Think-through 4; What it is, is a local news station.

Don't tell me you're already doing it. See my last post. This is Number 4 in the Think-through, because I've been tinkering with how to re-juice steel-tower radio in the personal-digital media era. There's always been a considerable percentage of the population who could do better radio than radio guys.

Now anybody can produce "broadcast quality" audio and programming content and distribute it for almost nothing, with no FCC licensing hassles. A cheap mike, a broadband connection and a laptop will do it. You can be a hobbyist or sell time, or open an online store, whatever. This is no time to be rigid, as the pro radio people have become over the past thirty-five years--actually their grey matter had become rigor mortis-ized by 1975.

Don't misunderstand me. Radio's making lots of money--fewer are making more, and Wall Street's taking a bigger share. Many more shareholders, too. "Terrestrial Radio" won't sink into the turf this year. Still, we don't know how fast things are changing. Look how quickly the Internet upended the music business. And everything else. Tower radio won't be the exception. But it still has mass, and the opportunity to fill the giant sinkhole it has allowed to open in virtually every U.S. radio market. Ironically, the format hole is called by radio's two most meaningless words: local news.

Not all radio companies are catatonic. I keep coming back to Bonneville, a venerable, rich, stable company, not a very exciting company to radio people. But Bonneville just made a set of moves in Washington DC that places them, in my opinion, on the razor-sharp leading edge of tower radio's future, which is not five years away, but now.

Bonneville shuffled their DC stations among transmitters and dial positions they hold there. Especially jarring to radio people was their move of WTOP, historic, dominant AM, to a stronger FM signal, while deleting a vanilla AC. 'TOP, the leading AM "newsradio" station in the nation's capital, is promoted now as an FM, though it's still available via one of their weaker AM sticks.



Simultaneously, Bonneville launched "Washington Post Radio" on 'TOP's well-known AM frequency, 1500 kHz, which the rigor-morts have called ris-KEE. This new partnership is spectacularly smart for Bonneville and the Post. From minute one it had smart, DC-savvy Post people chatting away off-script with familiar hosts, some moved over from WTOP, on the stories they cover so well in print. No mispronounced street names. I've listened some, and the newspaper people can talk just fine, thanks, and nobody I've heard sounds like a deejay or bloviating talk host. They sound like they know what they're talking about. WTWP's also refreshingly free of the shrill, compressed, reverbed, sentence-edited, Top-40 "production" you now hear on all commercial stations, whatever their formats.

Somebody was saying, before launch, that WTWP would be NPR on steroids. Thank God, it isn't--especially no academe-lite voices. I heard Bob Kur, former NBC correspondent, facilitating afternoon drive reports and analysis with Post staffers, informally, amiably, cordially. Apparently, no ADD-afflicted, ex-CHR PD paces outside the window, waving an ARBITRON, arm-pumping and mouthing "more energy!" Ergo, there's plenty of natural energy, authentic enthusiasm, real content. Genuinely happy voices, doing what they love.

In Washington DC, the nation's business is the local news. WTWP, Washington Post Radio, is a local news station. It has plenty to talk about, without a helicopter. Your city should have such a station. Getting into collaboration with your local newspaper would be a great way to start one. The paper needs a new outlet as much as you need the content.

Your station will sound--will be--different from WTWP. Your town's not DC, and your newspaper isn't The Washington Post. But I bet your local publisher's got a better fix on what makes the smartest, most involved, most affluent citizen-reader-listeners of your market tick than you do. And I'll bet you can find some interesting new ways to sell, too.

Alas, there's a 90 percent chance you're no Bonneville, either, and you therefore aren't getting this. Some radio guy eventually will, maybe. It ought to be you, there, with your legacy Number Two full-service news-talk AM and mediocre 3.0-share soft AC FM.

While most companies' cerebella atrophied, Bonneville kept its eye on the core business--programming radio for the city of license. Who'd have known, as the ship started to list, Bonneville would be prime candidate for smartest company in steel-tower radio? I say until another company demonstrates local thinking, the guys in the white shirts from Salt Lake are your role models.

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