I’ve seen that film. Amazing what changes and what doesn’t in 65-ish years.
We drove through Lyon on our way to Nice in 2022. I’m sure we’ll actually spend some time there soon.
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2024 Format Change Predictions
- Thread starter HenryOchs
- Start date
We drove through Lyon on our way to Nice in 2022. I’m sure we’ll actually spend some time there soon.
SF is very nice. I’m lucky to live close to New Orleans. NOLA is a poor man’s San Francisco 🤣
That's because 1510 AM had a sharp null to the south, in order to protect 1500 AM in San Jose.
I've had to go to Paris a number of times for work projects, but, other than a few amazing sights and museums, it is less fun to deal with it's people than New Yorkers. It does help to speak any language other than English, I found. My French is mediocre, but I found that, instead of encouragement, I got disdain so I opted to pretend only to speak Spanish.
Southern France is delightful, as is the Cotes du Rhone region (which has some of my favorite wines like Moulin a Vent varietal that I just love). On one trip, I visited an assortment of the locations the impressionists I like best favored, and that was kind of fun.
https://www.wine-searcher.com/regions-cotes+du+rhone
My experience was different. I found the people in Paris, the Loire, the Dordogne, the Riviera, Normandy and Brittany to be uniformly lovely to deal with. I’d wager my French is worse than yours, David, but I found that, in Paris, likely because people speak English there every day, it’s easier to find someone who understands than it is in smaller, more rural areas.
I’d heard the same. My experience from a total of two weeks in Paris over the last year and a half is that they respond to warmth when it’s expressed to them. Unlike our culture, they don’t make a show out of “friendliness” to strangers.
All too often here, that’s only artifice anyway, so no loss.
My experiences in Paris have varied, but a general observation is that younger people have less of that stereotypically haughty attitude. Part of it may be that the French educational system starts instruction in English at a fairly early age - these days, in the French equivalent of the second grade. By the time they grow up, they're very good at it. My French at this point is fairly decent, but I make mistakes. Even so, in recent years, I've had no difficulties in Paris. People outside the métropole do tend to be more open. In Alsace, the regional FM station, "Top Music", has even run ads that start out, "Are you tired of hearing a Paris accent?"
There is a simple protocol when dealing with people (I call it the French equivalent of the TCP/IP three-way handshake):
"Bonjour!"
"Bonjour monsieur, ça va?"
"Ça va bien. Et vous?"
"Ça va."
And then you can get down to business. There is even a French expression, "dire bonjour", which refers to the quasi-ritualistic nature of this type of exchange. Pretty simple.
In Spain, my main challenge has been keeping up with cab drivers. They'll talk your ear off. Then they ask, "why is your Spanish so good?" (since I look more German than anything else). I explain that I'm from New Mexico originally (not entirely the case, but I try to avoid complications). And they know of it! Then there was the Barcelona cab driver who, finding out we were from San Francisco, started telling us about the time he had been in Golden Gate Park during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake!
New Yorkers and Parisians have in common a disdain for the artifice Mike alludes to. I spent 32 years in the New York tri-state area, and have been out here for the other forty. There's been quite a bit of business travel in there and no small amount of personal, vacation and family-related trips.
Californians say "Have a nice day!", southerners express the same sentiment "Well bless your heart." New Yorkers just say "F**k you." They all mean the same thing, only there's no ambiguity about what the latter means. Most of the time it's intended in jest, for effect, but when the speaker is serious there should be no mistaking it (assuming you're not dense). And most of the time you won't hear it said at all. But in a city of (by now) nine million-or-so residents, and another 8 or 9 million in the surrounding counties, there's no time to humor dense people and/or bad behavior. There's also an appreciation for getting to the point and saying what you mean.
Parisians probably have a similar thing going on, but it's tougher to recognize when you don't speak the language. Many Americans don't speak any language, barely even their own.
I visited NYC in 2019, and I was quite surprised to find that the people I met were actually quite decent. Not rude at all. Granted, I did spend much of my time in and near Times Square, which is perhaps one of the world's largest tourist traps, and it was undoubtedly obvious that I was a tourist, but I did venture to Central Park, Downtown, and Chelsea, and all the while, everyone was nice and not rude. Even the police were nicer!
So, that led me to one of two possible conclusions: New Yorkers aren't as rude as I've been told, or people of the SFBA have become ruder still!
There have been studies that suggest people have gotten ruder in general since 2020, so there's perhaps some corroboration....
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So, that led me to one of two possible conclusions: New Yorkers aren't as rude as I've been told, or people of the SFBA have become ruder still!
There have been studies that suggest people have gotten ruder in general since 2020, so there's perhaps some corroboration....
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This.
Very often, Americans' response to "Bonjour!" is "do you speak English?", "Hi", or worse, jumping straight to whatever business we want to conduct ("Croissant").
We're the rude ones in that scenario.
If we can learn this for a trip to Tijuana or Cabo:
"iHola! ¿Como esta usted? "
"Muy bien, gracias. ¿Y su?"
....we can learn the French equivalent.
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Which brings up another great point----walk down a street in Paris, or anywhere in France, and you know what's usually missing?
Someone acting the fool.
Yes, there are pickpockets and con artists (welcome to the world), but it's refreshingly free of the "how soon is it before this idiot gets someone mad enough to punch him or does something really erratic?" that seems to be a regular occurrence on our streets.
On the rare occasions I've seen bad behavior in public over there, the perp wasn't French, and all too often was American.
It would be nice to see the return of some sort of oldies on 610 (or 910), but it likely will never happen because regardless of demographics, nobody around the SFBA seems to want it, especially on AM. Perhaps oldies as a format would be viable on a non-com station, but all of the LPFMs here seem to want to be NPR soundalikes.
My guess is that if anything does flip, it will be to Punjabi music or some such (because, like religious stations, there can never be enough of them!).
As for 810, it would be nice to have some sort of news-talk format that's fresher and more up to date so KCBS can have some competition. But again, no one seems interested.
I get it that current economic conditions make it hard to be creative or experimental, because funds are limited and experimentation can be risky, but rather than resigning to the inevitable demise of terrestrial radio, why not try something?
It seems they haven't got much to lose at this point....
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But the demographics ARE the reason. We know the format attracts over 65s because that's what happens in markets where it exists.
What about KQED?
Don't expect any innovation on AM. That time has passed.
KQED isn't so great on breaking news, which is where KCBS shines.
Cumulus tried doing news on 810. It lasted a few years and lost tons of money.
After that experience, no one else is going to give it a shot. Especially on AM.
Right. I guess a viable 65+ demo doesn't really exist here.
Plus, the few time I listened, I find that they seem a but pretentious and "stuffy." KCBS doesn't have this problem.
That was totally self inflicted. They totally wasted that opportunity by not focusing more on social media, apps, etc.
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Not in commercial radio. Non-commercial is different, thus KQED and now the new KEXC.
The point is it was tried, and the radio audience wasn't there. If the audience isn't there, it goes away.
The same thing happened to the news format in Houston, and now it's happening in Phoenix and Seattle.
And where it's been tried, it's either been against an established, formidable competitor or on a rimshot signal. Doomed to fail. It doesn't mean that the format itself is deficient or defective.
In the case of KGO, it wasn't all-news: weekends were still talk shows and I believe overnights were syndicated talk.
KROI was on a rimshot signal. The people were good (I had worked with many of them at KTRH) but the signal wasn't there and the commitment wasn't there from ownership. They were also up against KTRH and the image it had built from its years as all-news, despite iHeart's best efforts to pivot away from credible news coverage in Houston. (And KTRH had managed to build that image despite a substantial amount of internal tension and instability.)
Part of the problem is also that business time horizons are ever-shorter. Yet it takes years to build an all-news audience.
Part of the problem is that too many people in radio management have been trained to hate news and to disrepect news people. They have a bias against news and, if pushed into doing it, they do it badly. They refuse to figure out how to sell it. This has gone on for decades. It's a strong current that is nearly impossible to swim against.
NPR is no substitute. It does breaking news only on the national level, and usually only when it involves Washington or New York. Local member stations either don't have the resources to do breaking news, don't want to, or spend their resources on feature-length reports that can be hit or miss.
If I were still in the Bay Area, and felt an earthquake in the middle of the night (which has happened quite a few times) I wouldn't be tuning first to KQED. Not at all. KQED would be in NPR reruns typically. It would be KCBS.
I suppose I'll get a bunch of patronizing lectures after posting this one, but so be it. If y'all think you're in a dying business, then why are you still in it?
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