Are there any major stations that DON'T do voice-tracking and are 100% live?

[Alan Smithee]

Just curious about this, as I don't have much inside knowledge of the industry in recent years. I've expressed my feelings about this elsewhere but wonder if anyone in charge actually feels the same way and persists with live DJs.

I will say that one thing that this killed off was putting listeners on the air live, or even pre-taped when they called during music. Those were some of the more memorable moments I remember from decades past, usually giving opinions about current music or events. (Of course there were times when profanity got out as well.) The last time I heard a phone voice on a music station it was a few seconds of someone saying "This is my favorite" or something generic like that, and obviously wasn't a real person. I used to know most of the local stations' phone numbers (one was even my ATM passcode for a long time) but couldn't tell you any of them now.

 

[radiophiler]

Up until a couple of years ago, WMMR/Philadelphia was live and local 24/7. They eliminated live overnights and appear to be live and local 6:00 am to midnight Monday through Friday. I'm not sure how much is live over the weekend.
Some Newsradio stations in major markets have 24/7 presence. I believe KYW in Philadelphia records news segments for overnights, but there is a live traffic person on staff through the overnight.
I don't think there's another station in Philadelphia that's live and local 24/7.

 

[TheBigA]

I've expressed my feelings about this elsewhere but wonder if anyone in charge actually feels the same way and persists with live DJs.

Sure. Bob Pittman runs iHeart and has been in radio since the 1960s. He knows what radio with live DJs sounds like. He also knows it's not the 1960s anymore. We don't have as much local retail anymore. There's less local advertising to pay those local DJs. People don't carry pocket transistor radios anymore. As a result, there are a lot fewer people using traditional radio, especially after 7PM. So those are the real facts. In many cases, radio was live & local until 25 years ago, when people started using other devices to listen to music. Live DJs are better, but they cost money, and most markets don't have enough revenue to support that kind of staff anymore.

As far as listeners live on the radio, it really depends on the format. But I will tell you that very few music stations put listers live on the radio after 1995. That was the time a digital editing device came about that allowed DJs to edit calls to the core few seconds. It was so easy, even a DJ could do it. But even in the reel to reel days, a lot of DJs would record and edit callers. A lot of us have Radio VooDoo that automatically answers the phone, records the caller, and puts the file in an editor for us to edit to time. Even talk stations rarely put live callers on the air. Those that do put them on delay so they can edit out the crazy callers.

 

[TheBigA]

I will say that one thing that this killed off was putting listeners on the air live, or even pre-taped when they called during music.

Here's a fact that will surprise you: More than 50% of people prefer texting to talking on the phone. So what you end up with is a lot of the same people calling in requesting the same songs.

People have changed a lot in many ways that affect radio usage. As a result radio has had to adapt to the ways people use it.

 

[CTListener]

Here's a fact that will surprise you: More than 50% of people prefer texting to talking on the phone. So what you end up with is a lot of the same people calling in requesting the same songs.

Even before texting took off, the Saturday night request show on oldies WDRC-FM Hartford had that problem. Around the turn of the millennium, I'd tune in and hear several familiar voices and song every week. There was one woman who always requested "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me," another who couldn't let a weekend go by without "What's New, Pussycat." And, of course, someone ALWAYS wanted to hear "Unchained Melody."

Two of the stations I listen to up here in Vermont, country WXXK and classic rock WHDQ, have request hours Monday through Friday, texting only. I've tried the WHDQ text line twice and have gotten my song played both times. Of course, I checked their "last songs played" before choosing my selections and tried to steer clear of songs that are played daily. So I was a satisfied request-by-text customer even though I'd never spoken to a human being or even had my voice recorded for playback. I haven't called in any country requests yet, but the number of infrequently played older songs that pop up in that hour indicate to me that callers there are also being rewarded -- although I'm sure that those who call in for currents are only getting theirs played if they're already set to play in the following hour and can be easily switched out later. So, if WXXK plays "Choosin' Texas" at 4:30, the person who texts it in 10 minutes later, hoping to hear it again in the 5:00 hour, will be disappointed.

 

[TheBigA]

I'd tune in and hear several familiar voices and song every week.

There was one lady who always requested Love Can Build a Bridge by The Judds. She didn't vary the way she made her request. She did it the same way for the same song. The song itself wasn't a big hit, so we didn't play it very often, but we usually included her request. One day, we got a call from her husband, who told us his wife had died that past week, and asked us to play Love Can Build a Bridge in her memory. Pretty powerful stuff. Of course, we did.

 

[K.M. Richards]

... although I'm sure that those who call in for currents are only getting theirs played if they're already set to play in the following hour and can be easily switched out later. So, if WXXK plays "Choosin' Texas" at 4:30, the person who texts it in 10 minutes later, hoping to hear it again in the 5:00 hour, will be disappointed.

That parallels the old experience of people calling in a request for the song we just played. Happened all the time in top-40. We eventually figured out that our average listener would turn on the radio and call us right after they did, oblivious to the fact that their request aired right before they tuned in.

Of course, there was no explaining that to the listeners.

 

[TheBigA]

We eventually figured out that our average listener would turn on the radio and call us right after they did, oblivious to the fact that their request aired right before they tuned in.

The other thing we see by studying social media is that some callers are fans of artists, not listeners to radio. So they're calling to promote their favorite artist, not to hear the song on the radio. The artists themselves promote that kind of behavior, telling their fans to "call your radio station and request this song," in a way empowering the fans to affect the music charts. Of course, none of that happened before we had social media.

 

[K.M. Richards]

The artists themselves promote that kind of behavior, telling their fans to "call your radio station and request this song," in a way empowering the fans to affect the music charts.

In promoting that tactic, the artists presume that request calls have a greater weight than they do, which was never the case. We've known all along that the percentage of listeners who actually call -- or in modern times, text -- is small, and sometimes had their request tallied. But requests never a major factor for programmers, who would only rely on that data for marginal decisions about which rotation a current would be in.

So those artists are wasting everyone's time with that self-promotion. Would you like to tell them, A, or should I? (I'll start with Gene Simmons, LOL.)

In the cases that have been discussed here, I doubt any station that took requests via any media (other than for special all-request shows, as noted) ever used those requests as a determining factor for which gold titles to have in a station library. We have much better methodology and research for that now.

 

[Theater of My Mind]

With few exceptions, morning shows and talk radio formats are pretty much all that's left.

DJs existed in the first place because radio stations needed a human in the studio to play the records (and later, CDs), and they augmented that task with live breaks. Many of those breaks consisted of observational humor, jokes, quips, etc. that were completely nonessential and frankly not always very entertaining, but they gave the jock something to talk about.

Now we have voice trackers and A.I. replicating the same kind of filler content for no good reason. It's still nonessential and still not very entertaining, and that's made worse by the fact that the prerecorded jock or computer can't even respond to breaking news or developments in real time. But they're cheap and that's all that matters to these companies.

 

[TheBigA]

So those artists are wasting everyone's time with that self-promotion. Would you like to tell them, A, or should I?

The fact that they even mention radio is a positive to me.

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

1010 WINS has to be one of a few radio stations that does everything live and local.

106.9 FM KCBS/KFRC-FM and KNX Los Angeles share voice tracking for the overnight hours as mentioned recently. Otherwise it’s rare to hear any stations that are 100% live.

​

In other words it’s all about protecting their podcast and radio apps that’s the factor here to exist in today’s broadcasting operations.

 

[TheBigA]

DJs existed in the first place because radio stations needed a human in the studio to play the records

Keep in mind radio stations didn't really play records for the first 10-20 years. They hired live musicians to perform songs. They also weren't on the air 24/7. The stations sought to avoid paying the musicians, so they played records. The main reason they hired DJs was they needed humans in the studio to do transmitter readings and keep the station on the air. Wolfman Jack had an FCC First Class engineering license. He wasn't the only one. When the requirement went away for human transmitter operators in the early 80s, that led to a lot of stations carrying overnight syndication like Larry King. There's a long history of stations running material that was neither live nor local.

Now we have voice trackers and A.I. replicating the same kind of filler content for no good reason.

You should think of it from the perspective of the DJ. Sitting in a dark studio by yourself for 4-5 hours listening to the same music all the time isn't a great way to spend one's time. Especially at times of the day when most people would rather be socializing with other people. DJs would rather VT their shift so they don't have to wait for the song to end or work nights and weekends. At one time stations could get people to fill certain shifts by giving them the opportunity to host shows. That doesn't work today. The novelty of being on the radio wore out a long time ago.

 

[ted chittenden]

Even talk stations rarely put live callers on the air. Those that do put them on delay so they can edit out the crazy callers.

Sometimes it wasn't even the crazies they edited out. When I was attending college at LMU in Los Angeles, I called KABC after a night of partying on Saturday night to be on the air during the 8am local talk show following the news program "ABC Perspective on Sunday morning." I was commenting on how many students were getting too drunk at parties (my situation at the time) and that the state should clamp down on the universities for this. Then the person answering my call asked if my opinion was widely shared among my peers. I answered in the negative and I never heard my voice on the radio during that show. (It was also an early warning sign of how much of an outlier [using K.M. Richard's wording] I really was but I didn't recognize it at the time.)

 

[K.M. Richards]

Then the person answering my call asked if my opinion was widely shared among my peers. I answered in the negative and I never heard my voice on the radio during that show.

Back in the day, screeners were critical to the mission of keeping a show on-topic. These days, the callers are already polarized in favor and the screeners are actually reduced to keeping the "crazies" off.

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

Listen to me on Hits 106, think like an average person who doesnt know anything about radio or the tech involved and tell me you think im not really there. 3to 7pm mountain mon-sat

 

[SomeRadioGuy]

You should think of it from the perspective of the DJ. Sitting in a dark studio by yourself for 4-5 hours listening to the same music all the time isn't a great way to spend one's time. Especially at times of the day when most people would rather be socializing with other people. DJs would rather VT their shift so they don't have to wait for the song to end or work nights and weekends. At one time stations could get people to fill certain shifts by giving them the opportunity to host shows. That doesn't work today. The novelty of being on the radio wore out a long time ago.

Voicetracking allowsed me, when i was full time at KLMI to have weekends off, remote in from home when there was breaking news or weather.... and get the week off between christmas and new years, paid, and just have to track my shows, with no need to be in the office.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I was voicetracking (to allow me to do production and PD stuff during my shift) for four out of seven hours at the very first station I programmed ...

... in 1978.

And no one could tell then, either.

 

[crainbebo]

Speaking of song requests, my local Classic Hits FM (Cherry FM, 100.9 KARY) encourages song requests by text only. They don't do call-in requests. The station does a Drive at Five segment that is commercial-free and has listener requests.
I have thought about requesting a few 'oh wow' 1980s songs...but their playlist is pretty tight.

On the other hand, the Your Network of Praise network in Montana does a Monday and Friday Diner program during the midday where listeners all over the state (and nearby states where YNOP is carried) can call in requests. I've heard everything from early Christian rock (from the '70s!!) to "Lemonade" by Forrest Frank, to classic Michael W. Smith and 4Him. It's really cool and I wish more Christian stations would do request hours. There's still an audience for classic CCM (like the K-LOVE '90s streaming channel).

In my small market, nothing is live after 7PM. All syndicated here.

 

[davideduardo]

The other thing we see by studying social media is that some callers are fans of artists, not listeners to radio. So they're calling to promote their favorite artist, not to hear the song on the radio. The artists themselves promote that kind of behavior, telling their fans to "call your radio station and request this song," in a way empowering the fans to affect the music charts. Of course, none of that happened before we had social media.

Nowhere did I see this more than in Puerto Rico. In the 70's I had a very hot AC that played pop in Spanish with near Top 40 rotations, but had a deep gold library going back about 10 or 12 years.

Puerto Rico had a huge number of very good pop artists... Menudo and Ricky Martin are just two examples. We'd often have hours with nearly half the songs by local artists.

And in the 70's, those local artists all had fan clubs. And all the members had telephones. Whenever a new song came out, we'd get overwhelming calls from fans asking for the song... even before we started playing it (and we were the only station playing exclusively that kind of music).

This was before social media. But the fans had other ways of staying in contact, mostly a phone network. And they could be genuinely annoying!