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Full-service radio

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Full service (also known as hometown radio) is a type of radio format; the format is characterized by a mix of music programming (usually drawing from formats such as adult contemporary, country, or oldies) and a large amount of locally-produced and hyperlocal programming, such as news and discussion focusing on local issues, sports coverage, and other forms of paid religious and brokered content.

It is found mainly on small-market AM radio stations in the United States and Canada, particularly on locally-owned stations in rural areas, although it was once the norm even in larger cities prior to about the 1970s and could be found in some large markets as late as the 1980s. The format differs from community radio in that full-service radio is almost always a commercial enterprise and is not as often ideologically-driven (especially liberal) as some of the more prominent community radio operators are. Nonprofit community radio stations often run formats comparable to those on commercial full-service radio, albeit usually with less mainstream music.

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Radio format

Radio format

A radio format or programming format describes the overall content broadcast on a radio station. The radio format emerged mainly in the United States in the 1950s, at a time when radio was compelled to develop new and exclusive ways to programming by competition with television. The formula has since spread as a reference for commercial radio programming worldwide.

Adult contemporary music

Adult contemporary music

Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet storm and rock influence. Adult contemporary is generally a continuation of the easy listening and soft rock style that became popular in the 1960s and 1970s with some adjustments that reflect the evolution of pop/rock music.

Country music

Country music

Country is a music genre originating in the Southern and Southwestern United States. First produced in the 1920s, country primarily focuses on working class Americans and blue-collar American life.

Oldies

Oldies

Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as well as for a radio format playing this music.

Hyperlocal

Hyperlocal

Hyperlocal is information oriented around a well-defined community with its primary focus directed toward the concerns of the population in that community. The term can be used as a noun in isolation or as a modifier of some other term. When used in isolation it refers to the emergent ecology of data, aggregators, publication mechanism and user interactions and behaviors which centre on a resident of a location and the business of being a resident. More recently, the term hyperlocal has become synonymous with the combined use of applications on mobile devices and GPS technology. Use of the term originated in 1991, in reference to local television news content.

AM broadcasting

AM broadcasting

AM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using amplitude modulation (AM) transmissions. It was the first method developed for making audio radio transmissions, and is still used worldwide, primarily for medium wave transmissions, but also on the longwave and shortwave radio bands.

Community radio

Community radio

Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popular and relevant to a local, specific audience but is often overlooked by commercial (or) mass-media broadcasters. Community radio stations are operated, owned, and influenced by the communities they serve. They are generally nonprofit and provide a mechanism for enabling individuals, groups, and communities to tell their own stories, to share experiences and, in a media-rich world, to become creators and contributors of media.

Liberalism in the United States

Liberalism in the United States

Liberalism in the United States is a political and moral philosophy based on concepts of unalienable rights of the individual. The fundamental liberal ideals of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, the separation of church and state, the right to due process and equality under the law are widely accepted as a common foundation of liberalism. It differs from liberalism worldwide because the United States has never had a resident hereditary aristocracy and avoided much of the class warfare that characterized Europe. According to Ian Adams: "Ideologically, all US parties are liberal and always have been. Essentially they espouse classical liberalism, that is a form of democratised Whig constitutionalism plus the free market. The point of difference comes with the influence of social liberalism" and the proper role of government.

Programming

Programming generally heard on full service stations can include:

  • Local and national (or top-of-the-hour) news, sometimes including agriculture reports.
  • At least one local talk show (often under a generic name such as Viewpoint, Dialogue, or Hotline), occasionally along with syndicated talk programming. These are usually politically neutral and offer local organizations and businesses time to talk about upcoming events in an unscripted format. Other programs may have an "open line" format reflecting a conservative orientation, often reflecting a community's political predilections (and thus not following the orthodoxy of national conservative talk radio), rather than those of national broadcasters such as the traditional radio networks; likewise, if such stations are in more left-leaning communities, the shows may carry a progressive lean.
  • Music, frequently drawing from a number of popular formats. Common ones include middle-of-the-road, adult contemporary, country, and oldies/classic hits. These usually appeal to listeners outside of the "key demographic;" that is, people over 50 years of age. Other listeners usually prefer narrower formats, where a particular music is played, or news and talk are broadcast, by a station 24 hours per day, seven days per week.
  • Automated programming in overnight time slots, or, depending on Federal Communications Commission designations, even a sign-off (many daytime-only stations run full-service formats).
  • Tradio, a free advertising service for individual listeners (not businesses) to offer items for sale. This may be known under various names, such as "Swap Shop" or "Trading Post."
  • High school football, basketball and other local sports. Frequently, there will be an NCAA Division I university broadcasting football and basketball games (or, in the Northern United States, ice hockey), and often a smaller college in the market – especially if the college does not have its own station – will also have its games carried on the station; a full-service station may also affiliate with a major professional sports league team's radio network (this is especially true of the NFL, which plays most of its games during the daytime on Sundays, when all AM stations are able to operate).
  • Locally-based contests or prize giveaways, such as the "cash call", where a dollar amount is read by the announcer and a caller who has submitted an entry to the contest is called to tell the host what the amount is to win a check in that amount, usually a sum between $20-$75; if guessed wrong, the amount is increased and the jackpot rolls over. (This is similar to a typical interstitial feature during movies shown on local television, Dialing For Dollars, which was common from the 1950s through the 1970s.)
  • Sunday morning church services, often from several local congregations. Sometimes, a station will also have a daily sermonette at some point during the day, from possibly a rotating pool of clergy giving a brief but inspirational message, Bible reading, or "thought for the day." Unlike most specialty religious-formatted stations, "preach and teach" programs from national ministries may or may not be featured, depending on local custom. Conversely, major-market stations that are corporately owned are apt to carry local church services less frequently or not at all, preferring instead to carry automated, syndicated or brokered programming, or use syndicated features, such as the daily commentary of Focus on the Family, in place of local-based religious broadcasts.
  • Limited brokered programming, usually during off-peak hours.
  • Significant local advertising. Similar to community newspapers, small full-service stations have an advantage of being an attractive advertising option for smaller businesses that only need to reach a small footprint and thus would not advertise on larger corporate-run stations, due to their higher ratings and, in turn, higher rates. Thus full-service stations tend to work best in small towns that have large numbers of small businesses that can advertise on the station due to its affordability.

Depending on the ethnic composition of the station's coverage area and/or ownership and management, at least a portion of a full-service station's weekend programming is often set aside for ethnic or specialty music programming such as polka, Italian music, native American music, Celtic music or other widely varying ethnic programming, almost always by a local host. Many stations also set aside a block of programming for golden oldies, or music from the 1920s through early 1960s, with genres ranging from early rock and roll and pre-1965 country music to pop standards, swing, jazz, big band and – sometimes – existing recordings predating the 1920s. Again, this music overwhelmingly appeals to older listeners who remember the genres from their youth and have no interest in following current-day trends in popular music typically favored by their children and grandchildren.

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Conservatism in the United States

Conservatism in the United States

Conservatism in the United States is a political and social philosophy based on a belief in limited government, individualism, traditionalism, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to U.S. states. Conservative and Christian media organizations, along with American conservative figures, are influential, and American conservatism is one of the majority political ideologies within the Republican Party.

Conservative talk radio

Conservative talk radio

Conservative talk radio is a talk radio format in the United States and other countries devoted to expressing conservative viewpoints of issues, as opposed to progressive talk radio. The definition of conservative talk is generally broad enough that libertarian talk show hosts are also included in the definition. The format has become the dominant form of talk radio in the United States since the 1987 abolition of the fairness doctrine.

Middle of the road (music)

Middle of the road (music)

Middle of the road is a commercial radio format and popular music genre. Music associated with this term is strongly melodic and uses techniques of vocal harmony and light orchestral arrangements. The format was eventually rebranded as soft adult contemporary.

Adult contemporary music

Adult contemporary music

Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, R&B, quiet storm and rock influence. Adult contemporary is generally a continuation of the easy listening and soft rock style that became popular in the 1960s and 1970s with some adjustments that reflect the evolution of pop/rock music.

Country music

Country music

Country is a music genre originating in the Southern and Southwestern United States. First produced in the 1920s, country primarily focuses on working class Americans and blue-collar American life.

Classic hits

Classic hits

Classic hits is a radio format which generally includes songs from the top 40 music charts from the late 1960s to the early 2000s, with music from the 1980s serving as the core of the format. Music that was popularized by MTV in the early 1980s and the nostalgia behind it is a major driver to the format. It is considered the successor to the oldies format, a collection of top 40 songs from the late 1950s through the late 1970s that was once extremely popular in the United States and Canada. The term is sometimes incorrectly used as a synonym for the adult hits format, which uses a slightly newer music library stretching from all decades to the present with a major focus on 1990s and 2000s pop, rock and alternative songs. In addition, adult hits stations tend to have larger playlists, playing a given song only a few times per week, compared to the tighter libraries on classic hits stations. For example, KRTH, a classic hits station in Los Angeles, and KLUV, a classic hits station in Dallas, both play power songs up to 30 times a week or more, which is another differentiator compared to other formats that share songs with classic hits libraries.

Key demographic

Key demographic

The key demographic or target demographic is a term in commercial broadcasting that refers to the most desirable demographic group to a given advertiser. Key demographics vary by outlet, time of day, and programming type, but they are generally composed of individuals who are younger and more affluent than the general public: "Young adult viewers have been TV's target demographic for decades, because they're thought to have less brand loyalty and more disposable income." In the case of television, most key demographic groups consist of adults who are somewhere in age between 18 and 54. For example, the key demographic for reality television is women with disposable income aged 18 to 34 whereas for the WB Television Network it was "eighteen- to thirty-four-year-old viewers." Television programming is tailored to members of its key demographics: "Despite the increase in time-shifting to watch recorded television and shows on the Internet, the use of television as an advertising vehicle is still determined by demographic characteristics or who is watching at what time." The subset of ratings that only includes the key demographic of 18- to 49-year-olds is often referred to as the "key demo". Certain radio formats and television outlets may target persons 35 to 64, who generally have more disposable income than millennials, in part due to the late 2000s recession, which impeded career opportunities for younger generations.

Federal Communications Commission

Federal Communications Commission

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains jurisdiction over the areas of broadband access, fair competition, radio frequency use, media responsibility, public safety, and homeland security.

High school football

High school football

High school football is gridiron football played by high school teams in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both countries, but its popularity is declining, partly due to risk of injury, particularly concussions. According to The Washington Post, between 2009 and 2019, participation in high school football declined by 9.1%. It is the basic level or step of tackle football.

Ice hockey

Ice hockey

Ice hockey is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hockey sticks to control, advance, and shoot a closed, vulcanized, rubber disc called a "puck" into the other team's goal. Each goal is worth one point. The team which scores the most goals is declared the winner. In a formal game, each team has six skaters on the ice at a time, barring any penalties, one of whom is the goaltender. Ice hockey is a full contact sport, and is considered to be one of the more physically demanding sports.

Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada

Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada

The major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada commonly refer to the highest men's professional competitions of team sports in those countries. The four leagues traditionally included in the definition are Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), and the National Hockey League (NHL). Other prominent leagues include Major League Soccer (MLS) and the Canadian Football League (CFL).

National Football League

National Football League

The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and the highest professional level of American football in the world. Each NFL season begins with a three-week preseason in August, followed by the 18-week regular season which runs from early September to early January, with each team playing 17 games and having one bye week. Following the conclusion of the regular season, seven teams from each conference advance to the playoffs, a single-elimination tournament that culminates in the Super Bowl, which is contested in February and is played between the AFC and NFC conference champions. The league is headquartered in New York City.

Background

Full-service radio was the predominant form of radio broadcasting during the network radio era, before the debut of contemporary hit radio (top 40) in the 1950s. Top 40 and other narrowly-defined formats were adopted in large measure to replace network programming that was fast disappearing in favor of those networks' television operations, which were gaining high popularity at the time. In the old-time radio era, most stations would mix local programs (of a wide variety) with the networks' offerings. The name of the format implies that the station serves a broad spectrum of listeners and demographics with small portions of various types of programming.

Since the full-service format is traditionally confined to AM and rural listeners, oldies/classic hits, adult standards and classic country tend to form the basis of most music rotations on these stations. Full-service stations tend to have somewhat more of a freeform playlist, allowing disc jockeys to play favorite tunes, and as such, album cuts, B-sides, "forgotten 45s," local bands and lesser-known performers and songs can see more air time on a full-service station than on most other commercial formats. The freeform playlist also enables jockeys to fit in caller requests more frequently, whereas larger stations owned by corporations may only take requests at designated times if at all (and then have restrictions on top of that, such as only current hits plus recurrents within a certain time frame). Also, large-market stations almost always play music determined by a consulting service, and their announcers usually have little to no say over their playlists.

Full service is not one of the formats defined by Nielsen; in most cases, full-service stations are usually listed under the blanket category of "variety." Smaller full-service stations rarely show up in the Nielsen Ratings in part due to their general refusal to pay for the company's services; lack of participation in Nielsen also allows such stations to set their own advertising rates in response to what the market supports, rather than having Nielsen prescribe a suggested level.

In the United Kingdom, the term "full service" is sometimes used to refer to the Independent Local Radio stations of the 1970s and 1980s, which were contractually obliged to feature a broad range of output (specialist music, speech, sports commentary, minority programs) as opposed to the tightly targeted all-pop music stations of the 1990s and 21st Century.

In New Zealand, the format was known as community radio and was widespread amongst the smaller centers until the late 1990s, when these stations were replaced with network programming.

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Radio network

Radio network

There are two types of radio network currently in use around the world: the one-to-many broadcast network commonly used for public information and mass-media entertainment, and the two-way radio type used more commonly for public safety and public services such as police, fire, taxicabs, and delivery services. Cell phones are able to send and receive simultaneously by using two different frequencies at the same time. Many of the same components and much of the same basic technology applies to all three.

Contemporary hit radio

Contemporary hit radio

Contemporary hit radio is a radio format that is common in many countries that focuses on playing current and recurrent popular music as determined by the Top 40 music charts. There are several subcategories, dominantly focusing on rock, pop, or urban music. Used alone, CHR most often refers to the CHR-pop format. The term contemporary hit radio was coined in the early 1980s by Radio & Records magazine to designate Top 40 stations which continued to play hits from all musical genres as pop music splintered into Adult contemporary, Urban contemporary, Contemporary Christian and other formats.

Oldies

Oldies

Oldies is a term for musical genres such as pop music, rock and roll, doo-wop, surf music from the second half of the 20th century, specifically from around the mid-1950s to the 1980s, as well as for a radio format playing this music.

Classic hits

Classic hits

Classic hits is a radio format which generally includes songs from the top 40 music charts from the late 1960s to the early 2000s, with music from the 1980s serving as the core of the format. Music that was popularized by MTV in the early 1980s and the nostalgia behind it is a major driver to the format. It is considered the successor to the oldies format, a collection of top 40 songs from the late 1950s through the late 1970s that was once extremely popular in the United States and Canada. The term is sometimes incorrectly used as a synonym for the adult hits format, which uses a slightly newer music library stretching from all decades to the present with a major focus on 1990s and 2000s pop, rock and alternative songs. In addition, adult hits stations tend to have larger playlists, playing a given song only a few times per week, compared to the tighter libraries on classic hits stations. For example, KRTH, a classic hits station in Los Angeles, and KLUV, a classic hits station in Dallas, both play power songs up to 30 times a week or more, which is another differentiator compared to other formats that share songs with classic hits libraries.

Adult standards

Adult standards

Adult standards is a North American radio format heard primarily on AM or class A FM stations.

Classic country

Classic country

Classic country is a music radio format that specializes in playing mainstream country and western music hits from past decades.

Nielsen Audio

Nielsen Audio

Nielsen Audio is a consumer research company in the United States that collects listener data on radio broadcasting audiences. It was founded as the American Research Bureau by Jim Seiler in 1949 and became national by merging with Los Angeles-based Coffin, Cooper, and Clay in the early 1950s. The company's initial business was the collection of broadcast television ratings.

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands within the British Isles. Northern Ireland shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland; otherwise, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea. The total area of the United Kingdom is 242,495 square kilometres (93,628 sq mi), with an estimated 2023 population of over 68 million people.

Independent Local Radio

Independent Local Radio

Independent Local Radio is the collective name given to commercial radio stations in the United Kingdom. As a result of the buyouts and mergers permitted by the Broadcasting Act 1990, and deregulation resulting from the Communications Act 2003, most commercial stations are now neither independent nor local. The same name is used for Independent Local Radio in Ireland.

Pop music

Pop music

Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. The terms popular music and pop music are often used interchangeably, although the former describes all music that is popular and includes many disparate styles. During the 1950s and 1960s, pop music encompassed rock and roll and the youth-oriented styles it influenced. Rock and pop music remained roughly synonymous until the late 1960s, after which pop became associated with music that was more commercial, ephemeral, and accessible.

New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island and the South Island —and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island country by area, covering 268,021 square kilometres (103,500 sq mi). New Zealand is about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the islands of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. The country's varied topography and sharp mountain peaks, including the Southern Alps, owe much to tectonic uplift and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.

Community Radio Network (New Zealand)

Community Radio Network (New Zealand)

The Community Radio Network (CRN) was a network of radio stations based in provincial centres across New Zealand. The network was operated by The Radio Network (TRN).

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