Tim said:
Bongwater...I'm afraid what you said in your last post is true. It sucks...but, it's the way it is.
I don't know if you work, or have ever worked in radio. But, if you do/did, you'd know that many of us hate the way things are.
But, the blunt reality radio is a business that now serves a dumbed-down population, with way too many sources of information and entertainment...where "time famine" is a silly, but real thing. People feel overwhelmed, rushed, and for some reason want their radio really, really safe and predictable.
If you want to do radio for fun or to be highly creative...expect to earn much less money because you're reaching a much, much smaller audience.
If you want high-quality programming and still make a decent, above average income...be preparred to work your ass off with small businesses, whom like Chuck said, may want to advertise enough to make it work, but just don't have the money or willingness to invest over the long haul in order to do so.
It's simply is a reflection of the relative intelligence and intellect of the average listener and the economic environment we live in today.
I was in the biz during the '90s. But when the consolidation craze took over, it just got harder and more miserable dealing with the egotistical minds that reigned over me. I had better things to do.
Now some of those same people who shoved me out of my career have also been downsized out of the biz themselves exactly the same way they did me in (karma's a b-tch.) But beyond the occasional volunteer gig at the local college station, I really am happier watching it all far apart from the sidelines than directly underneath it. I mean, Phyllis Stark writes a column on this board called Life After Radio, chronicling the new lives of former radio pros in careers outside of radio. Some of these people were at the peak of their radio careers when it all fell apart for them and the frustration of finding new radio industry jobs was just too much. I can relate.
If this column is not a FLAMING indicator of what's happened to this business, I don't know what is. But for every success story, there's also a few people who self destructed or committed suicide - especially if radio work is the ONLY thing they know. Ted Williams got lucky (and almost blew it), but not many former broadcasters actually get that second chance today.
Tim said:
As a babyboomer, I certainly miss the music of the 60's, 70's, even 80's....at least the pop/top 40/AC stuff that most stations ignore.
Even if you're a believer in only "playing the hits", there's about 2,000 legitimate hits from those 3 decades....most of which you rarely if ever hear on radio in 2012.
The problem comes when you try to earn a living owning a radio station that plays music from parts of those decades: it's difficult for the reasons we've all listed in the past few posts.
To me, the 2nd best-answer to simply turning on the radio to hear the music I love best is an MP3 player. Yes, as an upper-half baby boomer, I listen mainly to an MP3 player in my car because other than talk (which I really don't like all that much...too much b.s. politics), and sportstalk occassionally, I rarely listen to radio in 2012.
I'd likely listen to Chuck's stations occassionally, but I'm not in Texas and don't have internet access in my car and data rates for streaming radio stations via smart phones are still crazy.
Radio is so boring in 2012 IMHO, it makes you long for even the 1980's...when at least "light rock, less talk" played a lot of the music we all like! We thought radio was bad in the 80's...comparred to now, it was great then.
The music itself today isn't really the problem. It's for it's own time. And there's even some good amongst the dreck.
But Madonna is a good analogy to the problem with radio. She's trying to sell herself today as something hip and edgy to a generation that already knows her from their parents music collection. Yet Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Neil Young and many others did the same thing
without compromising what made them famous in the first place. When I think of Madonna, I think of some of her most enduring pop songs, not an embarrassingly bad electronic dance music diva in her mid 50s who apes ecstacy. And that's how we want to see her.
When I think of radio, I think of personalities with local awareness, music that is familiar but not too predictable and news and talk based on FACTS, not insinuating, negative and baseless gossip from questionable sources. Voicetracked automation has replaced the personality, the music is predictable to the point of stale (no matter how old or how new it is) and the ART of radio is pretty much gone by the wayside for (as mentioned before) cheap hype that SCREAMS for attention. Or canned formats by numbers, cookie cutter "brand names", et al.
And I don't blame that on the listeners. They didn't ask for it. But a few stations started doing it and got lucky. Then other stations started imitating those stations and even more stations started imitating the others until it's gotten to the point where that's pretty much all there is now in most areas.
Older listeners can't stand it. Younger ones think it's irrelevant to them. Simple as that.
It's no wonder mobile streaming radio is getting so popular. At least on the web, there are alternatives to this.
Back when it was on FM 100.9, it was often in the top 10 and would also take listeners from sister B95.5...