they make the rules. Last time I checked we were not yet *officially* living in a plutocracy. According to my admittedly naive notions of government the public is supposed to have some say in how broadcast spectrum, which has been deemed to be public property (and rather valuable property, at that..) is put to use. The people, or their representatives, make the rules. If enough of the people believe that radio licenses should be allotted for reasons other than strictly financial then that should be the way that it's done.
#16: TS said they paid $33 million for the station, and overpaid. Let's say
fair market value is $25 million and you invested $1 million in the
venture. Considering that the S&P 500 ("stock market") has increased
in value about 10% a year on average this century, if the station is
not making $2.5 million a year, you will probably be upset. Considering
that the economy is booming and the S&P 500 has gone up an average of
16% over the past 5 years, that is a very conservative value. People
who do not have money coming out of their assholes do not invest
$1 million to hear music they like.
#18: I don't reduce "everything" to money but when you are talking about
business decisions -- especially ones where there is a $33 million
investment -- it must come down to money.
#17: Who sets the agenda? Why don't I hear Peking Opera on the radio?
What about other ethnic music?
#19: You can't operate a bar with licensing. Are bars not "free market"?
Is any industry that is not regulated not a "free market"? Do you know
what a "free market" is?
$1 billion would not guarantee you a bar. You still have to jump
through hoops. Again, do you know what a "free market" is?
The people have the ultimate say in how the broadcast spectrum is
used -- they vote with their ears and they vote with their wallets.
That's obviously not good enough for you because the Nanny State knows
better, right?
(First paragraph should say, "Is any industry that is regulated not a
"free market"?)
s'okay Jemmie. Sometimes I think you don't get it, too. ;) You say that people who aren't wallowing in money don't make major investments That's simply not true.I doubt anyone expected to make a profit on their loans and donations to help get the infant grex started, for instance. (For that matter, I have the impressions that several people were never fully reimbursed for their initial loans to the founding fund. Most of them eventually decided to just consider the money a donation after a while. OK, grex didn't cost anyone a several billion dollar investment -- but relative to our incomes it was still a lot of money. Everyone contributed what they could afford not out of a profit motive but out of a love for public access computer conferencing and a desire to promote free access to information.I don't think that puts the founders in the league of a Mother Theresa. Far from it. But money is simply not a motivating factor to some people as long as the cash is there to provide for the basics. (For instance a project brings in enough not to become an unmanageable financial burden, whether the project be a radio station or a computer conferncing system) Actually, there are a number of not for profit radio stations across the country (aside from NPR/PRI stations) that are run by volunteers who have other days jobs and are supported by listener subscriptions.Those stations are the radio equivalents of grex. Not everyone who listens contributes -- but enough do to keep the stations on the air and the volunteers are donating time and skills out of a love for what they're contributing.
(Digression: are you really a Chinese opera fan, rogue? If so, please come write something about it for the music conference or the Classical music conference some time...) I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on what a barrier to entry is. Inherently, radio is a business which can be run by high school student, or run out of the back of a truck. A government license which has to be purchased for $20-$30 million seems like a huge barrier to me, relative to the normal cost of operation. Last I heard, liquor licenses were generally priced in the tens of thousands of dollars, which is not an amount exorbitant to the cost of operating the business. When you write: "The people have the ultimate say in how the broadcast spectrum is used -- they vote with their ears and they vote with their wallets" well, I have to disagree there. The ADVERTISERS have the ultimate say in how the spectrum is used, and to the advertisers, some ears are more equal than others. I am not the customer of radio. I can't go buy the radio programming I want -- the closest I can get is to give money to the local public radio station. WQRS had plenty of listeners -- it was quite a profitable station. Free market theory claims that all profitable projects will be done; yet here, a profitable business was destroyed and its listeners -- and its customers too, because WQRS had advertisers who are unlikely to follow to the new format -- were discarded as worthless. What's wrong here? (Nothing is wrong, says Dr. Rogue Pangloss! This is the best of all possible worlds!! :) ) So, yes, Rogue, I do believe there is a role for Nanny State to play in the allocation of radio, at least until the next-generation digital radio service, which may allow many more players, comes into production.
Hey, it's silly to demean poor Jemmie because he talks about economics. That's like telling someone who understands physics, you must have a dreary life because you reduce everything to the law of gravity. Money and economics are just tools to analyse and organize our lives. They don't tell us what we have to do; they don't keep us from appreciating music, falling in love...having the same passions and feelings as self-satisfied ignorant people who proudly proclaim they don't "care" about economics. I don't know anything about the radio business, or have any strong feelings about what public policy should be...but it does seem entirely possible that the station management made a mistake. Not even Jemmie would claim that business people are infallible.
#22: Grex is not a for-profit enterprise -- note that in my messages I used
the phrase "for-profit corporation" many times. You cannot compare Grex
to a radio station a corporation paid $33 million for. They have
different goals. Judging the corporation's actions with the goals of
Grex is as pointless as judging Grex's actions with the goals of a
for-profit corporation. That is the point.
#23: I am not a Chinese opera fan. I don't like it. :-)
Free market states that participants want to *maximize* profits, not
that "all profitable projects will be done." One of the calculations for
whether a project is worth doing is the standard NPV (Net Present Value)
calculation. It's rather simple but a key number included is the
*cost of capital*. Cost of capital tends to increase as profitable
opportunities increase. An 8% ROI in one decade may be acceptable while
at least a 15% ROI (Return on Investment) is demanded in another decade,
depending on the economy.
$1 million a year profit for a $33 million investment is not good --
the corporation/individual could have purchased mutual funds and got
about 20%, or $6.5 million last year. And that's at a lower tax rate
because capital gains is taxed lower than profits.
#24: When analyzing business decisions, one must primarily use money as a
scorecard. This is why I brought up the Mother Teresa example -- when
analyzing charitible organization, one cannot use profit as a
scorecard.
I did not say the station made a good decision. What I am pointing out
is that a small piece of a big pie may be bigger than an entire small
pie. If it is, then it is only in the interest of the for-profit
corporation to go after the small piece of a big pie. Music is a
product.
We respect Jemmie, even when his ideas seem disagreeable to some of us. Anyway, on to the debate: I have to agree with Jemmie's take on how the radio market works. So, support Public Radio. These stations need donations to survive, and most $$ comes from listeners (with some $ chipped in by those businesses that offer matching funds if their employes donate). Those who have the gold make the rules. In Public Radio, listeners have a lot more clout because they're a major revenue source. So call in during a pledge drive, and offer some $. You'll probably be asked which programs you like best (I was, when I called WUOM). That's an opportunity to make a pitch for more classical music (or whatever else you prefer). Public Radio cares about what listeners think of various types of programming -- enough, at least, to hire market researchers who conduct test-audience surveys. I participated in one of these a few months back. They gave us questionnaires with essay portions. They played excerpts of stories of all sorts, and asked us what we liked best and least about them. They asked us about what times of day we'd listen, if we'd listen, etc. Forget commercial radio.
(Jemmie slipped in.)
I have a lot more respect and understanding of Jemmie now that I read #26.
Public radio, in rogue's model, is a terribly inefficient waste of resources. Those public radio licenses, which were given away for free, should be auctioned off to the highest bidder. I would argue instead that perhaps we need additional public radio licenses. ----- Back to rogue in #25, where he argues that a $1 million return on a $33 mil investment isn't very good performance. I won't disagree with that. However, let's look at what that investment really consists of. My guess is that the physical assets of WQRS would be under $5 million -- offices, studios, transmitter. That's just a guess. The value of WQRS as an ongoing business -- well, it can't be too high, because the owner just threw it away. So that leaves $28 million as the value of the government license. You can tweak that figure up or down, it doesn't affect my argument. But the government license can only be worth $28 million because there are such a limited number of them! Essentially, we have had an ever-increasing pot of money bidding up the price on a finite supply of licenses -- the license, of course, being a government artifact. If we were dealing with a "normal" commodity, the pot of money would have gone into capital investments to produce "more" radio. Instead of spending $33 mil to buy a business whose tangible assets are $5 mil, producing revenue of $1 mil, General Media would have gone off and built a station from scratch; QRS would still be broadcasting classical music; we would not be having this friendly argument. As for "all profitable projects," all I can say is that we had different economics teachers. "All profitable projects will be done" falls directly out of the definition that entry into the market is easy. If General Media stops broadcasting classical music while it is still a profitable business, someone else steps into that market niche. But it's not a free market; there's that damn $28 million license, price derived above. But on this point it seems we have no common ground.
<<asked to move the following into here>> by TS Taylor (tsty) on Mon, Nov 24, 1997 (18:10): ummm, actually, after a little research and readinghte newspapers and seeing some other stuff on line, it seems the new owners actually had a net profit slightly in excess of $1,000,000 for last year. ahhh, geee. however, in their greedy gobble to own a detroit radio property, they *vastly* overpaid ( ~$33 mil ) for the pleasure and decided that after their VeryBadPurchasePrice ...they were going to compoiund the error witha VeryBad&HorridProgramming change. which is *typical* idiocy when jerks with no knowledge of some industry get a buncha bucks and throw it wildly around trying to make a killing. whoever owned wqrs before reeeeeal saw the new owners coming from a mile away. the losers are *both* the new owners and the wide listening audience that DID generate over ~$1,000,000 in profit for them. takes quite an audience to generate a million bucks, even if you are the only game in town. and then to precipitously dive into a rock-solid-established (pun intended) segment ofhte music market that has held sway in detroit & environs for 30 years (did i mention experience before?) is tantamount to hari kari. i hope whomever owns wqrs is a privatley held company so no stockholders get their asses fried by these dolts. oh, someday i'll tell ya what i really think. <g>. -------- following on this a little, one mis-perception is that the *station* had/has the value. it is the *license* that has the value. apparently the license was sold in reference to the market value of a generic fm license in the 6th largest radio market, blah, blah, etc. while taht may be true ..... and while there *ought* to be a market value return on investment, radio (media in general) carves up the profits a little differently based on competiton in musical niches. like a buncha grocery stores where 4-5 sell only fresh veggies, adn 8-9 sell only meat and 1 store sells desserts! we just lost our dessert store adn the meat sellers are gonna chew up teh new entry bigtime, imo.
#26: Public radio is good. People who want to hear their stuff can contribute
to public radio and use their weight there.
#28: She didn't say anything I didn't already say. The business world has
different goals and plays by a different set of rules than what a lot
of Ann Arborites (computer geeks, academics, visionaries, wanderers,
hobos, etc.) are used to. It's hard to accept but it is reality.
#29: This is an interesting discussion. There are several issues of note:
1) With regards to doing "all profitable projects." I hope your economics
instructor also taught that the only true scarce skill is entrepreneurial
ability -- for economics sakes, all other skills are commodities.
Entrepreneurial ability is finite because time is finite and there are a
finite number of people; It is impossible to do "all profitable projects."
You probably are not familiar with NPV calculations because they are
financial rather than economic calculations, but they are simple
calculations used to determine whether a project is a "profitable" one or
not. A *very* important number in that calculation is "cost of capital."
In other words, if I get get 25% return/year in a mutual fund, a
project that returns 15% is *not* profitable. In your definition, you do
not take cost of capital into account. There are an infinite number of
"profitable" projects by your definition but using the financial/economic
definition, there more profitable projects there are, the greater that
"cost of capital" number becomes -- the benchmark increases. One of the
greatest errors made by non-professionals in doing profitability
calculations is their failure to take into account the complete
opportunity cost (or cost of capital).
2) I don't know if more radio licenses can be issued. I do not know all the
reasons why they are not if they can be -- I can think of a couple of
reasons. I am not sure how much the radio license is worth, but $28
million seems high. Not all of the price outside of tangible assets can
be attributed to the cost of the license.
There are classical music stations all over the country. There are none
in Detroit. Why attribute this to the evil FCC or evil capitalists? Why
can't it simply be because there is not enough interest in SE Michigan?
#30: Where your analogy fails is that desert buyers will bid up the price of
deserts to the point if supply is reduced; Classical music listeners will
not buy any more or less products from the advertiser of the station
they are listening to whether there is 1 or 100 stations. That is the
problem.
The Chinese bakery store in Ann Arbor charges much higher prices than
the one in Windsor, but has much fewer clients. The classical music
station cannot charge advertisers more for advertising if the number
of listeners decrease -- there is no cause-and-effect relationship
there (as a matter of fact, the opposite is true).
What a discussion-- but I'm not sure I understand it all. No, no-- don't explain it again! :) I surf through radio like I do TV-- can't wait to get a cassette deck or a CD player in my car so I will have something decent to listen to _all_ the time..
if only cabs had cd or tape players. wqrs was the *only* radio station i listened to in my cab. now that i know the company which killed wqrs also owns wcsx, i'm going to be hard put to find something worth listening to during the 40-60 hours a week i spend driving. this format change has left me close to heartbroken.
How about a portable CD? You can get a little xmitter that will broadcast it to the (FM) radio in your cab.
now there's a thought. thanks, rcurl.
#33: Classical CD's are very inexpensive; Royalties need not be paid to the
composers. You can get classical CD's for, like, $4 each. You can buy
ten for $40. I saw the transmitter Rane is talking about for $29.
Where have you seen classical CDs for $4?
?bargain bucket bin at best buy?
Naxos label CD's - not the upscale label recordings of pretentious & pricy orchestras & conductors. Seems I've seen 'em on a $4.00/CD for 4 or so several places. Been a while since i've bought, but that's NEW prices.
Re that CD -> FM transmitter I mentioned: mine is a WANO-TECH "fx-100", runs on 2 AAA batteries, and is about the size of a computer mouse. Its only drawback is that the tuning is a slotted disk on the bottom, not easy to tune. This is a nuisance when travelling as one has to choose an FM frequency on which there is no station, and tune to that - and that keeps changing as one travels. But for use in one locale this would not be a problem. Heartland no longer lists these, but Damark's new catalog has an Arkon unit for $25 (free s/h), Item B-30120-492096 (1-800-729-9000). [I have no experience with the Arkon brand.]
The only drawback with an FM transmitter for portable CD or disc changer is that you *do* limit the sound quality to that of an FM transmission. If you don't mind that, great. Of course, I realize that is probably the best you can do..
If you're planning on listening to something in a moving car that's probably not going to be a big issue compared to the other sound-quality problems you're going to have..
Yeah, considering the amount of extraneous noise in a car, there's probably not that much difference. I find the high dynamic range of CDs actually annoying in a vehicle -- you have to keep adjusting the volume to hear the low volume parts and turning it down so you don't get blasted by the loud parts. Some CD players actually can compress the dynamic range to help with this. Personally, I dub CDs off to tape. Then I can keep the tape in the car and the CD in the house -- and if someone steals the tapes, I'm not out that much cash.
Let's imagine that you have 20 or so tapes that you have recorded to listen to in the car. If you kept only 4 or 5 CDs in the car at any given time you'd be out nearly as much money from the cost of the tapes as you would be from replacing the CDs if they were stolen and that's not even accounting for all of the time you spent recording.. I'm biased against tapes, though, every time I've had a tape player in a car it's found some way to break in short order, leaving me without any way to play recorded music. Given my loathing of the local radio stations this always seems like some sort of intentional personal betrayal.. :-)
thanks again, rcurl. i'll give damark a call. the loss of wqrs does give me more incentive to build up my classical cd colection, i suppose. :)
er, "collection."
Re #44: Well, mostly the point is that it keeps me from constantly having to shuffle CDs between the house and van. Otherwise, what I wanted to listen to would always be in the wrong place. ;) My vehicle is in the 'noisier than most' category anyhow.
I have enough of a problem carting CDs from my room to the ground floor to the basement and back, and losing half of them in transit. :)
RE#41 -- FM is band limited to 15kHz, if you;ve spent the last several months of your life driving in a cab, you're probably not able to hear above 15kHz anyway. .
Tonight's 'Midnight Madness' sale in A2, SKR Classical is having the only sale of the year: 20% off all in stock cds. If you want to stock up on classical, I guess now's the time to do it.
Today I saw, at a record store, a clipping from the Detroit News indicating
that WJR is going to pick up some classical music programming in its
non-prime hours, including the Detroit Symphony broadcasts.
Here's an item I found on Usenet:
----------
An active working group dedicated to the establishment of a successor to
WQRS has email access. If you are interested in participating in this
group, please send mail to
msmiller@umich.edu
If you are outside the WQRS listening area, but wish to be kept informed
of progress, please use the subject heading: WQRS friend
If you are willing to be active in this group (whether now or after
Christmas), please use the subject heading: WQRS worker
If you were a WQRS listener, but don't have time to spare, please do
write, and use the subject heading: WQRS listener
We are assembling an inventory of the listeners. Please let us know
about you, and tell your friends!
Sign me up...
What station is 89.9 FM? They are doing a nice job with classical music programming but I never listen long enough to hear where the signal is originating.
Thank you ken. I was hoping to do more then complain about the loss of QRS. I just didn't know where to direct my energies. I also hoped that if I waited, someone like you on Grex would help point the way. I will write and pass the word.
RE #53 I believe that 89.9 FM is CBC Radio out of Canada. Please correct me if I am wrong.
89.9 is CBEC in Windsor. Bruin is right that it's a CBC station. They've got all sorts of weird rules about having lots of Canadian content, if I remember correctly.
CBC1; the AM station, 1550 I think, might also be one to play classical in the afternnon drive times.
Yeah, there are Canadian content rules, which means Canadian stations play a whole lot of U2... I think they had a Canadian producer at one point...
re way back the problem isn't the cost of licsence (they are free) the problem is that all the radio frequency spectrum has been preallocated by the FCC. Also the FCC bans transmitters under 100 watts from operating on comercial frequencies (i.e. AM and FM) so in practice you have to buy an existing station if you want to broadcast. This means a big capital investment wheich keeps "small players" like stations that would play classical or perhaps other interesting content off the air. My solution to the problem is to support "pirate radio," and I think a pirate classical FM station in Ann Arbor would be very cool. <set rant=off>
I don't think that's practical. The FCC deals out severe penalties and jail terms and don't think they won't find you. They have a very sophisticated sniffer van. I've seen it, and you don't want to be on the wrong end of it.
(it looked pretty neat in _Pump Up The Volume_, too.)
Well a) Just because something is illegal doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, look at the civil rights movement of the 60s laws were broken for the greater good. There are dozens of pirate radio station operating right now that the FCC is doing didley about. b) That may all be changing a Federal judge in I beleive Miami ruled recently that the severity of FCC was an unconstitutional restriction of 1st amendement rights to free speech. <Now back to your item on the demise of classical programming on the radio>
'pirate radio' meaning what, exactly?
Radio stations which operate without a license from the FCC, I believe. It seems to me there are some good reasons why the FCC sells licenses; it keeps two stations from broadcasting on the same frequency and running over each other. If the FCC didn't step in, the strong stations would bully the weak staions off the air, right? I guess you could argue that the license system amounts to the same thing - the rich stations can afford to be on the air and the weak ones can't. The license system is like Roberts Rules of Order for radio. :)
Is it just me, or would that be impossible to do surreptitiously?
I need a dictionary..surreptitiously?
Without being noticed.
It is noticed alright - but pirate stations generally operate from off-shore, outside the territorial limits of the USA.
re # 68 Big irate stations oerate offshore but there many (dozens of irate stations that oerate in US cities such as Chicago, Miami and Berkely just to name ones I know of. <one of my keys isnt working, guess which one>
Being that I do have a FCC license in my pocket, I'm not going to do anything to upset the applecart. I like having what I worked my ass off for, and I want to keep it that way.
*shrug* How hard it is to fight against consumerism.
raven - how do those Chicago, Berkely, Miami, etc. stations keep from getting busted then?
re #72 They have guts and just keep broadcasting despite FCC harresment. Stephen Dunifer in Berkley is legendary in free speech circles. Do a search on the web if you want more info.
RE#60-61 -- The "sniffer vans" aren't even vans. They are generally Ford Tarus Wagons, that are so well disguised that even the trained eye would have diffuculty noticing one. The FCC scares you into thinking they are big brother. They are part of the problam with broadcasting today.
You're lucky you don't live in the United Kingdom. They require radio and television _owners_ to be licensed (to support the BBC).
The other kind of pirate station is "micropower", under 5 watts or so. Now one watt is actually pretty powerful, but if the signal only gets around your neighborhood, and nobody complains, your chances of getting found are pretty low. The FCC can't just cruise those vans/cars around in hopes of catchiing Neighbor Johnny broadcasting at .5 watts... not enough money.
(Correct me if I'm delusional, but I remember hearing that Commie High was operating a micropower station briefly. Is this just Tom Dodd's overactive imagination, or did this really happen?)
Low power transmitters in the FM broadcast band are quite legal and sold openly. I have a small one for broadcasting tape and CD players to an FM radio - at home or in my car. The power is milliwatts, but I don't know what the power limit is.
re #77: (very briefly. rusty memory says it was during the Stone School
years. I could pribly dig out an old _Communicator_ for more
information.)
Should we start a pirate radio item in the cyberpunk or hardware conferences and take our (interesting) drift elsewhere?
I'm actually finding the drift a lot more interesting - and educational - than the original ranting :) (carson, I'm pretty sure it wasn't when they were at Stone School. Tom said the water stains on his ceiling were from Commie students who damaged the roof putting up the antenna)
Further to #78: I forgot to mention my TV signal retransmitter, also legal, for distributing my cable signal to a secondary TV set. There are also transmitting microphones for home use. FM is rather adaptable for this local use because the signals do not interfer when there is a significant difference in signal strength, unlike AM, where you can hear even weak signals superimposed on strong signals.
I was one of the poeple involved in the CHS radio station. We started it at Stone School. We took apart one of those Fisher Price "Mr. Microphone" things, and soldered in inputs a mixing board, which we had a tape deck and a microphone plugged into, and that was our transmitter. The range was most of the school building, plus a little bit of the school's back yard. Since the Mr. Microphone transmitter is sold in toy stores, I'm assuming it's probably low enough power that it's legal, or at least that the FCC doesn't care. Since our signal wasn't making it off school property, and we were using a frequency that wasn't being used by anything else in the area, I can't imagine anybody having complained about it. A station that could reach an audience bigger than a school building would probably be a very different story. There was an attempt after we moved back into the downtown building to get the radio station restarted, with somewhat bigger goals. I think somebody did look at putting an antenna on the roof, and also started going through the paperwork to apply for an FCC license for a low powered high school station, much like the Plymouth-Canton high schools have. It never got very far before everybody pretty much lost interest. As for FCC licensing, I'm glad to hear they enforce it. Without it there would be a huge mess, since people broadcasting on top of eachother would make radio unworkable. The reason radio works is because radio stations have distinct frequencies, and somebody needs to keep track of allocating them. Like it or not, the radio spectrum is quite limited. Even if it wasn't, there would need to be somebody in charge of deciding who got what frequencies to keep people from stepping on eachother. I don't think you'll find any resource like that that doesn't use some system like that, whether it's radio (FCC), TV (FCC), Internet IP addresses (IANA), phone numbers (Bellcore, last I checked, but I think they're transferring the authority to somebody else), or just about anything else like that you can think of. If the people involved in using the limited space don't recognize the same assigning authority, it just won't work.
re #18 Dan, the next time you're driving through the Tampa, FL area, check out 88.5, WMNF (the best radio station i've *ever* heard). They have _The Polka Hour_, 3 times a week.
The USA Today for Friday 2/27 has a good article, generally favorable, about pirate/low power broadcasting. The Berkeley case is being built on the argument that a system which requires that every broadcaster have a multi-million-dollar license is an effective abridgement of free speech. I also just linked in a big item on Digital Radio, now item #115 in the music conference.
The March issue of the Ann Arbor Observer has a small feature on WUOM, the University of Michigan's NPR station. The story says that since WUOM ditched their all-classical format, listeners and contributions have almost doubled.
Since the last response, I must announce that the former WQRS (105.1 FM -- please correct me if I am wrong) has again changed its format, this time to classic soul music. I was listening to the Four Tops singing "Baby I Need Your Loving," and between that song and "Good Times" by Chic, there was a station ID which read "Detroit's Classic Soul - 105.1 FM," or something like that.
It would've been the perfect opportunity to go back to a classical format. Unfortunately, they chose to make yet another classic rock (or soul if you prefer) station.
Well, no, it's not "yet another classic rock station", it's a soul station. There is a difference. With all the other local so-called-R&B-stations playing the watered-down music that everyone seems to love these days, the Detroit area needed a good one of these.
Just out of curiosity, is it good?
Channel 4 news announces tonight that a Detroit AM station will be playing classical music from 7 pm to 5 am. The station is WYUR at 1310 on the dial, and I do not know how well they are received in Ann Arbor. (Also, I don't know if anyone has mentioned the classical music on Saturday nights at WJR-AM, 760.)
Wow, that keen!
On our "average" bedroom radio, we cannot get a usable signal on 1310 AM.
Actually, at 1310, it used to be KeeNeR 13.
And for a while, it was a kids radio station, aimed at the 7-14 year old group. Lousy reception here in A2, better the farther east you went.
The University of Michigan radio station WUOM has decided to market itself as a 24-hour News and Information station, so that means that the overnight classical music show has to be dumped. "Music Through The Night," the syndicated package, has been replaced by the BBS World Service. "Performance Today," which ran earlier in the evening, has been replaced by other shows. http://www.michiganradio.org
I didn't much care for the usual "Music Through the Night" programming anyway.
What sort of thing did they play in the middle of the night?
It was fairly mainstream classical, nothing too atonal or noisy, but not entirely Classics Lite either. I found it a rather enjoyable program to drift off to sleep to. It's a nationally syndicated package, so I'd be surprised if a station in the Bay Area didn't carry it.
The San Francisco Bay Area is an absolute desert for classical music radio, and even more so for syndicated programs. The new AM station in San Francisco, which I can't get down here, apparently carries Karl Haas, whom I had previously heard only in other cities on vacation. The same is true for any other programs of that kind, though the stations have been known occasionally to carry ootie symphony or Metropolitan Opera broadcasts. Recently, while near Baltimore, I was able to put stations playing classical music - from Baltimore, Washington, and elsewhere - on all six places on my car radio. OK, a couple of them were repeater stations on different frequencies, but still ... What a cornucopia! Nothing like that could ever happen out here in the boonies.
Good grief. I lived in SF when its FM good music station was a pioneer in classical music on FM. I can no longer recall its callsign - what was it? What does it carry now?
When were you in SF? During my earlier years of listening to classical music - the 70s and 80s, even through to the early 90s - there were two stations here: KDFC was the highbrow station with serious music and no personality (even the announcements were pre-recorded, and no human beings were ever named), and KKHI was the lowbrow station with characters (including an execrable schmaltz-purveyor named Doug Pledger), which played all Baroque during commute hours to make more room for commercials, and carried most of the broadcasts (which KDFC probably wouldn't touch because they had announcers with names). A few years ago, both stations were sold, I guess, because they switched personalities: KDFC hired announcers and went lowbrow (probably the lowest brow was hit with this statement: "After the break, we'll hear a symphony by Beethoven. I'll give you a hint: it goes da-da-da-dum."), and KKHI went highbrow, though not quite as frigid as the old KDFC had been. KDFC is still around, as low as ever though at least they haven't hired Pledger; but the new KKHI lost money and was sold to become yetanother pop station. But then the ex-owner had second thoughts and opened up this AM station which, as I said, I haven't heard much: I can't get it down here and it doesn't play at night, which is when I'm usually in the City.
Neither of those. I lived in Oakland 1955-61.
Civilization has declined and fallen a great deal since 1961. (But then, they said the same thing about 1861.)
No, wasn't there then.
(CBC Radio One has a late-night classical music program entitled "That Time Of The Night." www.cbc.ca )
News from Usenet: WNIB, one of two classical music stations in Chicago, has been bought and is changing formats. We listened to them a couple of times on recent visits there, they seemed to be a decent station.
You have several choices: