Schools, Post Offices, and Radio Stations
You could excuse folks listening to their favorite radio station in Central Iowa yesterday for wondering what happened. Around 2 p.m., everything was fine—music or talk programming playing. Then suddenly, it was gone. Static replaced programming simultaneously on no fewer than four stations in Grinnell and Newton.
But it was not a technical problem that was quickly resolved. The corporate owner of those stations simply turned them off as no longer being profitable. The company had done the same thing to a pair in Fairfield earlier this year.
The current corporate owner had recently purchased the assets of a failed prior corporate owner, and to their credit, in some cities, staffing and local programming was restored. But in others—as folks in Grinnell and Newton learned yesterday—what little they had left was now gone altogether.
Radio is a business like any other. When a store or a branch of a business loses money, it often closes. Somehow, though, when it’s radio—something that comes into your homes and cars—it feels different.
The same thing happened to a number of smaller towns in Iowa earlier this year, when the owner of the newspaper group started closing down newspapers. Some were saved by local folks in each area, or regional groups. But some went away after more than a century of continuous printing.
Folks properly are concerned about the vitality of their town when the local school closes as part of consolidation. Or when the post office closes. Now it’s happening to cities of larger size with the local radio station. What was once a point of pride for a town becomes a memory. And I fear this is hardly the last time we’ll be telling a story like this.
The annual meeting of the Iowa Broadcasters Association is next Tuesday. I recall when it spanned parts of two days, with full meeting rooms and banquets. It’s a much smaller affair these days; even smaller after this week’s news.
