My media experience is probably typical, if there is such a thing as a
typical media experience. And I am familiar with both small and large
media markets.

I reported radio news at WINR-AM Binghamton, a small market,
during what was called the "morning drive" in a community with too
few cars to form a rush hour. The station's slogan--"you never know
what will happen next"--vastly exaggerated a programming format
that religiously played the same three songs 24 hours a day, but de-
scribed life at the studio in ways the general manager probably
wouldn't like to admit. When the FCC decided radio stations can't
leave their transmitters unattended, this station closed its in-town stu-
dio and moved everyone to the transmitter shack on an isolated,
wind-swept, hilltop location beyond the psychiatric center. I found
the studio by driving my car up the dirt road and until the hair on my
neck stood up.

Although WINR had a devoted listenership, it was hardly the most
popular station in town. That would have been WMRV, a top-forty,
FM favorite whose notoriety was probably due to its willingness to
play thirty-seven more charted hits than WINR. The entire station
was little more than a wall-size tape machine located in a closet,
where four reel-to-reel tapes would randomly alternate playing
3-minute cuts identified by an ever-happy, disembodied voice playing
on a cartridge. "That was--Barry Manilow!" the voice would rave.
"Now, here's. . . Barry Manilow!" Once the sign-off cartridge was acci-
dentally activated in the middle of the afternoon, and the station

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