Discussion - when does an update qualify as minutia?

[CAwasinNJ]

This is a topic that I've been wrestling with for a long time and I want to have an open discussion about it. There have been quite a few times when there are a flurry of posts talking about a station's off-air or dead carrier status. Don't get me wrong. Those posts are on topic and not against any rules. It's just that to me a minute by minute account of the carrier status of a station is a waste of time. (Some of the posts in the KDYL thread over the past couple of months are a good example.)

So my questions are these. Do you think my opinion is correct? How much is too much? At what point should we post about it? There are quite a few more of these anomalies that I see, but I don't consider them worth mentioning. Is that wrong?

[David]

Here's my take on the subject: If there's a technical issue with a station like an open carrier or hum in the audio, then I think it should be mentioned under certain circumstances. It doesn't need to be discussed on a day by day or hour by hour basis, but I think reporting technical problems is of greater importance with a station like KDYL; which has been off the air for an extended period of time, and seems to be prone to an above average number of technical difficulties. Most radio station owners can't monitor their over the air signal(s) 24/7, and I know there are several people in the broadcasting industry locally who read the posts on this board. Sometimes posting about a station's technical issues results in important information, and provides feedback for the owner/operator. For example, when it was mentioned in early April that KDYL had gone off the air again, we found out from Mr. Kifuri that the power supplies for the station's transmitters had been damaged by lightning. IIRC, when 104.7 KNIV was broadcasting dead air for several months because a sale wasn't consummated, there was a lot of space devoted to a discussion of what constitutes a silent radio station. Discussions like those aren't what I'd classify as minutiae.

On the other hand, I think it's a waste of space for someone to make multiple posts about a certain radio commercial being edited; or allow someone to post questionable information about a station's status or future plans, or imply that long time members of this board are hearing things that allegedly don't exist. That's the type of stuff I consider to be useless minutiae, and on the same level as spam or trolling.