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Classic Hits: Evolution or Revolution?
- Thread starter semoochie
- Start date
semoochie said:
Short shelf life, as I noted in my post.
Basic problem: The song sounded like a plea for money, which it was. After a few weeks, you hit a point where there are two kinds of people: Those who've already donated and those who have no intention to. And neither group wants to hear the pitch anymore.
Once "Hands Across America" was over, that was it.
Yes, it seems that if singles sales peaked in 1974, and only slid from there onward, then Billboard was definitely way behind the curve in waiting until 1998 to drop the "must be released as a single" requirement for making the Hot 100.oldies76 said:
And if singles sales were already sliding, then the introduction of cassette singles and CD singles in the late '80s/early '90s was just a colossal waste of time and money.
The We Are the World album was basically a joke. It was larded with filler. Other than the title track, that is. Throwaway songs donated by artists involved with the project, generally songs that did not make the cut for those artists' own albums. (Although, I will say that Springsteen still performs "Trapped" in concert.) The Canadian artists' own charity song was also added to the collection.michael hagerty said:
By the way, I have that album in my collection. My sister bought it during her lifetime, and it was among some of the records that my brother-in-law gave me after my sister's death.
The "hands across America" event itself was also a joke. A logistical nightmare. I lived (at the time) in a town that it passed through, and there was some excitement there because of it, and I was glad to be able to say that I participated in it. (I think we may still have photos somewhere.)michael hagerty said:
Years later, I found the "Hands Across America" single in a thrift store. I picked it up, mainly because it had the picture sleeve with it. A little slice of history. "We Are the World" is on the b-side, and it is credited to the same "group" that sang "Hands Across America," but it is actually the USA for Africa version (again).
"We Are the World 2010" was an even bigger joke, for many of the same reasons that you (and others) gave here.
TheFonz said:
This thread has been about a lot more than "fixing" commercial radio.
First, the things that some people unfamiliar with the radio business, with ratings and with advertising sales believe are in contradiction with reality. Explaining that reality and trying to understand the concerns of certain format partisans makes for an interesting and lively exchange.
Second, since radio is still used by 19 out of every 20 people weekly, it appears to offer some significant benefits to users beyond just "being free". Perhaps it is the entertainment between the songs, the mix, the blend. Differing opinions help define this issue.
And then there are the issues with satellite: odd playlists that seem to always make every third song one we don't like, weak presentations, imaging and flow, horrible horizontal and vertical rotations... and the fact that most radio has always been heard in the home and workplace, where satellite has nearly zero penetration.
And the Internet: lack of a proven business model, asphyxiating royalties, restrictions on things like playing the same artist too often or doing artist sets, etc.
So there is a lot to discuss. Plus... it's fun.
firepoint525 said:
Pretty much. But the record labels were hoping that they could make a few bucks with an old idea in a couple of new formats, so they tried it.
As for Billboard and singles charts, something to keep in mind:
Until Casey Kasem started mentioning it every week from July, 1970 on, the public had no clue what Billboard was. Afterward, it would be more accurate to say they misunderstood what Billboard was, and that misunderstanding continues, to a degree, to this day.
Billboard was a trade magazine aimed at the industry, not consumers. And by "industry", that only barely included radio. The intended readers were recording and publishing executives, record distributors and promoters, rack jobbers that services the juke-box industry, and record store owners.
Out of 130 or so pages in a typical issue of Billboard, 5 or 6 (not counting the charts) had anything to do with radio (that number bumped up to 8-10 pages once Radio and Records showed that there was money in covering the radio business and GMs started dropping their Billboard subscriptions for R&R (both were wildly expensive...around $150 a year 40 years ago...something like $1,000 in today's dollars).
It was never intended to be a consumer news source reporting on the hit record charts the way Entertainment Weekly obsesses over the box office.
If there was a format for recorded sound, or a genre of music, no matter how marginal in sales, it was in Billboard's best interest to have a chart for it, because the record companies would buy ads in Billboard hoping to convince distributors and store owners to stock the record. Had Billboard dropped the physical single requirement, record labels wouldn't have had to buy ads to support that product (they were already buying ads to support the albums the singles came from. It would be a net loss).
The charts reported wholesale purchases of records by distributors and stores because you saw big movement quicker than counting retail sales to consumers. And Billboard's way, a million-seller stayed a million-seller...even if 900,000 didn't sell and were shipped back. And those chart anomalies? Like how a song could stay at #32 for two weeks but still keep its bullet (the little dot that indicated the record showed significant growth from last week)? One of the worst-kept secrets in the business was that a big enough ad buy could keep that bullet from vanishing.
Bottom line: Billboard had two purposes: To make money for Billboard and to sell product on the wholesale level.
michael hagerty said:
You bring up an excellent point.
Once we got Gavin, FMQB, Radio & Records, the Hamilton Report and other radio-centric chart and radio publications, it was not common to see Billboard at most radio stations.
In the 50's and 60's, Billboard and Cash Box did get station use, but mostly because there was little else. But stations did not want to see national charts... they wanted to see what other stations were adding, dropping and moving.
What I always found amusing was the considerable success of the Billboard radio conventions in the 70's... huge rooms full of programmers and wannabes, none of whom had a subscription to the sponsoring magazine.
DavidEduardo said:
Well, apart from Gavin, Billboard had the convention business all to themselves for a while. And not many jocks and PDs were going to pass up the chance to schmooze and network on the company's dime while the record companies took care of the food, drink and (in some cases) extra-cirriculars.
But the above just underlines why Billboard's charts aren't the equivalent of stone tablets carried down a mountainside by a man with a long beard. The charts were in the magazine not to show what was selling to record buyers, but to prompt record store owners (many of whom weren't going to stock 100 singles or 200 new albums) to buy and stock the songs.
In the news sections of the magazine, Billboard would acknowledge returns and sometimes give raw numbers, but never on a record-by-record basis. Usually it was industry-wide or (rarely) by label. Even as a 15-year old newbie, I looked at those stories in the front of the magazine, then at the charts in the back and knew that some of those returns were records that had been certified Gold, but that tens or even hundreds of thousands of returns would never be accounted for in such a way as to revise a peak chart number or rescind a Gold award.
Absolute truth? The only big Top 40 chart that I'd be confident was an accurate reflection of the market was WABCs from 1963 to 1976, when Rick Sklar was PD. If Rick played it, it was because it was being bought in large numbers by real people in the New York metro. Of course, that's why WABC's charts were usually 20-25 songs long during Rick's tenure and why WABC was frequently the last station to add a record. He waited to see what was really happening rather than buying into record company hype.
And...because I know I'll have to say it eventually...as reliable as those WABC charts were at the time in New York, they're meaningless there or anywhere else in 2013.
J
johnsummers
Guest
Guys, this is the best thread I've seen in a long time. Mr. Eduardo and Mr. hagerty are very knowledgeable, and not just because I agree with what they say ;D I find it curious that there are so many folks ready to jump on the grave of terrestrial radio, and prematurely, I might add. Is it what it used to be? No, then neither am I (lol)...things change and evolve. Will terrestrial radio last forever? Probably not. But these people who say...'it's over'...'stick a fork in it', puzzle me,
B
Biondi4Mayor
Guest
johnsummers said:
We're not saying radio is over really, just that we as listeners are unhappy with the current picture of classic hits radio.
Radio's longevity could be its own heated thread ;D
TheFonz said:
On AM, no doubt. Now that's a terrestrial radio segment I think everyone agrees is doomed.
CTListener said:
Yeah...it's spread. I tried to spend some time listening to WLS-FM online late at night a couple of weekends ago and they were running an info. Caught KOOL-FM in Phoenix doing the same in weekend overnights this past weekend. Ugly stuff.
Only problem with that is that I grew up in a small town in which the lone top 40 radio station there apparently treated Billboard like the "music bible." This station often would not add songs to their rotation until/unless they broke the top 40. Meanwhile, I could hear these yet-to-be-added songs over competing stations in nearby towns because their playlists weren't quite as tight. What, the station in my town apparently thought that we live in a vacuum and wouldn't hear certain songs unless they played them? How elitist is that?michael hagerty said:
I grew up about two hours away from Memphis, and it amazed me how the rural small-town stations could run as much as a month behind Memphis stations when it came to adding songs!
firepoint525 said:
Having lived in both a major city (Los Angeles), and a small town of 3,000 people growing up, and having started my career in that town, I can tell you part of that problem could have been in how they got their records in the first place.
Most small town stations couldn't get the record companies to send them free promo copies, so they bought or traded advertising for them at the local record store.
And what did record stores use to decide what records to stock (especially in a small town where there was only so much business)?
That's right: Billboard.
So those stores would wait until a record was #45 with a bullet, meaning it had a decent chance of making #40, and order the minimum 5 copies, which would show up in the mail in 10 days or two weeks...by which point the record was (hopefully) in the top 40.
If the radio station got its records from the record store, it had to wait until the record store had them first.
That's exactly how it was for years at KIBS in Bishop, California, where I started at age 15. A year later, the one record shop in town cancelled its trade agreement with the radio station, which didn't want to pay cash. I went to the GM, asked for permission to run up the long-distance bill for one month, made up a list of every record label and called them one by one to pitch for free record service.
Surprise: We may have been a town of 3,000, but we were (at the time) the only receivable daytime signal for 100 miles on a highway where 7 million people travelled annually to get from L.A. to Mammoth, Yosemite and Tahoe.
They all said yes.
The GM made me Music Director and a few months later PD (he'd always been all three). And apart from world exclusives promised to KHJ, I was getting the same records as the L.A. stations one day after they did.
Again, a rare stroke of good fortune. Most small market stations had to wait for the record store to get them first.
P.S.: Our newfound access to music led to the record store dealing with an increasing number of unhappy customers who heard us play songs and wanted to buy them but couldn't because the store was waiting on Billboard.
After a couple of months of that, the store approached us, wanting to revive our trade deal if we promised to only play records we got from them. No deal.
Eventually, they realized that they needed to listen to and be responsive to their customers, and they started calling me weekly to find out what records I was planning to add to the playlist that week and what I thought might be worthwhile in the week or two beyond. In exchange, they agreed to give me an accurate account of singles and LP sales as well as requests for items not in stock and special orders that had been placed in the past week. Win-win.
After a couple of months of that, the store approached us, wanting to revive our trade deal if we promised to only play records we got from them. No deal.
Eventually, they realized that they needed to listen to and be responsive to their customers, and they started calling me weekly to find out what records I was planning to add to the playlist that week and what I thought might be worthwhile in the week or two beyond. In exchange, they agreed to give me an accurate account of singles and LP sales as well as requests for items not in stock and special orders that had been placed in the past week. Win-win.
Interesting stories! I can give you one from the consumer's point of view.
There was an electronics store just a few miles from me which had enough wall space for the ENTIRE BILLBOARD HOT 100! They had wall slots for 100 different 45s! They usually had that weeks Hot 100 taped to a clipboard and it was right there on the counter if you wanted to check it out. Now needless to say, they did not necessarily have a record in every one of those 100 slots, because there were some that they maybe had not received yet, or sold out of, whatever.
But more interesting was that once a record had dropped off of the Hot 100, they would place it in a box full of deeply discounted 45s! I got several Bruce Springsteen 45s from the Born in the USA era that way, most of them with picture sleeves. So I would just wait for a song to drop off of the Hot 100, then go in there and get it discounted from that box! All I had to do was just search the box for the ones that I wanted.
There was an electronics store just a few miles from me which had enough wall space for the ENTIRE BILLBOARD HOT 100! They had wall slots for 100 different 45s! They usually had that weeks Hot 100 taped to a clipboard and it was right there on the counter if you wanted to check it out. Now needless to say, they did not necessarily have a record in every one of those 100 slots, because there were some that they maybe had not received yet, or sold out of, whatever.
But more interesting was that once a record had dropped off of the Hot 100, they would place it in a box full of deeply discounted 45s! I got several Bruce Springsteen 45s from the Born in the USA era that way, most of them with picture sleeves. So I would just wait for a song to drop off of the Hot 100, then go in there and get it discounted from that box! All I had to do was just search the box for the ones that I wanted.
I have often wondered what it is about an infomercial on radio that would keep people tuned in! With television, at least you have the visuals, but what do you have on radio? And I would imagine that if a listener tuned in and joined an infomercial in progress, that would be an immediate tune-out factor! After all, if they have just joined you, you haven't had a chance to build suspense in order to keep them listening!michael hagerty said:
I have mentioned this several times on here, but I once worked for a Christian talk station which scheduled infomercials at times like 10:30 on a Saturday morning. I didn't fault them for doing this, because they had to make the money to pay the bills, and this sold the otherwise unsold airtime. (Now you could make a case about a so-called "Christian" station doing this, but that is not where I am going, here.)
I remember the station receiving a fax from one of these infomercial vultures, basically complaining about the lack of response from their infomercial over our station. They swooped up (otherwise) unsold airtime, then wondered why they received no response? I don't even blame the infomercial vultures for reassessing their advertising, because even they would want to advertise somewhere where they might actually receive a response and maybe even make a sale or two. But they might want to ask themselves WHY that particular timeslot was unsold, rather than buying it (deeply discounted, of course) and then wondering why no one responded to their ad.
I used to do a weekend "program guide" for that station, in which I listed all the programs that aired all that day (on Saturday) and then again for Sunday. (This was obviously just a filler program itself, which might explain why we never did one for weekdays.) When one of the program guides got dropped (because it was no longer needed), I asked them to go ahead and drop the other one, too, because by then the weekends had too much infomercial advertising for me to work around. (These were prerecorded, and I usually updated them about once a month, so usually I had an actual program that I could mention, not "paid advertising.)
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