1470AM: Anyone else noticing the irony?

Sunday is PSA day - usually in the morning when a large part of the listening audience is at church or doing family related activities. That is nearly a universal radio truth. You are correct in surmising that the PSAs you hear at other times are most likely the result of poor ad sales.

When I was in radio, I believe the rule was 30 minutes per week of public-service-oriented content. Of course, that was over 10 years ago; it might have changed.

Stations had a choice of how they put the 30-minutes together. They could run a 30-minute public affairs show, or they could air 30 individual minutes. They had to document it for their public file, though, so every station I ever worked at used the 30-minute show format, in order to have some "meat" to throw in the public file.

WIOT and WCWA used to run a show on Sunday mornings at like 5AM called "Question This." That was their Public affairs fulfillment show. I am not sure if it is still on the air or not. I think 93.5 and 94.5 run a similar show, with London Mitchell?

And yes, too many PSAs usually means too few ads sold. Occasionally, you'll hear a PSA used as filler, when a single spot wasn't sold. Sometimes you'll hear one thrown in to fill time during a moment of "technical difficulties," like during a sports event. But if you hear PSAs back-to-back-to-back during a standard commercial break...yeah, that's trouble.

The PSAs used to come on reel-to-reel tapes or CDs, and they would have multiple cuts for various uses. Different lengths, sometimes one in Spanish, and usually ones with different music beds and voice-overs meant for different formats, i.e. country, R&B, A/C, etc...

One of my jobs up in Michigan was to program PSAs as filler during talk shows on our "flanker" AM station; the up-north equivalent of 1230 and 1470. Management never listened to that little station, so I used to have fun programming the Spanish-language PSAs during the G. Gordon Liddy show...

Lets go back to the headline....who listens to am radio?
that still exists? lol

Speaking of how to use "gay..."
1908 called. It said to stop using "gay" to refer to homosexuals unless those homosexuals are really, really happy.

Are you asserting that it's not PC to even use the word gay to describe a homosexual? Because I bet GLAD disagrees. And I bet about 20 other homosexually based organizations that incorporate the word GAY in their name do too.

and I thought the PSA was a bit over the top with the language policing of the word gay when used in a derogatory manner. Now I can't even use the word Gay to describe a homosexual? Jeesh.

That PSA is gay.

Gay used to mean happy. Then homosexuals began using it as a term to describe themselves not in a happy state but in a sexual meaning. Now the term has been stolen by the under 30 generation to describe something as lame. The people who stole the word first are now offended.

I cannot think of an argument that is dumber.

Now the term has been stolen by the under 30 generation to describe something as lame.

I'm in my late 30s, my brother in law is over 40 and both of us...in our pre-enlightened youth...remember using the term to describe something (or someone) as lame. As with many things we did when we were 10 years old, it seems real stupid now.

I think your dividing line has to move up a little bit. It's been a co-opted for a while now...maybe the under-45 crowd?

Guys, don't twist what was said.
They want to "encourage people not to use the word 'gay' in a derogatory fashion"

You guys are the ones who said they don't want it used to describe themselves, not them. The LGBT community has no problem with the term being used to describe their sexual preference.