New KOOL HD-3

[EricStein]

Huh? What do you think Yacht Rock is? 27 songs that fit one mood. I hope you're paying for it.

I take it you work in sales. Maybe at a national rep firm.

I said that I wanted to end the argument. People like you who think the radio industry is just fine as it is with its lack of risk taking and love of vanilla formats is absolutely what’s wrong with today’s radio. I’ll stop (and you should as well) before this gets into “take it outside” territory.

 

[landtuna]

So many boomers have as close to 35 years of on-line experience... and we know a bit about the subject.

Damn right! My online "experience" began in 1969. Granted, it was mainframe dial-up but that's 50 years this past month.

 

[CTListener]

While streaming is newer, many of "us" boomers began to explore the Internet early on with products like the 1994 "Internet in a Box" software package. (I wish I had save the package... right down to its corrugated cardboard box packaging!)

The internet came to my workplace in late 1995, and I gave WebTV a try for a taste of the new medium at home in early 1997. You could stream audio with WebTV, but it had to be RealAudio 2.0 or earlier, and 24kbps or less! Of course, Microsoft wound up buying WebTV and corporate warfare with Real Networks and Sun Microsystems meant (1) no further upgrades to the device's RealAudio compatibility, meaning most streams became unusable within months; and (2) no implementation of Java, which had been promised by the old ownership, but there was no way Sun was going to work on anything that would benefit Microsoft. I got my first "real" computer in 1999.

WebTV was a very good idea, but was before its time and was hamstrung by Microsoft's prickly relationships with the rest of the industry. From smart TVs to Chromecast, its legacy can be seen in millions of homes today.

 

[KeithE4]

Damn right! My online "experience" began in 1969. Granted, it was mainframe dial-up but that's 50 years this past month.

So you were the first guy Al Gore was able to connect to when he invented the Internet?

 

[CTListener]

Damn right! My online "experience" began in 1969. Granted, it was mainframe dial-up but that's 50 years this past month.

In 1969? Internet? Really? Are you talking about some military proto-ARPAnet thing?

 

[TheBigA]

I take it you work in sales. Maybe at a national rep firm.

Nope

People like you who think the radio industry is just fine as it is with its lack of risk taking and love of vanilla formats is absolutely what’s wrong with today’s radio.

You don't want radio. You want a free personal music service that plays only the songs and styles you want. You love vanilla, as long as it's YOUR vanilla. If you wanted to take risks, you'd venture outside that narrow subgenre of 70s soft AC. No risks there at all. You already know the songs.

 

[KeithE4]

Many boomers were in their 40s and 50s when the internet came into their lives, either as something they were introduced to at work or something they or their kids were fascinated by. I'm 63, got on the internet when I was 42 -- and I was late to the game even then!

Point is, more boomers are likely to know about streaming than you think.

I got on the Internet via Compuserve in 1997. One of the first things I attempted to do was listen to streaming audio via RealPlayer on Windows 95. Since my PC at the time was a 386 with 4 Mb RAM and a dialup, it only worked sometimes. But the point is that I was already trying it as soon as I was able to connect. So were others my age -- inside the prime Sacred Sales Demo in 1997. Streaming has never been just for kids.

 

[davideduardo]

In 1969? Internet? Really? Are you talking about some military proto-ARPAnet thing?

He said "mainframe dial-up" not Internet.

Dial-up is not necessarily "internet". AOL, BIX, Prodigy and CIS all incorporated pre-consumer Internet services, but none of which migrated very successfully from the dial-up model to the high speed web.

(Later edit / addition) The pre-1991 services had hooks into the pre-consumer internet, but were not, per se, Internet servicer providers. They had their own proprietary systems which began totally independent of the Internet.

I installed an IBM mini (System 32) in 1975, and it had very limited dial-up diagnostic abilities. Unfortunately, due to the very poor telephone infrastructure where I had it installed (Guaynabo, PR), we could not use that ability. But the technology existed as Landtuna says.

 

[CTListener]

You love vanilla, as long as it's YOUR vanilla.

And there was nothing -- EVER -- more vanilla than soft '70s AC. I'm absolutely astounded that people on this board miss it so much and think that it's a crime that they're not hearing Air Supply and Atlanta Rhythm Section and Barry Manilow and Player on their radios anymore. Such passion for passionless pop. SMH.

 

[CTListener]

I got on the Internet via Compuserve in 1997. One of the first things I attempted to do was listen to streaming audio via RealPlayer on Windows 95. Since my PC at the time was a 386 with 4 Mb RAM and a dialup, it only worked sometimes. But the point is that I was already trying it as soon as I was able to connect. So were others my age -- inside the prime Sacred Sales Demo in 1997. Streaming has never been just for kids.

My early streaming discoveries were New Orleans jazz and blues on WWOZ and an excellent weekend folk program on WKSU in Ohio. Pretty sure WWOZ is still on the Net playing the music that was born in and around Louisiana, even if it's of much more interest to genre specialists and tourists than the residents of the station's listening area.

 

[KeithE4]

He said "mainframe dial-up" not Internet.

Dial-up is not necessarily "internet". AOL, BIX, Prodigy and CIS were all pre-consumer Internet services, none of which migrated very successfully from the dial-up model to the web.

I installed an IBM mini (System 32) in 1975, and it had very limited dial-up diagnostic abilities. Unfortunately, due to the very poor telephone infrastructure where I had it installed (Guaynabo, PR), we could not use that ability. But the technology existed as Landtuna says.

But if it was in 1969, it probably was on the ARPANET (which was shut down in 1990). The general public wasn't allowed on the modern Internet until Al Gore "invented it," aka sponsored the bill that allowed the public to access it, in 1991. Streaming didn't exist until a couple of years later.

 

[TheBigA]

And there was nothing -- EVER -- more vanilla than soft '70s AC.

Most of the complaints that I see about radio are really about music. And if you follow the hardened attitudes about music, they parallel a lot of the other hardened values in other areas. Music used to unite and now it divides, just like everything else.

 

[davideduardo]

But if it was in 1969, it probably was on the ARPANET (which was shut down in 1990). The general public wasn't allowed on the modern Internet until Al Gore "invented it," aka sponsored the bill that allowed the public to access it, in 1991. Streaming didn't exist until a couple of years later.

But dial-up boards and services like CIS, Prodigy, AOL predated 1991 by nearly a decade (even more for business use such as the original Compuserve services). Many of those sources allowed file transfers (at very low bitrates, for sure)

 

[davideduardo]

But if it was in 1969, it probably was on the ARPANET (which was shut down in 1990). The general public wasn't allowed on the modern Internet until Al Gore "invented it," aka sponsored the bill that allowed the public to access it, in 1991. Streaming didn't exist until a couple of years later.

I know the diagnostics of my stations' IBM System 32 in 1975 were just a telephone connection with modems at either end. It had nothing to do with ARPANET. Our parent company, a supermarket operator, had used this technology with IBM for their 360 mainframe for many years prior to that.

 

[EricStein]

I apologize for turning this thread into a hot mess. Yes, my taste in music is diverse. Yes, I do have some odd interests. Yes, I know there will never be another station in town that plays soft AC from the ‘70s and ‘80s. I just feel that most modern music from all genres has a lot to be desired. Sure there’s some good new music, it’s just hard to find on traditional radio.

And yes, you can laugh at Christopher Cross music being one of my guilty pleasures.

 

[KeithE4]

Most of the complaints that I see about radio are really about music. And if you follow the hardened attitudes about music, they parallel a lot of the other hardened values in other areas. Music used to unite and now it divides, just like everything else.

So why is that? I'm guessing that it was the invention/discovery of Sacred Sales Demos in both radio and TV, starting in the late 1960s or early '70s, that fragmented the audience.

 

[TheBigA]

So why is that? I'm guessing that it was the invention/discovery of Sacred Sales Demos in both radio and TV, starting in the late 1960s or early '70s, that fragmented the audience.

Was that a cause or an effect? Because it was around that same time that music itself became fragmented, as evidenced by the number of Grammy categories. The explosion of this new genre called rock & roll, named in the mid 50s. Then the splintering of rock itself in the 60s and 70s. It didn't take long before there were more Grammy categories than there were radio stations. As I said, it's often a discussion more about music than radio.

 

[KeithE4]

Was that a cause or an effect? Because it was around that same time that music itself became fragmented, as evidenced by the number of Grammy categories. The explosion of this new genre called rock & roll, named in the mid 50s. Then the splintering of rock itself in the 60s and 70s. It didn't take long before there were more Grammy categories than there were radio stations. As I said, it's often a discussion more about music than radio.

Yes, but at least until the early 1970s or so, Top 40 radio played music from many different genres: Rock of several varieties, jazz/pop instrumentals (especially prior to about 1970), some country, moldy oldies, and even gospel records in some Midwestern and Southern markets. IIRC, fragmentation really started taking off in 1975 or thereabouts, when the decline of rock on Ancient Modulation was beginning to ramp up.

 

[davideduardo]

So why is that? I'm guessing that it was the invention/discovery of Sacred Sales Demos in both radio and TV, starting in the late 1960s or early '70s, that fragmented the audience.

Until the end of The Golden Age of radio (kind of concurrent with the lifting of the TV Freeze in 1953), radio was a family medium and listening was household based. Ratings did not have demos.

As radio stations separated into "types" (MOR, CHR, r&b, Country) with single music formats all through the day, we also got new ratings systems. Starting in the mid-60's with ARB, we got data on ages and gender. Marketers now could pick the stations that best matched their sales profiles (which they were zeroing in on by doing research such as Pantry Checks and Omnibus in-home product surveys).

Both Nielsen and ARB similarly started giving more granular TV data, motivated by the increased marketing skills of national advertisers who wanted to reach specific buying groups and now had the proprietary research to determine what those groups were.

So we could say that the improvements in consumer research created the demands for targeted media in radio and targeted shows on TV.

But that did not, of itself, cause music fragmentation.

Top 40 began as a broad spectrum "hits of any kind" format ranging from James Brown to The Browns to The Archies to Bobby Vinton to Andy Williams to Iron Butterfly, Horst Jankowski and Claude King... all on the same station.

As FM developed, pushed in '67 by the FCC's new simulcast prohibitions, stations owned by profitable AM cash cows looked for formats that would not compete with existing profit centers. We got everything from a flood of Beautiful Music stations to progressive rock initially, and then oldies, AC ("chicken rock"), AOR, country, urban and more. Those formats took elements of existing formats and gave listeners a chance to have choices where they liked most of the songs a lot, where old Top 40 was "I like every other song... but some I hate".

An example was Cleveland. In the late 50's, there were 3 formats on the 8 AM stations: MOR, Top 40 and r&b. By the early 70's, there were a dozen formats spread over about 20 stations that could be considered competitive. Listeners who had few choices before (and then only "which of the Top 40's do I like best?") now had several stations where nearly everything was to their liking.

As a consequence of more targeted music, listeners did not hear lots of songs that, were it a decade prior, they would have heard.

I looked at a year-end chart from 1959 at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1959

About a third of the songs are ones I never liked. Another third are ones I tolerated. Only one in three was a song I really liked. So when I listened to WHK or WERE or WKYC/KYW, I'd either dial-hop or put up with two-thirds of the songs that I did not care for. Had I remained in the market, a decade or so later not only would I not have to put up with the equivalent of Happy Organ or Lavender Blue, I would never have heard them as I would have settled on a station that would not have played them.

But remember, the same thing happened with everything from cars to breakfast cereals... more choices as marketing departments rather than manufacturing started determining what products to sell. The Edsel, after all, was introduced with no research, no marketing input and no consumer feedback. The same thing was happening with music and radio formats.

 

[landtuna]

So you were the first guy Al Gore was able to connect to when he invented the Internet?

Never met the man but it was Milnet way back then.