How sad is this?

St. Louis was once a vibrant, thriving, ever-changing kaleidescope of a radio market, overflowing with great air talent and creative promotions and production that rivaled anything on either coast. For examples, check any of Frank Absher's great STLMedia history websites.

Personalities changed and stations stunted and the market buzz lasted for weeks and months, promotions made headlines and got plentiful TV coverage awarding amazing prizes and when stations changed formats it was primo water cooler talk.

That was then.

Now, not so much.

Proof in the pudding:  the biggest radio news locally over the past few months has been this:
 -- long-retired former KMOX-er Anne Keefe is leaving town to move in with her family in Rochester, NY;
 -- a sports station PD whose name no one outside the industry knows is leaving to go to some market out West;
 -- a talented talk-show host/TV reporter takes a new gig in Florida;
 -- Mizzou sports, treated for years like a volleyball by radio programmers and sales managers, returns to a second-tier AM station for another round of bad treatment;
 --  a formerly successful but now invisible STL DJ is being sought by the state of Missouri to pay up a delinquent $73+k tax bill;
 -- an FM owned by a huge and impersonal company will shift formats to some other kind of Oldies over Memorial Day Weekend.

Yes, sad.

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