I don't mean the cracker company, either, the one known as Nabisco, for National Biscuit Company. Or was that Baking?
No, I'm thinking of what was once the broadcasting monolith, first in radio and then in television, the one that projected a peacock logo at the onset of color programming.
The financial struggles for traditional mass media in the digital age are well-known, but broadcasting has been hit perhaps even more drastically than newspapers.
As a child of the '50s and '60s, I'm still shocked at the disappearance of AM radio, especially its powerhouse clear-channel signals. My daughters, savvy as they are in tech matters, don't even know what AM is. These were coveted media, and getting a license for even a daytime frequency in a metropolitan market could be a coup. Think of WKRP in Cincinnati for the insider view. Instead, though, owners have allowed many of these to go silent. As for FM? The real competition is from streaming and satellite.
We gave up our TV years ago after realizing that whatever we wanted to watch was available online. Still, I was stunned the other day to discover that NBC no longer has an on-the-air outlet in Boston. That was unthinkable. Nobody would give up a network affiliation and go independent. Yet, as I learned, it isn't anymore.
The trigger came the other morning when I was gazing at my Yahoo news feed and clicked on the latest Patriots football gossip from NBC Sports Boston, one of the primary regional sources. Wait, I thought. Why isn't this identifying a station? Or at least a channel?
And that's when I went down the proverbial online rabbit hole and found out that the once mighty network exists solely on cable in the nation's tenth largest media market. Even the Tonight Show.
As for its entertainment lineup?
There are good reasons we're turning to the new seasons at Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, etc. Besides, we can watch those shows at our convenience, not the network's.
I must admit finding it hard to keep up with all of these changes. How about you?
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