Bulletin to watch: CBS-FM days from switching back to OLDIES!

[its time w (your name)]

If nothing else, it's encouraging to see the comments stirred up by my trite post regarding the validity of musicians like Mellencamp, Springsteen et al, and their place on the reborn WCBS-FM.

One thing I learned long ago is NOT to criticize other people's taste in music or entertainment (difficult as it may be at time.) It kinda smacks of elitism and what might be called music facism. The, "I'm better than you because I think Pink Floyd and "Shine On You Crazy Diamond is the best damn song EVER written and recorded... not like that Earth Wind & Fire crap you listen to." Music as religion.

Think Mellancamp isn't a bonafide musician, performer? You think Elton John is bilge? Don't think they have a place at WCBS-FM? Fine. I'll not argue the point, because it's quite likely I won't convince you otherwise. From your comments and advice, I think I understand the basis on which you make your statement.

When musicians get together, does a guy like the Paul McCartney says "I'll never play with John Mellencamp cuz his music sucks..." or maybe one of the many blues greats says "friggin' Bon Jovi... I can't belive that SOB has sold millions of records... must be idiots buyin' that crap... I'll never jam with that dude."

This gets to be like the "Thelonius Monk vs. Art Tatum as it relates to the significance of jazz and its impact on social change in the 60's" thing. Damn! I shoulda read more Camus.

As Mick, Chuck and countless others before them said, "it's only rock 'n roll.... but I like it."

Rock on, Jim. I see little difference between the music elitist who insists artists get bonus points for obscurity, and the rabid collector of star trek action figures. Both take themselves very seriously.

 

[davideduardo]

If you know anything about this sort of hobby board, you know that matters of personal taste trump the exigencies of the marketplace. One of the few that speaks truth to sentiment is David Edwardo Gleason and he must be a glutton for punishment.

Aw, shucks. Thanks for the compliment. I was on the debate team in school, so being involved in this back and forth is fun. And, when the argument requires facts, I can not tell you the number of times that looking for confirmation of a post or trying to find rebuttal data has led me to discover new things or things I did not know about radio listening and listener behaviour and programming techniques. I think there is value in perusing and persuing these controversial threads... but ya' gotta' be thick skinned at times.

The nice thing here is that now we have the presence of Tom Taylor, one of the most knowledgable-about-radio folks I know, and his morning eBulletin is not to be missed. I think that new aspect of RadioInfo gives some balance to the occasional flame!

 

[chuckydoll]

Do I see a disaster in the making?

The old CBS-FM emphasized Beach Boys, Beatles, Four Seasons and Motown. The new CBS-FM will do the same with classic rock as well.

Throw in heritage DJs, reverb and lots of specialty shows -- all of which the fanboys are screaming for. This spells Disaster with a capital D. When that happens you'll wish Jack were still around.

Want to hear the new CBS-FM done right? Go up to Connecticut and tune in 102.9 DRC-FM.

 

[lalumia]

DRC is indeed, incredible, I ALWAYS have them on in the car(except when monitoring Z 100 for the hits, as I DJ dance clubs on the weekend, like to keep in touch with that 'feel'; but DRC is an AMAZINGLY listenable, enjoyable, well programmed station

 

[adma]

Nonetheless Rap=braindead. So there.

Ah, but that reactive attitude among oldies afficionados is a perfect pendant to the kinds of younger demos who regard pre-1964 as "geezer music". Fundamentally--maybe most especially on a parent/child basis--they deserve each other.

Oldies at its best is celebratory--at its worst, it's reactive. Which brings us to...

After all, if we keep in mind the symbiosis behind how W(e) A(lways) B(roadcast) C(onservatives) plays homage to its Musicradio past, the oldies thing becomes more like the "Those Were The Days" opening serving ignorant-pinhead boomer versions of Archie Bunker...

True. Listen to the callers.

Lino

And for that matter, look at the current dentist's-board intermix of "Yay! Oldies are back on WCBS-FM!" and "Yay! Bob Grant's back on WABC!"

But maybe that was the demo etc problem behind WCBS--it wasn't just perceived to be over-55, but the "Archie Bunker" end of that demo. You can get away with it on talk radio; but that's "prose", music radio is "poetry". An Archie Bunker blathering away can be "entertaining"; an Archie Bunker environment is oppressive, devoid of culture, taste, anything but pathetic nostalgia. Even if the actual item(s) of nostalgia still hold their inherent magic.

Norman Lear and Carroll O'Connor did succeed mightily in portraying him sympathetically, as a genuinely affecting emblem of an honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC fast fading into eclipse. But it was still hard to escape the fact that a certain bit of Darwinian reasoning might have lain behind said eclipse. His type just wasn't "fit" enough to survive.

Archie Bunker was the classic "fading demo" sort of thing. Transpose him ahead three decades, and you can very, very much imagine an episode built around his reaction to WCBS-becoming-Jack.

Such is the stigma. Yet ironically, it's also why I feel the new "classic hits" WCBS won't have nearly the reach among the desired demo as desired--in a sense, it's more like an Archie Bunker wishful fantasy of "honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC" 30/40something cultural behaviour. It's reaching for those who haven't been "spoiled" by hip-hop or hard rock or MTV or away-from-radio or whatever.

It isn't that the station will flop; more like it'll lumber along on a certain autopilot with an older demo than it counted on, by which time the whole "55+ ad billing stigma" ceases to matter due to the overall depleted state of the medium. Just safe to stick with a status quo; likewise with K-Rock...

Rock on, Jim. I see little difference between the music elitist who insists artists get bonus points for obscurity, and the rabid collector of star trek action figures. Both take themselves very seriously.

Ah, but perhaps if it weren't for said elitist sensibility (or at least the impulse to take it seriously rather than sneer at it), we wouldn't have iPods killing the radio star and radio audience. And what's the attitude sometimes stated in this thread and elsewhere? "Buzz off, we don't need you, anyway."

IOW as mass-market radio supporters in 2007, boy, are *you* taking yourself very seriously...

 

[rockroll0617]

Nonetheless Rap=braindead. So there.

Ah, but that reactive attitude among oldies afficionados is a perfect pendant to the kinds of younger demos who regard pre-1964 as "geezer music". Fundamentally--maybe most especially on a parent/child basis--they deserve each other.

Oldies at its best is celebratory--at its worst, it's reactive. Which brings us to...

After all, if we keep in mind the symbiosis behind how W(e) A(lways) B(roadcast) C(onservatives) plays homage to its Musicradio past, the oldies thing becomes more like the "Those Were The Days" opening serving ignorant-pinhead boomer versions of Archie Bunker...

True. Listen to the callers.

Lino

And for that matter, look at the current dentist's-board intermix of "Yay! Oldies are back on WCBS-FM!" and "Yay! Bob Grant's back on WABC!"

But maybe that was the demo etc problem behind WCBS--it wasn't just perceived to be over-55, but the "Archie Bunker" end of that demo. You can get away with it on talk radio; but that's "prose", music radio is "poetry". An Archie Bunker blathering away can be "entertaining"; an Archie Bunker environment is oppressive, devoid of culture, taste, anything but pathetic nostalgia. Even if the actual item(s) of nostalgia still hold their inherent magic.

Norman Lear and Carroll O'Connor did succeed mightily in portraying him sympathetically, as a genuinely affecting emblem of an honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC fast fading into eclipse. But it was still hard to escape the fact that a certain bit of Darwinian reasoning might have lain behind said eclipse. His type just wasn't "fit" enough to survive.

Archie Bunker was the classic "fading demo" sort of thing. Transpose him ahead three decades, and you can very, very much imagine an episode built around his reaction to WCBS-becoming-Jack.

Such is the stigma. Yet ironically, it's also why I feel the new "classic hits" WCBS won't have nearly the reach among the desired demo as desired--in a sense, it's more like an Archie Bunker wishful fantasy of "honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC" 30/40something cultural behaviour. It's reaching for those who haven't been "spoiled" by hip-hop or hard rock or MTV or away-from-radio or whatever.

It isn't that the station will flop; more like it'll lumber along on a certain autopilot with an older demo than it counted on, by which time the whole "55+ ad billing stigma" ceases to matter due to the overall depleted state of the medium. Just safe to stick with a status quo; likewise with K-Rock...

Rock on, Jim. I see little difference between the music elitist who insists artists get bonus points for obscurity, and the rabid collector of star trek action figures. Both take themselves very seriously.

Ah, but perhaps if it weren't for said elitist sensibility (or at least the impulse to take it seriously rather than sneer at it), we wouldn't have iPods killing the radio star and radio audience. And what's the attitude sometimes stated in this thread and elsewhere? "Buzz off, we don't need you, anyway."

IOW as mass-market radio supporters in 2007, boy, are *you* taking yourself very seriously...

Holy jeepers! What are you guys in the Big Apple smokin' these days?

;D

 

[LinoNYC]

Oldies at its best is celebratory--at its worst, it's reactive.

You omit a third and possibly decisive point in a PPM era, oldies are "tolerated" well as background. Since much future measuring will include incidental exposure, CBS will now have two well-positioned stations (WWFS-WCBS).

And for that matter, look at the current dentist's-board intermix of "Yay! Oldies are back on WCBS-FM!" and "Yay! Bob Grant's back on WABC!"

Don't read too much into this sort of thing. The same mentality prevailed when Troy "Star" Torain was fired for threating sexual assualt on a four year-old.

But maybe that was the demo etc problem behind WCBS--it wasn't just perceived to be over-55, but the "Archie Bunker" end of that demo.

I guess that the same train of thought that led to your above remarks would lead to these, however while WCBS did have a hard-core of Bensonhurst-Howard Beach doo-Wops, their offspring was ironicly more inclined to hip-hop than oldies.

A case of effluent sympatico. They don't like the people that make hip-hop but it resonates with their intellect.

Norman Lear and Carroll O'Connor did succeed mightily in portraying him sympathetically, as a genuinely affecting emblem of an honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC fast fading into eclipse. But it was still hard to escape the fact that a certain bit of Darwinian reasoning might have lain behind said eclipse. His type just wasn't "fit" enough to survive.

Pardon the bluntness but such remarks evince a lack knowledge and historical perspective. Pure B.S.

The "Archies" left in two major waves:

First the WW2 returnees who wanted to raise a family in something better than the scum-owned tenements that awaited them in the city.

Then in the 1960s over a million whites daparted for the 'burbs, as they left they were replaced by poor blacks from the south and the crest of the ongoing wave of caribbean hispanics. Crime soared, social services and law enforcement drained the city.

It wasn't that Archie was not "fit" for the city. It was that the city was deemed unfit to raise a working-class family.

uch is the stigma. Yet ironically, it's also why I feel the new "classic hits" WCBS won't have nearly the reach among the desired demo as desired--in a sense, it's more like an Archie Bunker wishful fantasy of "honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC" 30/40something cultural behaviour.

The "honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC" is not so much a "fantasy" as some might wish to portray it. Take a look at the quality of what was constructed by the WW2 generation, everything from buildings to the sound systems that I, as the following generation overhauled. The quality of workmanship was/is outstanding, far greater then what my self-centered bunch are willing to contribute.

It isn't that the station will flop; more like it'll lumber along on a certain autopilot with an older demo than it counted on, by which time the whole "55+ ad billing stigma" ceases to matter due to the overall depleted state of the medium. Just safe to stick with a status quo; likewise with K-Rock...

In my opinion, true. Since most young people come to the medium for something they now get elsewhere, the future of commercial, non-ethnic radio will be communal, background listening. Thus, it's not too surprising that advertisers have demanded a technology for measuring this sort of passive listening -the PPM.

Lino

 

[its time w (your name)]

Ah, but perhaps if it weren't for said elitist sensibility (or at least the impulse to take it seriously rather than sneer at it), we wouldn't have iPods killing the radio star and radio audience....(blah blah something .....)

IOW as mass-market radio supporters in 2007, boy, are *you* taking yourself very seriously...

Ah, a rather simplistic, and simply wrong, analysis of the industry. What happened to "nuanced," in your community?

What does Archie Bunker have to do with any of this? Are you aware he is a fictitious character based on stereotype? He was, however, wildly popular. Lear, being a flaming socialist, created his character intending him to be a buffoonish villian, portraying "bourgeois" America. Needless to say, it backfired in a huge way. Same thing happened with Michael J. Fox.

I dont know what IOW is, (or care) but Im not a "supporter," Im a "worker," so to speak. Anyone who thinks of me as "serious" isnt paying attention. Actually, I get paid to be silly.

 

[adma]

Norman Lear and Carroll O'Connor did succeed mightily in portraying him sympathetically, as a genuinely affecting emblem of an honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC fast fading into eclipse. But it was still hard to escape the fact that a certain bit of Darwinian reasoning might have lain behind said eclipse. His type just wasn't "fit" enough to survive.

Pardon the bluntness but such remarks evince a lack knowledge and historical perspective. Pure B.S.

The "Archies" left in two major waves:

First the WW2 returnees who wanted to raise a family in something better than the scum-owned tenements that awaited them in the city.

Then in the 1960s over a million whites daparted for the 'burbs, as they left they were replaced by poor blacks from the south and the crest of the ongoing wave of caribbean hispanics. Crime soared, social services and law enforcement drained the city.

It wasn't that Archie was not "fit" for the city. It was that the city was deemed unfit to raise a working-class family.

[

uch is the stigma. Yet ironically, it's also why I feel the new "classic hits" WCBS won't have nearly the reach among the desired demo as desired--in a sense, it's more like an Archie Bunker wishful fantasy of "honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC" 30/40something cultural behaviour.

The "honest, hard-working meat-and-potatoes NYC" is not so much a "fantasy" as some might wish to portray it. Take a look at the quality of what was constructed by the WW2 generation, everything from buildings to the sound systems that I, as the following generation overhauled. The quality of workmanship was/is outstanding, far greater then what my self-centered bunch are willing to contribute.

Well, look at it this way. You're not *not* affirming my fundamental point. Remember that I said, "sympathetically". Lear + O'Connor more than likely had this in mind; for all his quirks, Archie Bunker was presented as a fundamentally "good" person, i.e. you'd trust him to do a good job, no B.S. He wasn't mere a Homer Simpson-type klutz, necessarily.

The "not fit enough" regards the issues which fed the more familiar "unsympathetic" (or comic) side of Archie. Thus in a way, if I and my type are guilty of elitist snobbery, it was "in the air"; and especially as the butt of sitcom humour, the "Archie type" truly was was a tragic (yet strangely, self-inflictedly, inevitable) victim.

And regarding the present day: remember that I was referring to a fantasy of "30/40something *cultural* behaviour". Call it "self-centered" if you want, but there's something kind of refreshing and laudable about a generation conditioned into viewing NYC's present cultural mosaic in creative, positive, non-reactive terms...

It isn't that the station will flop; more like it'll lumber along on a certain autopilot with an older demo than it counted on, by which time the whole "55+ ad billing stigma" ceases to matter due to the overall depleted state of the medium. Just safe to stick with a status quo; likewise with K-Rock...

In my opinion, true. Since most young people come to the medium for something they now get elsewhere, the future of commercial, non-ethnic radio will be communal, background listening. Thus, it's not too surprising that advertisers have demanded a technology for measuring this sort of passive listening -the PPM.

Lino
[/quote]

So we've come full circle and affirmed my basic point--and maybe it's worth pondering the trajectory of "passive listening", i.e. radio as increasingly something not on one's volition, but as something "encountered" in the corner grocer, at the garage, etc. Poor man's Muzak. (And I even question the health of this "communal, background listening" notion; my feeling is, the kind of office-listening that was once commonplace is now all too often viewed as crass.)

Unfortunately (and maybe through entrenchment-in-the-biz), a lot of the people in this thread are still operating on old consumption models. Hey, folks, transpose yourself forward 20, 30, 40 years and tell us how you'd be, how you'd think...

What does Archie Bunker have to do with any of this? Are you aware he is a fictitious character based on stereotype? He was, however, wildly popular. Lear, being a flaming socialist, created his character intending him to be a buffoonish villian, portraying "bourgeois" America. Needless to say, it backfired in a huge way. Same thing happened with Michael J. Fox.

*Backfired in a huge way*?!?!?!?

Now, just compare the above analysis to mine (and LinoNYC's), and you'll understand everything that's wrong with whatever this sort of radio culture's bred...

 

[its time w (your name)]

Now, just compare the above analysis to mine (and LinoNYC's), and you'll understand everything that's wrong with whatever this sort of radio culture's bred...

Yes, compare. It shows I can get from point A to point B in a straighter line, deleting the needless pseudo-intellectual tripe.

 

[its time w (your name)]

By the way, I've lost track of the quote boxes.... Who said this?

"In my opinion, true. Since most young people come to the medium for something they now get elsewhere, the future of commercial, non-ethnic radio will be communal, background listening. Thus, it's not too surprising that advertisers have demanded a technology for measuring this sort of passive listening -the PPM."

This is an outstanding, insightful thought. Not that anyone needs to be stroked by me, but please step forward and claim your due credit. This kind of insight is what I really come here for. Thanks.

 

[adma]

Now, just compare the above analysis to mine (and LinoNYC's), and you'll understand everything that's wrong with whatever this sort of radio culture's bred...

Yes, compare. It shows I can get from point A to point B in a straighter line, deleting the needless pseudo-intellectual tripe.

But what is your point A to point B on behalf of? Ugly redneck silent-majority philistinism.

So, there's my version of point A to point B. And there's the problem with radio culture today...

Oh, re the above quote: LinoNYC.

 

[its time w (your name)]

But what is your point A to point B on behalf of? Ugly redneck silent-majority philistinism.

So, there's my version of point A to point B. And there's the problem with radio culture today...

Oh, re the above quote: LinoNYC.

heh heh heh heh.... Some "intellectuals" take longer than others to resort to epithets.

You say redneck like its a bad thing.

Adma, I left college w/ a 4.0, AND I can rope, ride, and hunt. The horse sense has been far more useful than the poetry. Im also an independent thinker.

I didnt create today's radio culture, but I am gainfully employed. Next!

 

[adma]

You say redneck like its a bad thing.

Account for those for whom it *is* a bad thing. It may explain a lot of radio's woes, whether directly or by association--and yes, that may even include ad-buyer woes.

(And as I've indicated re WCBS, maybe it's what helped helped lead to its blithe Jack-ing in the first place, i.e. the inherent "undesirability"/easy-disposability of the Bob Grantian old codger who thinks music went to pot w/all that boom-wickywickywicky harrumph harrumph harrumph.)

 

[its time w (your name)]

You say redneck like its a bad thing.

Account for those for whom it *is* a bad thing. It may explain a lot of radio's woes, whether directly or by association--and yes, that may even include ad-buyer woes. ...

(blah something ... blah blah blah... showing you my obscure hip-wit...blah blah....)

There you have it. REDNECKS! killed radio. HUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Who would have thought that Hee Haw was actually a subversive plot to undermine our way of life. Buck Owens seduced America's youth and perverted our values with his hay culture.

 

[adma]

You say redneck like its a bad thing.

Account for those for whom it *is* a bad thing. It may explain a lot of radio's woes, whether directly or by association--and yes, that may even include ad-buyer woes. ...

(blah something ... blah blah blah... showing you my obscure hip-wit...blah blah....)

There you have it. REDNECKS! killed radio. HUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Who would have thought that Hee Haw was actually a subversive plot to undermine our way of life. Buck Owens seduced America's youth and perverted our values with his hay culture.

Ah, but mind how the TV networks purged their rural comedies in one fell swoop around 1971--Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, et al. Sometimes, the stigma raises its stinkin' head.

And re the here and now, don't think that even if they weren't precisely "redneck", Don Imus and O+A weren't somehow damaged by association with the realm of the crass, or that they even negatively (albeit, in Imus's case, maybe tragically) highlighted said crassness in their turn...

 

[oaktree]

Anyone note the ads on the new web site? Cruise company, Lincoln-Mercury and Mercedes.

Yep, gotta blow off that over 50 crowd, right? They mean nothing to agencies... We've seen that, what, a hundred and eighty seven times here?

 

[OldiesCat]

OLDIES!

That's likely corporate dollarsl, depending on the website placement.

I'm sorry you feel slighted and underappreciated by the advertisers (NOT the agencies, since they take marching orders from their clients, who spend multi-millions of dollars each year researching who their consumers are and how to reach them) but turn your anger and frustration toward THEM, not us.

We do not decide whether they target 55+ consumers with radio or not.

 

[oaktree]

I must have missed that memo ...

 

[davideduardo]

Re: OLDIES!

That's likely corporate dollarsl, depending on the website placement.

Same ads rotate in and out on all the NY CBS properties. It's a blanket cluster deal, and has nothing to do with the new format.