Well here we are once again gathered around the speakers, perhaps in my case this microphone, but the fact is we are together again and that’s why I love being with you because you. We get to hang out together, we get to express opposing ideas, and different opinions. The best part about it is that we do not do it out of anger or hate toward each other. That’s what I love about hanging out with you on these Thursday nights or Sunday nights if you’re listening to us on the replay. Hey, we must not forget about those who were listening on-demand because without our partners, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing right now. I just would like to say, without a shadow of a doubt, you are the best part. I love this show and my daily show that is on from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. central time on the TBJS Radio Network, “The Big John Show”.
Over the years in my radio broadcasting career, I have poured my heart and soul into this industry, or business if that’s what you want to call it, and I’ve had a rollercoaster of a time. We’ve had some highs, some low’s, and then there are times where we just went under, but there have been some times where we have flown sky high to the moon, so to speak. I’m always interested in doing creative things that I hope you’ll enjoy listening to on the air. Even when I was on terrestrial radio, I always did The Big John Show along with another three, four, or even five hour show for the past 10 years now. To be successful in this business, you have to be a hard worker, sometimes harder working then the other players in the game. Working long hours behind the scenes, stressful deadlines, constant changes, and without mercy against your competition. You cannot take anything granted, this includes the people that you talk to on interviews, the phone calls, or the people you meet up in the streets. Because one day that can all disappear without any warning.
As morbid as it may sound, my goal is to do what so many have done already and that is to die behind the microphone. That is the great way to go in this industry, crazy or morbid as it sounds, but if you really truly love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. And if you really love your job, then you’ll probably think or feel the same way. A good man who has done so much for this industry passed away just yesterday morning. His name was Rush Limbaugh. I know a lot of people don’t like conservative talk on the other side or they don’t want to listen, but the guy tried to make things happen and to bring attention to the conservative thought or movement, if you want to call it that. What the guy did is one thing that not very many people will probably understand as most of those who are in the radio business. I’m not talking about your podcasters or those who live only been on internet radio their whole time, I’m talking about people who actually fought to stay on terrestrial radio. Those people who really struggled to make sure that each show was as best as it could possibly be.
Rush Limbaugh, some would say, actually saved AM radio. Yeah, there was a lot of talk radio personalities before rush Limbaugh, but there was a time back in the mid-to-late 90s when AM radio was considered to be taking its final breath, if you will. Rush Limbaugh was a voice that people started tuning in to AM radio again. AM radio is great for distance, but not so good when it comes to sound quality of highly compressed, overly produced music. When it comes to using your voice on AM radio, then you could have no problem being heard over a vast distance. Try listening to AM radio signals at night and see how many you actually can pick up that are halfway across the country, literally. AM radio, in my eyes, is a very wonderful and exciting frontier. Even though it’s been around for decades, possibly a century, AM radio still is a very vital tool in radio broadcasting, especially for news and information. FM radio is very awesome when it comes to music or other produced audio pieces.
It is my belief that AM radio is still very young and not in its prime yet, but maybe I’m just a little too nostalgic. FM radio is very nice and so is HD radio on the FM band. Problem is HD is still young and it is still got its kinks. However I’m sure it’ll be worked out as technology advances, but as long as you still have to pay a yearly license to be able to broadcast on an HD platform (https://hdradio.com/broadcasters/licensing/), it will not expand as well as am or FM signals. And I say this because you have to pay a yearly or biannually fee because it is patented and I think that is wrong. I’m all for capitalism, but I’m not for leasing a platform because that is stunting the growth of the future in an industry that I love. I understand paying the Federal Communications Commission license fee to use the airwaves, I just don’t like, nor do I feel it would be good, the idea that we have to pay a license fee to broadcast HD radio signals on FM or AM (https://hdradio.com/all-digital-am/) because one company has got the patent on all HD radio signals recognized by the Federal Communications Commission. In other words to use an HD transmitter, you have to pay for a license fee to this company. It’s not a software issue or free maintenance throughout the year, you pay a fee. So that’s like double-dipping and that’s only stunting, or hurting, the purpose of radio.
I’m all for free radio and I think free radio is great. And by free radio, I mean picking up the airwaves on a receiver that is being transmitted by a mom-and-pop old as well as corporate radio stations. Hell, I even love the idea of Low Power AM and Low Power FM radio, also known as Part 15 Broadcasting. Don’t get me wrong, there are some big broadcasting companies that do good jobs, but it seems the bigger they are, the more cutthroat and careless they get about their workers / employees. In radio, I think you can get too big and that should be where you fail. Radio was supposed to be local and unfortunately, there is several big companies that own as much as they can in so many markets it really hurts, not only the quality of what goes on the air, but it makes it stagnant reputation in that market. Now I know what I speak is not really interesting to a whole lot of people, but it’s still important enough to be shared with you because of how you get your information.
You see when you get a national radio show put on a local station, you eliminate a local voice on your radio station in that local Market. Yes, it is bragging rights for a on-air talent to say he or she is in so many markets across the country, or around the world, but you also eliminate the chance for a local voice or opinion to be heard. That hurts what radio is supposed to be, particularly as it is described per FCC regulations (https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/public-and-broadcasting#PUBLICINSPECTIONFILE). The FCC wants so much percent of the local, the requirement for you to own a radio station is to contribute, to what the market in which you are license to needs or to serve that market better. That’s why you have to have so many Public Service Announcements or local interviews in what they call a “Public Inspection File”. This is a public file that is about local charities or organizations that are doing things and are mentioned, people interview on the air, or that the station participated in without financial gain or profit. You’re supposed to serve your market because that’s why the FCC allows you to have a license for in said market.
Obviously you were not going to care what happens in Los Angeles California if you’re in Miami Florida. Unless it’s something on a grand national scale or something so horrific, you really don’t care what the local weather is on the opposite side of the country. You don’t care about local politics if you’re not in that area or you don’t care about the businesses that are closing if they’re not in your area. It’s different if you are listening to that station online because you are hearing it from that particular point of contact, even though some have the capabilities to block their local advertisements and play regional or national advertisers in the spot break, but that’s a whole other topic for another time. Basically, you don’t want to hear advertisements from that part of the country on your radio do you? Even though, radio stations need advertisers to stay in business and that’s important.
Just like any business needs people that have money to come in and buy their goods or services so they can stay in operation. That goes for online radio stations like the TBJS Radio Network, shows like the Big John Show, or Bravo Sierra with Big John, we all need advertisers or sponsors willing to take a risk on us so we can continue doing what we do. We have listeners that might want to hear about your products, goods, or services as well. When that doesn’t happen, we have to move to alternative means of cash flow. That’s why I asked for partners to join The Big John Show and in return, we offer features that unlock on our websites, among other hidden offers. If a station can get local advertisement from local businesses, that makes radio shows sound even more local. I think that’s kind of where a lot of these national syndicated shows gets confusing because they’re national shows that allow local advertisers as well as the big-name advertisers to be heard during their time slots. Therefore if you hear local advertisement, you might think that show is more local in your neck of the woods than really sitting in a concrete building somewhere around Los Angeles, California.
If you enjoy the show, that’s not a problem to you and there’s a lot of really good shows that I listen to on national stage,but then you also have to realize that those national voices don’t really care about what goes on Main Street in your town, your county, or even in your state unless it is a huge event. So where do you go to get your local news or information? You could listen to your local radio station and sometimes they may offer a local morning show or afternoon show and then that’s it. A lot of mom and pop radio stations can’t afford having a full staff if they’re in a small town like here in Southeast Oklahoma. So they subscribe to a major media provider who will give them top and bottom of the hour news, important news breaks, or they’ll work a partnership deal with the local TV channels to get the weather and news information. When you deal with a major news outlet, you’re going to get there spin on a news story and again it’s not going to be local. When you work a deal with a TV station that’s in your market, you might get a local news story here in there, but chances are if you’re like in our neck of the woods in Southeast Oklahoma, you’re going to get a lot of news about Northwest Arkansas that really is not relevant to your geographic location.
So again you’re stuck trying to find out the news for your area. Yes, granted you could possibly work a deal with a local reporter or two or your local newspaper if you have one, but a lot of them don’t have time to go on the air. And what do you do if they have a point of view that’s different than yours or what you want to project out from the local radio station? There’s a lot of things you got to put in perspective and if you really want to share accurate information, you really have to go to the source and it really gets tough if you’re already stuck at one location, you can’t leave, and there’s nobody else to help you. The reason why I’m telling you all this is because I want you to understand the chain of information and how it works. Or how misinformation can easily be produced on a local level. If you get it wrong, you could cause a mass panic or worse. And if you get it right, then maybe half of the people paying attention will really care. That is nothing against the listeners or anyone else that don’t pay attention to current events, but those who rely on their local media for updates on current events or rely on a source for current events and information, they have to live up to a standard or the bar that was raised for them to hurdle so that way they can continue that relationship with their listeners.
The same could be said about television, but unfortunately in my experience, there’s so much more wrong with television when it comes to miss information and persuasion then there is a radio. In television, you’ve got audio and visual signals or subliminal messaging. And that can cause some confusion. Have you watched the Super Bowl halftime show in the past 10 years? Have you watched the news on the mainstream media or have you watched most ballgames in the past eight or nine months? You see a lot of messaging there in basketball, baseball, football even with all the kneeling. Yeah, you don’t see or hear that as much in radio unless someone actually mentions it. They, granted what you don’t mention could be just as harmful as what you do mention, but that’s where the personality has to make that decision and bare all cost should he or she do it wrong. You have to remove the agenda and just report the facts so the person listening, or watching if it’s television, can decide for themselves. Those are the days that we, as a society, so desperately hurt for. In my opinion, we need to go back to those days to where we just report the facts and forget about the opinion people. If the opinion supports or has the support of all the facts, then okay I suppose you could roll with that. But when you have more opinion than facts, that is not a good thing. That results in what you have in places like CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, CNBC, all these major news places including ABC, NBC, CBS too.