I live in a region served by Frontier. The lack of infrastructure maintenance is obvious even to the untrained eye. Rather than transfer trunk lines from broken phone poles when new poles are installed the area of the old poles holding cables and fiber are chainsawed into stubs that are lashed to the new poles for years. Some roadside cables hang low into brush for miles. Remote DSLAMS that once had battery backup for power outages have never had their batteries replaced, local power outages cause DSL and voice outages. Business and residential trouble tickets take weeks or months for truck rolls. Once the tech responds it might take 2 or 3 additional trouble tickets to get the problem corrected. Outside of town Frontier may offer 1.5mbps DSL speeds which compete against Spectrum's lower priced 200mbps offering. Sad to see it come to this. This is an industry wide problem.
Local newspaper craves readership.
Editor goes on a mission to make sensational news the main topic, turning the paper into a tabloid like the National Enquirer instead of concentrating on local news.
A few years later Editor leaves paper, paper reduces blood guts and ax murder coverage bringing back a little local news but cuts local staff, sub contracts out delivery, reduces physical size of the paper, makes every page more ads than content, raises prices.
Paper changes hands a few times, mostly large national media holding companies. Paper has very little local content, most articles are stale, days old Associated Press articles and a few freelancers. Still more ads than content.
Today.
Sub contracted out paper delivery crashes and burns in spectacular ways. Home subscribers report not receiving paper many days a weeks, a few have no delivery for multiple weeks at a time. Weekday paper most time no more then 30 or 40 pages. Impossible to contact customer service except via e-mail with long response delays. Annual paper subscription soars to over $400 per year. Paper artificially raises rates by including outsourced "special sections" that aren't much more than advertising inserts in some Sunday editions that they charge extra for.. Residents giver up and look elsewhere for local news.
Local Radio
Local radio station with long history and following gets bought out by holding company. Everyone fired. Turns into lights out satellite fed service. First Disney Kids for a year, then Spanish only, then oldies. Then comes back for a short time with popular local morning DJ. Then drops DJ for more central studio canned crap. Nothing local available from station. Definitely not serving the community. Not sure how they bring in enough money to pay to keep the transmitter on the air. ~The End !
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How to kill a news paper
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