K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
Friendly advice, which I always find helpful personally: Never assume anything, because inevitably someone or something will come along to prove you wrong.
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Are there any major stations that DON'T do voice-tracking and are 100% live?
- Thread starter Alan Smithee
- Start date
Friendly advice, which I always find helpful personally: Never assume anything, because inevitably someone or something will come along to prove you wrong.
I'm going to take what @Lance Venta, @TheBigA, and @K.M. Richards have said on this subject and place it in a very different paradigm. When something new comes along, people want the thing that the new thing is replacing to still be there should the new thing go sour for them. We've seen this in radio and the Internet and we've seen it elsewhere as well.
The problem is, there aren't enough financial resources available to have the old and the new run concurrently for a long period of time. In other words, financial resources, like all other resources on this planet, are limited and that limitation means that choices have to be made about where and how much resources should be placed in, say, old (radio) versus new (Internet) media. Since (at least for now) consumers are choosing en masse to embrace the new medium, that is where the dollars (the limited resource) are going into as opposed to traditional radio.
It would be nice to have an economic system that supported what everybody wanted at all times. But since all resources are limited, that is something that can never be.
The problem is, there aren't enough financial resources available to have the old and the new run concurrently for a long period of time. In other words, financial resources, like all other resources on this planet, are limited and that limitation means that choices have to be made about where and how much resources should be placed in, say, old (radio) versus new (Internet) media. Since (at least for now) consumers are choosing en masse to embrace the new medium, that is where the dollars (the limited resource) are going into as opposed to traditional radio.
It would be nice to have an economic system that supported what everybody wanted at all times. But since all resources are limited, that is something that can never be.
That's what people who use radio don't understand, because for them, radio is free. They don't pay for it, so they don't understand how the advertising market has really changed from 10 or 20 years ago. I look through old commercial logs, and a lot of the advertisers we once depended on are out of business. Sears is one example. They bought a lot of time from us, and now they're gone.
If radio listeners had to pay for live & local DJs, they'd feel a lot differently.
The satellite DJs have nearly always been quite professional and enjoyable to listen to.
The local DJs aren't always that good.
The local DJs aren't always that good.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
And that, my simian friend, has been the case for longer than I have been in radio. Especially in small market radio. I probably wouldn't have gotten my first job as quickly as I did if I hadn't been doing all the announcing for my local cable company and gotten noticed by a radio station owner.
Sirius is a subscription service that listeners pay for. If listeners paid for broadcast radio, it would be very different.
Updating WXLF White River Junction, VT's "Most Requested" top 5 at 5. I listened both yesterday and today and, as you probably expected, the songs "requested" were completely different from one day to the next.
Monday:
5. Change My Mind -- Riley Green
4. Brunette -- Tucker Wetmore
3. A Song to Sing -- Lambert/Stapleton
2. Chevy Silverado -- Bailey Zimmerman
1. How Far Does a Goodbye Go? -- Jason Aldean
Today:
5. Sleepless in a Hotel Room -- Luke Combs
4. Till the Last One Dies -- Chris Young
3. All My Exes -- Alaina/Matthew
2. I Ain't Coming Back -- Wallen/Malone
1. Ain't a Bad Life -- Rhett/Davis
How likely is it that the top requests would differ that greatly over 24 hours?
Casey had to record promos for stations that ran the show at various times. Remember when Casey had to do a promo for a station that ran the show at 2 a.m.? The engineer apparently saved the outtakes of that tape. It was ponderous!
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
There were of course exceptions, but based on what Pete Battistini has told me, as well as what he included in his two books on the show, the Sunday morning timeslot was apparently the most popular among stations.
Some people like classic PCs and gaming despite all of modern computing's technological advances. And our roadways still host innumerable classic cars even though most drivers are barreling toward a fully computerized and electrified future.
In the same way, I think some people just want a little dial space set aside for radio the way it used to be -- locally-owned, locally-managed, locally-originated, locally-hosted, locally-programmed, and 100% live ... save automating certain holidays for the employees.
Basically, the planners of our FM band had the foresight to set aside 21 handicapped parking spaces for NCEs (87.9 - 91.9). They knew that big money would have otherwise picked them all off, eventually buying them out of any and all regular parking spaces given enough time and accompanying economic dry spells. Unfortunately, what those planners didn't foresee were the incredible revolutions in technology and the astounding political failures to maintain ownership limits that were lying around the bend at the time. So they failed to reserve another 20 handicapped spaces for the "for-profit mom and pop" class of stations described above. Which is a shame, really. Because had that allocation been made, 92.1 to 95.9 would today be a locally-flavored refuge from The Corporate Way for people interested in running radio as both businessmen and artisans. To say that the FM dial should have no space reserved just for mom and pops doing it Their Own Ways -- even when those ways aren't necessarily the most profitable ways -- would be like demanding that all commercial real estate be barred to mom and pop Italian restaurants in favor of selling exclusively to an endless procession of Domino's.
You mean like a museum? It's a very romantic concept.
A lot of public stations operate that way. Although it will be harder to do that now that government money has been eliminated.
I know a few retired former radio folks who've brought AM stations with the idea of reviving the past. Thankfully they aren't under a lot of financial pressure, because there's not much money to be made in that kind of thing.
Not even close. Where in that list do you see fossilized concepts so discarded by contemporary society they need to be entombed in a cultural reliquary? It's quite the opposite. "Local" anything has a very big draw in today's globalized world. Observe the Facebook and Nextdoor icons neighboring each other on people's home screens.
By the way. nothing I said about doing radio the way it used to be in the categories above means every other category would have to be frozen in time. Text messaging, not jamming up copper phone lines on special 520 trunks, and playback from hard drive would all be perfectly acceptable. Just keep some vinyl turntables and CD players in the studio for the hosts who like bringing in their playlists in milk crates.
True, but without any profit potential on the NCE band, certain demographics tend to dominate it. Many would simply find it impossible to operate there.
No argument when it comes to AM, but I was talking about FM.
The only place where that's done today is college radio.
Maybe you haven't heard, but radio companies aren't making any profits today.
Depends on the market. The local owners I know who operate FM stations don't make enough to pay a full staff of local talent. The money has to come from somewhere. Advertising has dried up. Everybody shops at Amazon.
If they're in the business just for the money and they aren't making any profits, then why are they doing it at all? I wish I had the money to buy a station now and run it properly, with the real reward being having a good station on the air and any money being secondary. That's kind of how it was for me in the movie theater business which I left about 25 years ago- I worked long hours and the pay was hardly anything, but I loved just being there and putting on a quality show for everyone which I learned not everyone had the skills to do let alone the desire. I left because I was the only one who even cared about delivering a quality presentation and was almost to the point where I had to apologize to the higher-ups for it. Theaters have only gotten worse since then, they also aren't making big bucks and I have no sympathy for them. I'd buy a theater and run it properly also if I had the money to do so. Most people in that business now obviously don't love it, and I don't know why they stick with it when they aren't even making money.
Incidentally, speaking of college stations, KDVS in Davis CA (the main station I listen to) sounds like it still has live people on the air, even in the overnight hours- and they do it for free. If I were rich, I'd at least be giving that station money.
I know a bit about radio history, and, yes, it is romantic. But it won't buy you coffee at Starbucks.
I first fully automated a station around 1978. Time after time, listeners who visited the station to pick up a prize saw "Arturito" (A play in Spanish on R2D2) and thought that it was amazing. They did not, ever, find it disappointing.
We only had listeners come to the station for "big" prizes... tickets and albums and T-shirts were mailed out. So when we did have a bigger winner, I always tried to have one of the jocks come and personally deliver the prize to the listener. That created a lot of comments with friends of those listeners, and it was a huge positive.
Shows like Deliah these days are either sent as segments with music attached or as just dry voice tracks that can be inserted in a local log with localized music. There is flexibility on when the show airs depending on what the syndicator wants. The days of everyone having to air something from 7p-12mid for a specific show are long gone. (because the limitation of it being live on satellite at a specific time is not there anymore).
They generate money, but a lot of companies aren't making a profit. Then there's an entire world of non-profit public radio. But in both cases, the situation is that people have other options, such as digital, and they prefer those options to the more traditional ones. Your comparison to movie theaters is a good one.
And generally there aren't many listeners to be had either.
If you're an old timer looking to do this, you need to be doing it just for you. If you're depending on income and/or a sizeable audience, you're unfortunately going to be disappointed.
That likely was WCFL, Chicago, which did run the show at 2am. There may have been others.