
America's rural radio stations are vanishing - eplanit
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/jun/06/radio-silence-how-the-disappearance-of-rural-stations-takes-americas-soul-with-them
======
momokoko
Private equity markets killed radio. Radio stations were simply worth more to
a large broadcasting company than a small local station because large
broadcasters could leverage their massive advertising network.

We're going to eventually look back and wonder how much damage the rise of
private equity and modern finance has done to so many things that were once of
such high quality. Financial engineering is distorting the original intent of
market forces and leaving more and more consumers with an inferior product.

~~~
api
The phrase "financial pollution" recently came to mind in the context of
foreign investors buying and sitting on real estate and driving up costs for
local residents. I think the phrase may apply to a lot of things.

Keynes seems to have been right about the problems of "saving beyond planned
investment." It seems to create even more problems than he imagined. A little
of it does end up finding interesting important ventures but most of it is big
dumb money that chases bubbles or gets parked in socially destructive rent
seeking operations. Money is made for some investors but the overall ROI for
civilization is a net negative; making money by destroying wealth.

~~~
Spooky23
You are describing legalized money laundering designed to tie up money and
keep it out of circulation.

It will keep inflation away until it doesn’t, as some day the consequences of
printing money will be felt. One of the most negative influences of
civilization has been people hoarding wealth, and we’re reverting to an
environment that empowers that.

~~~
RaptorJ
You'll only feel the consequences of printing money if productivity and
population stop rising, and seeing as how the earth in infinitely large, I
don't see that happening!

~~~
whenchamenia
Population is leveling off. Only developing nations are still growing in
general. Your assumption, as those printing money, is equally flawed.

~~~
api
Money printing was a hack to deal with the economic money supply problems
caused by the crazy population growth of the 19th and 20th centuries.

------
dsparkman
Local radio stations of my childhood did one thing that no streaming service
could provide... community. Not the "fake" online community crap. You got the
news of your community. You learned the away high school basketball game had
been rescheduled. You learned about crimes that may have happened in your
community. It helped get local news out in a town that had a weekly newspaper.
You got to hear fascinating stories from old timers in your community. Oh and
there was music thrown in for good measure :)

~~~
Johnny555
While this is true, since nowawadays you can just get all of that information
off your smart-phone, broadcasting such information no longer brings enough
listeners to support a station.

Though to be honest, I don't even know what brings listeners to radio these
days -- the only radio I listen to is 20 seconds in the morning before my
car's infotainment system finishes booting and connects to my phone and then I
can ask it to play just about any song/genre/playlist I want to, or ask for a
news briefing, or the weather, etc. I used to listen to the station with the
best traffic reports, but I don't even need that since my phone map will tell
me about traffic backups ahead and even reroute me around it automatically

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
> nowawadays you can just get all of that information off your smart-phone

Really, where? When it comes to super-local specific, curated information, I
find it really hard to duplicate what you used to get from local radio
stations. You certainly have all the different bits and pieces, but IMO not in
a way that curates it to a consistent view, and sense of community, the way
radio used to.

~~~
Johnny555
My local school district posts an events calendar, school closures, lunch
menus, etc on their website. Students/families can also subscribe to an alert
system that will notify them immediately about important events.

My hometown paper publishes their police blotter online, that includes pretty
much every police call including car breakins and kitten rescues.

The paper also publishes also publishes local interest stories, interviews,
etc.

They don't publish the paper every day any more and it's in tabloid format now
instead of broadsheet, but the online site is up to date.

Google maps gives me real-time traffic updates, Waze will tell me if there's
construction or a dead animal on the road ahead.

So it's not all in one place, but it's all on my phone, and available on
demand, I don't have to wait until the top of the hour to find out if there's
an accident on my route to work.

~~~
JudgeWapner
and that explains why it's not as useful. I think just the act of having
someone _deliver_ it to you constitutes the connection. And having "every
police call including kitten rescues" is a bug, not a feature. Too much
information is just as bad as not enough.

~~~
Johnny555
_and that explains why it 's not as useful_

I can get the information on demand 24x7 from anywhere in the world, that
seems _more_ useful than having someone read it to me at scheduled times on
the radio where if I don't happen to be listening at that time, I miss it.

If I have to work through the high school football game (or am out of town)
and want to know the score when I come home, I can pull up the school's
webpage at 11pm to see the score, I don't need to tune in at 7am the next
morning to hear the local news.

If there's a water leak and school is closed early, I don't have to be
listening to the radio all day to hear the announcement or wait for my child
to call me, I'll get an SMS (and/or phone call or email or app alert) and I
can already be on my way home to meet her.

 _Too much information is just as bad as not enough_

This is a rural area, my typical hometown police blotter column includes 4 or
5 incidents (including the occasional kitten rescues and lost cow found
wandering downtown). That's hardly too much information. And back when they
_did_ read this information on our local AM station, they included the same
information (our family dog made the police report on the radio when she was
reported on the local highway and returned home by police)

------
jarjoura
I think all you grumpy commenters in here are nostalgic af! I hated radio in
my youth. It was 20 minutes of the same songs followed by another 20 minutes
of commercials. The same playlists over and over, and really the only value-
add were the DJs talking to you. Then once radio stations caught on to that,
they shifted to shock-jocks that really went overboard. I mean look at Howard
Stern, he grew out of that shift.

If Live Nation and CBS radio didn't buy up all the radio stations in the 90s,
they probably would have vanished one by one as people moved on to iPods and
CDs for consumption.

Both Apple Music and Spotify have playlists of every conceivable genre and of
every mood you could possibly be in. Want to listen to bad elevator cover
songs? You can find it! There shouldn't be any problem with music discovery at
this point. I'm constantly finding new music from all kinds of artists.

For everything else, DJs in the morning, shock-jocks, talk radio, those are
served by Podcasts. Once again, every possible genre, from murder mysteries,
to local news, it's all there. Maybe your small community doesn't have a
replacement podcast yet, but that doesn't mean it can't exist. The barrier to
entry is so low that I imagine it's only a matter of time.

------
imroot
This article is about 20 years too late.

Back in the late 1990's, I worked for a rural radio station -- they were in
the process of moving to full automation, and was working on getting the
country station in full automation: I had a background in Audio/Video
Productions (and computers/electronics), so, I spent a lot of time working on
the automation (old Harris Automation System, vs the rest of the cluster using
AudioVault from BEI).

There was someone in the studio from 5AM Until Midnight (sometimes later if
there were west coast ballgames) Monday-Friday: We'd do the news at the top
and bottom of the hour (each station in the cluster got sent back to network
audio at different times -- 4:15, 6:00, 6:30 after the hour, which required
some really good pacing and reading skills to not let the other stations know
you're pushing something back to network), cut live and recorded weather for
other stations, and then answer the phone/distribute faxes/etc.

I learned a lot about RF and Broadcast engineering during this time, and it
honestly was the catalyst to push me into electrical and computer engineering
(admittedly, restoring a VAX/VMS with the station engineer was the biggest
driver).

I can identify a "Satellite" station from a mile away. The liners sound
different -- if they even match up -- the clocks at the top and the bottom of
the hour are sync'ed with :30:00 and 00:00.

Sunday mornings was religious programming (the "hangover" shift), and we'd do
Friday night Football for High School and Saturday/Sunday College and
Professional Football games, and Basketball games during the winter months.
Add in some NASCAR and Indy racing (on the country music station), and there
were plenty of weeks where I had 50/60/70 hours (at 17, I thought I was
financially set -- lest I know that I was completely wrong!)

To this day, the group of stations that I grew up with are still using split
ownership to get past FCC rules about station clustering (but, all ran out of
the same building).

------
hprotagonist
our radio stations are vanishing, period, into a siriusXM and ClearChannel
morass of repetitive hell. NPR affiliates (KEXP, etc) and college radio
stations (WZBC, WRCT) keep the flame alive but they’re all that’s left.

I still dearly miss the stations of my youth, which were crucial venues for
hip hop culture (HOT97) and alt rock (KROCK, WFNX, ... ) in a way that youtube
and soundcloud and bandcamp just aren’t.

~~~
chrisseaton
What do you think they contributed in your youth?

Apart from high-quality spoken-word content (like Radio 3 and Radio 4), most
radio stations are playing music which I could listen to elsewhere, in higher
quality, when I want, and then they add some super low quality filler chat in
between. Plus adverts!

What do you miss from them? Just that was the only way to access music back
then?

~~~
hprotagonist
My youth did not include high quality on demand free or minimially expensive
music and/or music discovery services that were not a FM radio (or MTV).

Independent radio stations have DJs and a culture around them that foster new
music and support independent musicians.

To pick an example, Hot97 was _the_ voice of the bronx (literally, in the case
of angie martinez) and the east coast hip hop scene from more or less the
beginning. DJs would meet or be introduced to or know of local artists, get
their demo tapes on the air, and launched major careers as a result.

~~~
empath75
Yeah but now people have thousands and thousands of DJ’s to choose from.

~~~
hprotagonist
and the vast majority of them suck!

that probably makes me a grouchy old man, but the fragmentation and
personalization of music does actually lead to a dilution.

------
MrRadar
Reading this article brought to mind one of my favorite radio stations, WOJB.
It's located in rural northern Wisconsin. I live in Minnesota outside of its
broadcasting range, but I always look forward to listening to it on my trips
to visit my relatives who live in the upper peninsula of Michigan.

The first time I listened to it the DJ had his 4 year old daughter with him in
the studio and during one of the breaks she asked him to sing her favorite
song. He obliged and it was some depressing country song, but towards the end
she joined in enthusiastically, breaking the tension. It was very
heartwarming. That is my favorite radio memory and the kind of radio you don't
get from corporate stations.

After that I looked the station up and learned that it was founded to bridge
the divide between the Native American and white populations of the region
between whom there were significant racial tensions. I can't speak to whether
it did or not, but it certainly seems like it has. One year while driving
through I caught a live broadcast of a pow-wow which was a delightful
surprise.

A few years ago I was driving through the area and I couldn't pick them up.
The next town I got to I stopped to look up the station to see if I had just
forgotten the right frequency but it turned out that their transmitter had
broken and needed a complete replacement. In the end it took them about a year
to raise the funds to buy and install the new transmitter and I think they are
still operating at reduced power because their antenna needs to be replaced
(which is apparently in part what caused the original transmitter to break).
It just goes to show how fragile these institutions that can form the pillars
of communities can be.

They do broadcast online, but I find that when I'm not traveling I mostly
listen to local stations here in Minneapolis. Minneapolis is almost certainly
a beneficiary of the policies the article cites as the cause of the decline of
rural radio. Radio here is as vibrant and alive as it's ever been (at least
that I've been around). I have 6 different public stations that all have
different programming in my car presets and there are many more commercial
stations I listen to on occasion. The FM dial is completely packed (I don't
think there are _any_ open frequencies right now) and the AM dial is pretty
full as well. I just wish this did not come at the expense of my rural
neighbors (and I don't think it has to).

~~~
isaacdl
I love WOJB! I go up into northern WI for an annual trip every year and it's
always a highlight when we get in range. Wondered why it was so much harder to
pick up this year.

I especially love some of the late night DJs...eclectic music tastes that I
don't ever hear elsewhere on the radio.

------
8bitsrule
I just learned the other day that the last college station I DJ'd at was sold
to Public Radio, long ago.

Commercial radio? Given the facility, equipment, antenna, license,
electricity, that's just the start. A one-person operation is almost
impossible, even if you're independently wealthy _and_ have the technical
chops. But if all you've got is automation? the 'community' part is hopeless
... might as well be 'iHeart' (hah!)

'People' radio is unavoidably a people-intensive operation. How do you fill 16
hours a day with sound? That's 4 four-hour shifts. _Every._ _Day._ Assume
you've somehow found 3 volunteers, each with a personal record collection. How
many people will you find to interview in a town of 3000-10000? Who's going to
sell quality advertising? Who's going to produce it? Who's going to manage the
business side? Climb the tower?

Sad it is, but that model is _over_. Mr. Lucke is the one fanatic in a town of
3000 - I salute him, Behringer console and all.

But community radio has headed in a different direction, and across the US is
finding ways. For anyone interested in what _is_ still working, across the US,
check out the Radio Survivor podcasts. (These guys know their stuff.)
[http://www.radiosurvivor.com/category/podcast/](http://www.radiosurvivor.com/category/podcast/)

------
sadphone9000
It is disgusting that all cell phones don't have an AM and FM receiver.

~~~
rando444
Most phones have a radio antenna, it's just not a default application feature
for whatever reason.

If you're running an android phone, you should be able to enable a radio with
little trouble.

~~~
zcid
A lot of the phones in the US will have a radio but no internal antennae. The
radio is only activated when headphones are plugged in as they become the
antenna.

------
js2
Related: _A New Proposal Looks To Loosen Radio Ownership Rules_

[https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730323196/one-more-scoop-
of-v...](https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730323196/one-more-scoop-of-vanilla-a-
new-proposal-looks-to-loosen-radio-ownership-rules)

------
merluck
Hello. My family needs help. The Guardian article was written and investigated
for almost 8 months. They are Mark and Tristan Lucke. The situation is
extremely important. Please go to willcoxradio com for complete story . Today
the temperature is high there. Fire smoke from the mountain is coming into the
station. Mark isnt well because of this. The town of Willcox is looking the
other way. The world news isn't. We really need help with this. My email is
merluck63@ gmail.com. l help with everything to help them. My family needs
help with getting this problem fixed before it is to late.Thank you for
sharing this news. We truly appreciate it.Mercedez Lucke- Lucke-Benedict

------
paulcarroty
[http://www.radio-browser.info/](http://www.radio-browser.info/) \- great
service with many clients. Just type any city in search and hear the local
radio right now. It's kind of traveling, very funny - hear the local news of
places where you never been.

------
merluck
I had to join this to make sure my message was sent. Bless you all with love
if anyone and everyone can reach out to Mark and Tristan . There has to be a
way to stop this criminal 51% owner that Mark has to deal with. Everything was
great brfire this happened. The station flourished. KHIL was global. Fans
across the world. Now it is a huge mess and my family is suffering. It gets
worse as the heat elevates. There must be something that can be done. No
lawyers will touch this without money and there is none. I give half my salary
to help them. Anyone? Can you help? Please share the articles. There are many
more now . Mercedez Lucke-Benedict

------
markbnj
Why isn't streaming filling this void? I remember back when winamp made it
easy to receive live streams from hundreds of broadcasters. Is that still a
thing? Broadband wasn't very broad back then, either, so the tech should be
perfect for rural areas where connectivity is spotty.

~~~
mwcampbell
Ah, Shoutcast. It will always hold a special place in my heart [0], if only
because it reminds me of a more care-free time in my life.

But in addition to the complexities of licensing if you want your stream to be
legal, it seems to me that there's at least one flaw in the design. To receive
an uninterrupted Shoutcast stream, you have to have a persistent, unbroken TCP
connection with the server. IIUC, this is a recipe for frequent interruptions
on mobile. I think that Apple's HTTP Live Streaming and MPEG DASH have the
right idea; instead of an actual stream, you get chunks of media from an HTTP
server, based on a playlist. In Apple HLS, that playlist is even a variant of
the Winamp .m3u format. I understand that these systems are primarily used for
video, but I wonder if any radio stations use HLS or DASH for their online
streams. Of course, the downside of these systems is higher latency, but that
might not be so bad [1].

[0]: One of my first real projects in Python was Supercast
([http://supercast.sourceforge.net/](http://supercast.sourceforge.net/)), a
Shoutcast-compatible server. I was also a DJ on the Internet radio station for
which I wrote that server. Not a particularly good one, mind you, but it was
fun for a little while.

[1]: Back when I was into Shoutcast, I did think the latency of large buffers
was a bad thing. One difference between Shoutcast and my Supercast server was
that Supercast didn't send an initial large audio buffer to each listener. But
priorities change sometimes, and now I think it's more important to avoid
drop-outs.

~~~
ohithereyou
iHeartRadio streams support both HLS and Shoutcast. You can find the stream
info for each station embedded in a JSON object on the stream page. For
example, for a iHeartRadio station that I listen to occasionally, there's the
following:

    
    
      "streams":{
        "hls_stream":"http://c8.prod.playlists.ihrhls.com/609/playlist.m3u8",
        "shoutcast_stream":"http://c8icyelb.prod.playlists.ihrhls.com/609_icy",
        "pivot_hls_stream":"https://us.api.iheart.com/api/v3/adswizzhls/redirect.m3u8?url=https%3A%2F%2Fc8.prod.playlists.ihrhls.com%2F609%2Fplaylist.m3u8&marketId=51",
        "secure_hls_stream":"https://c8.prod.playlists.ihrhls.com/609/playlist.m3u8",
        "secure_shoutcast_stream":"https://c8icy.prod.playlists.ihrhls.com/609_icy"
      }

~~~
mwcampbell
Interesting, thanks. So, I'm not crazy to think that using HLS for audio might
be worthwhile. I wonder if iHeart does it for robustness over mobile
connections, or just browser compatibility (particularly with iOS Safari).

That secure Shoutcast stream is an interesting mix of old and new. It has the
expected "icy-" HTTP headers, but it's using HTTP/2 and, of course, HTTPS. The
fact that it even returns a valid response for an HTTP HEAD request puts it
ahead of real Shoutcast and Icecast streams in terms of standards compliance.
It looks like iHeart has their own streaming server.

------
jccalhoun
I still miss WOXY
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOXY.com](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOXY.com)
(It wasn't rural but it was bought by a corporate station). I listen to a good
amount of radio but most of it is "radio" since I listen to it online. I could
pick up the local NPR station but it is just easier to listen online. The
local music radio stations are either country, religious or corporate (like
JACKfm) so I listen to The Current
[https://www.thecurrent.org/](https://www.thecurrent.org/) online for a couple
hours a day most days.

------
subpixel
A good one and a great one, while they last:

Good
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHVW](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WHVW)

Great
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKHR](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKHR)

------
c3534l
You could have written this same article 80 years ago.

------
madengr
I’d start a hobby, classical station. The local KPR (Kansas) is pretty much
classical, but is polluted with the drivel from NPR. Instead of
advertisements. You can’t go thirty seconds without hearing the name “Trump”

