You're a Listener and you don't get it... 

When the FCC lifted restrictions on the number of stations that any given company could own in a market, a feeding frenzy ensued with large radio companies getting bought by bigger companies, who sold to even bigger companies until there were only a few really, really huge radio behemoths left. Instead of one FM and one AM per market, conglomerates own six, seven or more stations in some cities. To make it cost effective, the six or seven promotion directors, production guys, jocks and people wearing the chicken mascot costume get fired, save for one or two of each (the cheap, young and inexperienced ones) and have them spread out over several stations. One jock can be live on station "A" and record his voice (see: this cartoon) on stations "B" through "J". Bottom line baby, the station makes more money, and as we all know, when the station makes money, we ALL make money (see: this cartoon).

So much for the history lesson. Now these displaced talents are seeking work, usually in other fields, some in real estate or finance, some sampling domestic wines from a paper bag. What happens is the talent pool has thinned enough that if someone needed experienced radio people, they will have moved on to greener pastures.

Radio is now built on the Apollo 13 model, i.e, thousands of moving parts, each built by the lowest bidder.

One other clarification- Digital editing is done on a variety of hardware/software devices. Some are sophisticated (Pro Tools, Audicy) and others are shareware programs that had no business in radio to begin with (Cool Edit, SAW in particular). Guess which stations usually buy.

KRUD Listener Tip:   Complaining really does work. Tired of hearing commercials for fraudulent products on the air. Bitch about it. Yeah, it'll take some effort on your part but you just may have an impact. Radio is not totally in the dumper yet. It wouldn't hurt to write your congressman either..... Ok, nothing you do will probably have a great impact but you can always be a pain in the ass to radio management.