>Who do you want to reach? You want to expand your audience. There
>are a thousand different directions to go. Let's say that there are
>groups you want to reach that you're not currently reaching in the
>community, go into those communities, get programmers, give them
>training, see what they want to do. Engage in a process of bringing
>people aboard. That's the only way you can really do it that I can
>think of. The way not to do it is to hire some high-ticket
>demographic expert from the advertising industry who comes in with
>reams of charts and statistics, telling you, Play this song and you
>get this audience. That's not community radio. That's the whole
>logic of commercial radio. One-way flow. The whole idea is to grab
>people and hook them to listen to ads. Community radio is developing
>an audience and an interaction in a community. You talk to people,
>bring programmers in. That's the way to do it....
I'm not sure I buy this. WBAI is full of this sort of talk these days - we need to bring in voices from the "community." I never know what this means - what *is* the community? It's usually defined demographically, if it's defined at all. But for these purposes, the "black community" largely excludes that portion of the black population that votes Democratic and goes to church.
And what kind of programming would these voices from the "community" produce? Pacifica radio, and left media in general, desperately need people who know what they're talking about - who have a body of expertise, skill at analysis, and some sense of style to make it all appealing. Are there vast untapped resources out there in the "community"? Where do you start prospecting?
Doug