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Automated Station -> DJs - Why?
- Thread starter kfbkfb
- Start date
I worked with one of those
Somewhat related to automaton: our morning guy at a small market station where the FM jock tends to the AM automation, is training a high school kid and talking about changing those 10.5 inch reels.
This morning guy was born with birth defects. One of his arms was slightly shorter than the other and on both hands he did not have all his digits. I think four on one and three on the other. As he tells the kid to write this down: don't rewind a reel until the next reel in the sequence begins and never hit the stop button or try to stop those metal reels with your hands. He stops and holds up both hands while trying to look deadly serious. The new kid's expression was priceless.
This morning guy was born with birth defects. One of his arms was slightly shorter than the other and on both hands he did not have all his digits. I think four on one and three on the other. As he tells the kid to write this down: don't rewind a reel until the next reel in the sequence begins and never hit the stop button or try to stop those metal reels with your hands. He stops and holds up both hands while trying to look deadly serious. The new kid's expression was priceless.
More likely, it is the what the finance people in corporate at the companies that own the radio stations want.
As for the listeners -- how many of them are actually passionate enough about radio that they actually care one way or the other? My suspicion is that it isn't so much that young listeners like voicetracked and/or jockless stations, but rather that they aren't paying enough attention to the programming to really notice any difference.
The finance people do what they're told by the top people. They WILL spend money if it makes them money. We see that clearly with the salaries they pay their most popular hosts. They spend money if it gets them the rights to popular sports events or other things like that. The job of talent is to make their value clear to the people who hire them.
Based on what KQCR FM did for station promotion - "more music" was the mantra for several years (IIRC, competitor KRNA FM had DJs from day 1), I would think that that would appeal to listeners (since ads are a necessary part of "free" radio), about the same number of ads as DJed stations, but more music because no DJ talk.
The signal from KRNA FM was weak outside of Johnson Co IA, not really competing with KQCR FM except in Iowa City IA.
Kirk Bayne
The signal from KRNA FM was weak outside of Johnson Co IA, not really competing with KQCR FM except in Iowa City IA.
Kirk Bayne
You don't think humans prefer some things over others? With so many forms of media available today, media consumers have a lot of choices. Older consumers like reliving the days of their youth when media consisted of a few local radio stations and chatty DJ's, mix tapes on cassette, and a few local TV stations. Today with things like smartphones/apps, smartspeakers and other Internet connected devices, you can listen to your favorite music or podcasts whenever and wherever, without mundane chatter.
Chances are they weren't around when frequent live chatty DJ's were, so there's nothing to compare against. Besides; even back in the day, a frequent research response used to include a lot of: 'DJ's talk too much'. Now, if you don't want to hear chatter, one can avoid it completely.
At a station where I worked years ago, the FM was automated with a bank of 10.5" reel machines. Sometimes during the day it would miss cues. Finally someone figured out that with the doors to the automation room open, the temperature would rise, causing the machines to speed up just enough to raise the cue tones, putting them out of range. Keeping the doors closed and keeping an eye on the AC solved the problem.
Tapecasters were "economy versions" of the early Spotmaster machines... the standard Viking deck with a tone detector and audio amp in a metal box. They could not harm a cart, and were very simple to maintain.
All you needed in your repair kit was a bunch of the solenoid lever springs and a spare board or two. Was not a Tapecaster that could not be fixed and back in operation in 30 minutes. I must have had about 40 to 45 or so of them at my stations in Ecuador, and even had a couple of the jocks trained to swap full playbacks with the reserve one we kept in the production room.
On the other hand, I saw whole carts sheared in half by the elevator effect of the Gates 55!
What cheap decks were those? Decks using the usual hysterisis-synchronous motors were not sensitive to heat:
Hysteresis Motor Construction Operation Characteristics and Applications
Hysteresis Motor Construction Operation Characteristics and Applications - A hysteresis motor is a single-phase synchronous motor whose operating principle is based on the effect of magnetic hysteresis. According magnetic hysteresis, the magnetic flux density in a ferromagnetic material lags...
The characteristics of a hysteresis motor are given as follows −
- Hysteresis motors have uniform torque from standstill to synchronous speed.
- A hysteresis motor can synchronise any load which it can accelerate, no matter how great the inertia of the load.
- A hysteresis motor is inherently quiet and produces smooth rotation of the load.
- In a hysteresis motor, the number of rotor poles are equal to the number of stator poles.
- By changing the number of stator poles through pole-changing connections, a set of synchronous speeds for the motor can be obtained.
Of course human have preferences -- but we don't necessarily have preferences on everything, and some of those preferences may be fairly weak depending on the extent to which we care about a particular thing.
Using radio as the example, many of us here have strong preferences on what we like and dislike. That's not surprising considering that we all care enough about radio to be reading and posting here. But we're in a minority -- most people just don't care that much about radio. And I'd say that the percentage who don't care at all or are only mildly interested is probably quite a bit higher than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Not too long ago, I saw a post somewhere on Radio Discussions (from David Eduardo, I believe) noting that average time spent listening to radio has declined from 20 hours to 6 hours in the past 20 years -- that decline doesn't seem to indicate a high level of interest in radio on the part of the average listener. And how many people have strong preferences on things that they don't care a lot about?
As for the research back in the day that said "DJs talk too much", I have to note that while plenty of listeners said that, those listeners also chose to listen to the stations with the chatty DJs over the ones without those DJs. I can't recall many places in the eighties and nineties where "more music, less talk" stations actually ended up winning in the ratings. Here in Dallas/Fort Worth, KVIL dominated with double digit audience shares for most of the eighties with a format that included incessant DJ chatter and seven commercial breaks per hour. In the AC format, they had 3 or 4 times the audience share of the "more music, less talk" competitor (which was KDMX, then known as "Magic 102.9).
Djs do use their real names though, with some slight variations sometimes. They tell stories and share their thoughts which gives a personality behind the mic that is someone a person can feel connected to.
FIrst, you won't read such research as it is done on a station by station and format by format basis and is totally private and confidential. Stations hire a research company that specializes in broadcast and media research and they examine the different aspects of format partisans and station P1 listeners.
"Connecting" is a word for "emphasizing" or "relating". The name has nothing to do with this.
Hollywood for decades gave actors "better" names and the ones that succeeded did so because they connected with moviegoers. Same applies to radio talent. Think of those names as "nicknames" such as we use with friends and family.
Radio nerds care about radio, but they're in the minority. This is an on-demand world, so other than Instagram or TikTok, most folks under 50 don't have strong preferences.
This isn't the 80's or 90's anymore. Things change, people's tastes change.
While I am not a radio music listener, I can speculate that the younger demos will tell you they want to hear their favorite tunes and none of the other "noise" like news, commercials or DJs. I will also say that if we had entertainment with the music, that station would lead the automated voice tracked "better blend of music" nonsense. I don't know or care enough to say what today's entertainer should be focused on, but I know radio is a habit and not something people look for because it is boring. I've always felt that people, who can get music anywhere, are foolish to listen to it and the 8 minute stop sets on commercial radio. I wonder if radio will again find personality and draw people to it.
I also remember the errors on early automation systems. Today the most common thing I hear is a weather forecast for Long Island on WKIP in Poughkeepsie, or the wrong news cast loaded in from the overworked newsperson. I think the local Poughkeepsie inserts are done at WGY. The automation works better in the digital age, but the people still put the wrong things in it. At least they don't have to race to change the music tapes when the silence sense alarms go off.
I also remember the errors on early automation systems. Today the most common thing I hear is a weather forecast for Long Island on WKIP in Poughkeepsie, or the wrong news cast loaded in from the overworked newsperson. I think the local Poughkeepsie inserts are done at WGY. The automation works better in the digital age, but the people still put the wrong things in it. At least they don't have to race to change the music tapes when the silence sense alarms go off.
And yet back in the '50s and '60s people love the DJs. And i remember a basketball game between the faculty and 61 Big WAYS DJs at my junior high school in the 70s.
That's one thing I won't do. While I may have new sources for music this year when I go to the mountains, WESC is one of those iHeart stations where if you hear one commercial, you can forget about music for the foreseeable future. Same when I listen to Christmas music in the car.
We had a shop teacher that didn’t have all his fingers either.
Totally agree. The issue is not trying to remake an old time radio station. The issue is that the curren blandness of radio will NEVER attract new listeners. We need to find an entertainment approach that makes people WANT to listen to a particular station. Music alone can'd do it because music is everywhere on a billion stations and other sources. Find the new thing people will like, whether is it personality people can identify with and care about today, or something else, if you want to be rich and famous. Or at least pay the bills and have a buck three eighty left over at the end of the month.
The biggest problem is that younger people, and older people, watch and listen on demand. Their "personality" is podcasts, YouTube and TikTok/Instagram creators.
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