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Game Zone

Mark Roberts said:
After listening to part of it, I retract my "at least they tried something different" argument. There's more cheese on that thing than in a Wisconsin dairy.

Why anyone listened to Walter Sabo's advice after that, it's a wonder.
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A few years later, he was hired by a certain very large AM station in the east to advise it on what to program on weekends after it had moved from full-service AC to all-news on weekdays (with talk at night).

I swear to you on Edwin Armstrong's grave that the answer he provided was...

Smooth jazz.

Which he delivered in a conference room with a window overlooking the building next door that housed a full-power FM station that already programmed smooth jazz 24/7.
 
I will say that Magic 61 was his idea and it was an excellent Standards station---better for at least some of its run than what KMPC was doing, which I thought was terrific as well. How much of that credit goes to Walt and how much to the individual PDs like Dave Sholin, Phil Valentine, and Bob Hamilton, I can't say.

One of my favorite Walt Sabo stories was Bobby Ocean on the last Friday of KFRC's Top 40 format. Osh was doing 3-6 p.m. and he was being brutal about the upcoming format change.

Bobby had a little kid voice on cart---called the character "Little Beazer" and at one point in the afternoon, Bobby said:

"Hey, Beaz! Remember when you were learning to count?

(Voice: "I think I'm gonna be sick.")

No, no...you were learning to count and your uncle Walt Sabo was helping you and you said "Uncle Walt, what comes after 3?" And Walt said...







"Not Bobby Ocean!"

(SFX: rimshot)
 
fybush said:
A few years later, he was hired by a certain very large AM station in the east to advise it on what to program on weekends after it had moved from full-service AC to all-news on weekdays (with talk at night).

I swear to you on Edwin Armstrong's grave that the answer he provided was...

Smooth jazz.

Which he delivered in a conference room with a window overlooking the building next door that housed a full-power FM station that already programmed smooth jazz 24/7.
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That's definitely Max Bialystock territory.
 
Weiserguy said:
"Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
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I post about possibilities for the future of radio because I think it ought to be a worthy discussion. There is a Radio History forum at RD, and a similar idea at NYRMB, but maybe there needs to be a Radio Future board as well. I think an argument could be made, and I have suggested in in other posts, that history IS repeating itself. Unless radio learns from its past, it is heading for an uncertain future. In the 1950's TV challenged radio by taking away its audience and advertisers. In the internet age, the same thing has happened. In the earlier challenge, smart people figured out how to make radio relevant again and the medium had a fantastic rebirth. In the current onslaught, rather than thinking fresh, the response has been to cut, cut, and pare back some more. My non-professional suggestions are made in the hopes that people who do know how radio, audiences and advertisers work will start thinking about the next chapter.

I have been schooled here that radio needs to evolve, and on that score, I think the business is still in decent shape. Money and audience are still there, but the writing ought to be on the wall that new sources of each are going to be needed by the time Gen X ages out of advertiser interest. New thinking from advertisers might be needed as well. When I have asked before about what new ideas knowledgeable people might suggest, I get laughed at with "trade secret" remarks. I suspect I could call the bluff - there currently ARE no new ideas short of cutting back the tweaked playlist music/commercials radio we have today.

I had heard about the Game Zone idea from long ago, but until the link was posted here, had never seen anything about it. If I learn the lesson correctly, it was too much of a shock to a fading AM Rocker - lesson learned: Radio changes need to evolve, but maybe in smaller doses it would have helped instead of failing. And, taking the lessons learned into account, 40 years later can/should it be attempted again?

I think I have heard suggestions that 'radio' will simply be moving to the internet. Setting aside the question of what kind of a write off current broadcasters will need to take on all their investment in terrestrial infrastructure, I think an internet radio world will be a much smaller compartmentalized existence that earns a lot less money. The Miami Herald recently ran a story on a successful internet entertainer who is earning $3000 a month from 40000 Twitch followers and a couple of hundred from YouTube postings. That's still just $36K a year, and I bet major market radio pays talent more than that.


A standing question remains: What can Radio do to attract Millennials and GenZ ? To the Moderators: Would a Radio Future discussion forum be an idea?
 
SCMcKinney said:
I post about possibilities for the future of radio because I think it ought to be a worthy discussion. There is a Radio History forum at RD, and a similar idea at NYRMB, but maybe there needs to be a Radio Future board as well. I think an argument could be made, and I have suggested in in other posts, that history IS repeating itself. Unless radio learns from its past, it is heading for an uncertain future. In the 1950's TV challenged radio by taking away its audience and advertisers. In the internet age, the same thing has happened. In the earlier challenge, smart people figured out how to make radio relevant again and the medium had a fantastic rebirth. In the current onslaught, rather than thinking fresh, the response has been to cut, cut, and pare back some more. My non-professional suggestions are made in the hopes that people who do know how radio, audiences and advertisers work will start thinking about the next chapter.

I have been schooled here that radio needs to evolve, and on that score, I think the business is still in decent shape. Money and audience are still there, but the writing ought to be on the wall that new sources of each are going to be needed by the time Gen X ages out of advertiser interest. New thinking from advertisers might be needed as well. When I have asked before about what new ideas knowledgeable people might suggest, I get laughed at with "trade secret" remarks. I suspect I could call the bluff - there currently ARE no new ideas short of cutting back the tweaked playlist music/commercials radio we have today.

I had heard about the Game Zone idea from long ago, but until the link was posted here, had never seen anything about it. If I learn the lesson correctly, it was too much of a shock to a fading AM Rocker - lesson learned: Radio changes need to evolve, but maybe in smaller doses it would have helped instead of failing. And, taking the lessons learned into account, 40 years later can/should it be attempted again?

I think I have heard suggestions that 'radio' will simply be moving to the internet. Setting aside the question of what kind of a write off current broadcasters will need to take on all their investment in terrestrial infrastructure, I think an internet radio world will be a much smaller compartmentalized existence that earns a lot less money. The Miami Herald recently ran a story on a successful internet entertainer who is earning $3000 a month from 40000 Twitch followers and a couple of hundred from YouTube postings. That's still just $36K a year, and I bet major market radio pays talent more than that.


A standing question remains: What can Radio do to attract Millennials and GenZ ? To the Moderators: Would a Radio Future discussion forum be an idea?
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Below 30---and really, maybe even 35---you can't get them to make a phone call on their phones. You're not going to get them to listen to radio.
 
michael hagerty said:
Below 30---and really, maybe even 35---you can't get them to make a phone call on their phones. You're not going to get them to listen to radio.
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Well maybe with the exception of calling the folks (i.e., parents or grandparents) so they can actually hear that you haven't yet died.
 
michael hagerty said:
Below 30---and really, maybe even 35---you can't get them to make a phone call on their phones. You're not going to get them to listen to radio.
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It's interesting. 150 years ago, the telephone began to replace writing letters to communicate. Now, using the phone in the same way has been supplanted by the modern equivalency of writing letters!
 
semoochie said:
It's interesting. 150 years ago, the telephone began to replace writing letters to communicate. Now, using the phone in the same way has been supplanted by the modern equivalency of writing letters!
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I should freak out my kids....dig out one of my Mom's old letters and text them in that style:


"Dearest (name),

I hope this text finds you well and happy. Many are the times you cross my mind.

Mr. Jenkins, down the street---you know, the man with the lovely roses---passed away last week..."



You know, just four or five meaty pages of stuff of zero relevance to their lives written in the style of someone taught how to write a letter in 1930.




THAT'LL get a phone call! Might be to the authorities for a welfare check, but still...
 
michael hagerty said:
I should freak out my kids....dig out one of my Mom's old letters and text them in that style:


"Dearest (name),

I hope this text finds you well and happy. Many are the times you cross my mind.

Mr. Jenkins, down the street---you know, the man with the lovely roses---passed away last week..."



You know, just four or five meaty pages of stuff of zero relevance to their lives written in the style of someone taught how to write a letter in 1930.




THAT'LL get a phone call! Might be to the authorities for a welfare check, but still...
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At the end did she write, "You know, Old Rivers died"? :LOL:
 
semoochie said:
Imagine a time when a song like that could actually make the top five!
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When you look at the rest of the chart for the week it peaked, it makes some sense.

Not a lot---just some:

Hot100 / 1962-05-26

Billboard Chart Database / ビルボードチャートデータベース
elpee.jp elpee.jp

Brennan was a regular on the TV show "The Real McCoys", which was in its final season when the record hit. The year prior, the show was #5. It ranked 14th in its final season.
 
TheBigA said:
Are you talking about the device or a station? Because for them, the device doesn't exist. Perhaps therein lies the problem.
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I think I am talking about the station, or at least the destination that the desirable demos can be congregated to. I would think advertisers will really only pay big money for sizable audiences on whatever platform. If internet Radio has a lot of small audiences all over the place, will advertisers be interested in buying that? It seems to me successful talent on internet Radio will be the ones making SOME money, just nothing compared to what an OTA radio group of stations would give them, since with OTA advertisers will know what audience they are buying.

Does the PPM work on internet broadcasts and streams? I think the internet can give data of how many listen, and where, but not firm demographic data.
 
semoochie said:
Imagine a time when a song like that could actually make the top five!

Weiserguy, are you from Weiser Idaho? The song to which you refer is "Old Man River", singular, as shown in your link.
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No, I've never lived in Idaho. (Though my brother used to.) "Weiserguy" is a riff on my last name.

My "Old Man Rivers" comment was riffing on both a fellow participant (whose screen name is Michael Rivers Kramer) as well as the comment in #53 from @radiofan2023:
radiofan2023 said:
At the end did she write, "You know, Old Rivers died"?
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So both came together in that reference. But I also know the song Old Man River from Paul Robeson's marvelous recording of it I've had since college. (The album it's on is probably older than me.)
 
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