HOW (LOCAL) RADIO WORKS-STRESS ON THE WORD “LOCAL”

Twenty-One Years is a long time, and that’s EXACTLY how long WION as today’s “I-1430” has been serving Ionia County.  For a somewhat lesser time, we’ve served Kent County on 100.3, and a larger part of our Ionia county on FM 92.7.  As you also may know, we now serve the state of Michigan, the USA, and the world via the web, just like “the big guys.”

The appeal of “radio” is in what I’d call the “local recipe.”  The music industry would dispute this, taking credit for all of our work and CHARGING US for our success.

When a radio station is successful, it’s advertising base grows, business by business, client by client, non-profit by non-profit, and YES, non-profits buy advertising.
It’s the advertising dollars that pay our expenses, just like your personal job or career pays yours.  We, like you, have bills like: electricity, heating fuel, property taxes, repairs, and maintenance.   In addition to that, however, add:  Music licensing from no less than FIVE companies that claim rights to what we play for you.  BMI, SESAC, ASCAP, GMR, and SoundExchange all dig into our pockets for licensing of the music.  In addition, we pay the company called “Live 365” to take our AM stereo live signal and distribute it among listeners all over the world to the “tune of” around seven thousand hours listened each month.   Adding to the cost mix is FCC licensing, which they call “regulatory fees” each year.  Our license, while issued for eight years at a time would be made null and void if we did not pay a few thousand dollars each year for the privilege of holding and using the license.

When you add-in engineering fees to keep our equipment going, the cost of our “texting to landline” service our listeners use quite often, the cost of our 800 number which takes messages for us, Cable internet AND backup Starlink for when Spectrum fails us, LP fuel for the generator when your power and ours is “out” and we have to run off-grid, and you’ve got a “recipe” for a rather expensive 24/7 service provided from small town USA:  Ionia, MI.

Because of the high costs of maintaining AM radio physical plants among all the regulations, and the way the music industry is treating (especially) independent stations, many small towns have lost their radio stations as revenue dipped and costs accelerated.  We’re doing all we can to keep all our services viable to you at WION twenty-four hours a day.

Ionia, however needs to do some work.  In fact, most of the small towns in our terrestrial coverage area need to do some work.

You see, in my 21 years here, I’ve watched South Ionia grow into what you might call “Corporate America.”  (As a community) we bulldozed the Meijer to build a bigger one in a new location.  The OLD Meijer location became a Lowes.  Lowes, however did not get enough support and left an empty building. Thank goodness the building was suitable for Farm Depot which is now a WION client ONLY because they, themselves while selling big equipment are actually a not-too-huge company with only a couple more locations in our state and local people running it.  Put that aside and see the addition of Taco Bell, Walmart, Walgreens, Petco, Aldi’s Oreilly’s Auto Parts, TSC, Goodwill, among others and what has happened is a gradual yet steady pull of people AWAY from “mom and pop” businesses and INTO those along our m-66 corridor.  This has hit the downtown hard especially in the past few years, though I’ve seen it like a roller-coaster now for 21 years.  Even MORE-so of concern to WION is that that last list I mentioned to you  WILL NOT BUY LOCAL RADIO ADVERTISING even though they are part of our small, happy market.  For almost every corporate entity that you cheer when it comes here, it’s another nail in the coffin of locally owned businesses including radio.  LOCAL competitors who have been here longer than the new corporate entities are hit hardest without budgets to fight back!

And, as you  have championed corporate coming to town you must also understand they don’t CARE about local media.  Ever wonder why you don’t hear big box stores on WION?  Its because they either refuse “un-rated stations” (like us) or….they try to beat us down to get rates LOWER than our local advertisers, and for that I will not stand.

Take Menards, for instance.  They sent us an invite to participate in the possibility of having them on the air like they were the “Gods” of advertising.   Once we responded to their invite with our rates, they “countered” asking us to cut our rates in HALF of what they normally are for THEM….then, they want a 15 percent discount on the HALF OFF for the fact they have an internal agency….THEN they want a ONE FOR ONE (Buy one, get one) commercial schedule.  At the end of the conversation, their rate would have been lower than our loyal, local sponsors….some of which have been with me for nearly 20 years!  Now, if we ever get to the point where I can walk into Menards, buy six lightbulbs and walk out with twelve, maybe we’ll talk…but until then, NO.  I don’t owe that corporation anything, yet they think WION does.  I applaud the local employment, but aside from that, they TAKE more than they give from our town, having run all the other local hardware and lumber yards OUT that were here when I bought WION.  There is one exception, that being GilRoy’s in downtown Ionia, where the employees of that hardware bought advertising recently from their own pockets….since corporate would not.  And…it worked!

So, you see….as a town, we’ve been growing “corporately” but not growing LOCALLY.  It’s a problem.  it hurts our Main Street, it hurts our local businesses in general, and it hurts RADIO.

As the music industry has just recently been given permission to retro-actively charge us for three years of music we have already played and paid-for  and other costs go up, the challenge of keeping local radio operating gets tougher and tougher.  When was the last time YOUR home or business got charged for three years’ back “anything” that you already bought and paid-for? Radio IS being charged just that!  It’s closest parallel would be if YOU got charged by a restaurant for “extra costs” now on meals you ate over the last 3 years, meals you already paid for.  Local stations like WION can’t just fire people to make up the cost difference like the bigger station conglomerates-will.  We already run lean and yet provide 24 hour service, texting to our station, streaming worldwide, live people during storms and power outages, this website, the promotion of LOCAL businesses and so much more.

Like you, I am forced at times to go to “corporate” based South Ionia.  Yes, it employs locals. Yes, at times it has things we need. Nobody can deny our town has morphed into one that relies on many of the corporate entities we see everyday on M-66.  But….

We also have around FIFTEEN empty business storefronts in downtown Ionia.  That’s way too many.  It’s a circle.  It’s a cycle. A vibrant downtown keeps people coming back.  Supporting and cheering for new corporate business south of town does NOTHING to help the empty storefront issue, and empty storefronts give visitors the impression that our town has little to offer except colored bricks and a “beautiful LOOK.”

I don’t have the answer, but I implore you to at LEAST go to WION advertisers,  let them know you appreciate their hard work and being in business…..and….that they advertise on WION.