What If?

... employee groups start buying local stations from consolidated companies while they are on their last legs? Would you buy your station, if you could own it for $2?

... internet broadcast runs out of bandwidth and reopens "local" opportunity for terrestial stations?

Music Master's Joe Knapp:

"If terrestrial radio is going to thrive again, it has to take advantage of the two things it has going for it. It reaches a limited market, so it's better suited for LOCAL programming. It's also an efficient one-to-many distribution channel, so it has to have mass appeal. I think the ONLY way to do that is to have live bodies on the air who relate to the audience and react instantly to everything that's going on. That's the kind of stuff you can't get on your iPod or New Media. Radio and New Media each have a place, but we need to remember that they're different, and need to be tuned accordingly. Internet radio can't serve the audience terrestrial radio does because of bandwidth limitations. I never stopped to do the math on that before. I suspect a whole new Internet strategy, like neural networking, may become necessary before it can work the way we expect. Internet radio reaches a global market, and it's probably better used as a Long Tail medium (even though that term is getting heat these days). Terrestrial radio serves a LOCAL market very well. I also think the tide will eventually turn and newer, smarter managers will come to realize that salaries produce more profit than they cost. Hire people to MAKE you more money. They've lost sight of that for the moment, but that may only be temporary."

... I hope Joe's right.