Ok I really don't understand

[bobdavcav]

I really don't understand why people, especially on these boards, say radio is so boring today. Yes there's more voicetracking, but I would say that radio today is just about as interesting as it was in the 1980s. Case in point, I don't hear anything special about KIIS in the airchecks I've heard of it from 1989, and WBBM-FM doesn't sound much different presentation-wise than it did 30 years ago. In fact, I could probably argue they sound better today than they did 30 years ago. There are some stations that don't sound as good today as they did years ago, KBKS being an example. Back in 2008 and 2009, they sounded great! Now, they're kind of boring and the more rhythmic CHR has overtaken them by a significant margin. How can radio in general be considered boring today as compared to 30 years ago?

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Personal taste is very subjective. What is the proper color for a lady's dress? Which lady? What time of day? What event are dressing for?

Radio is like that. What is the proper sound for radio? Do you live in the city or out in the wide open spaces? Are you age 18 or maybe age 68?

You have to understand that some of us in conversations like this will try to tell you radio had already turned to crap by 1980... so how can it be any better or any worse today?

If you can remember radio you heard in the 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s... then what you have heard since the 1980s all sounds about the same. (I know it's NOT about the same... ) but if you are old enough to have any fondness for the earlier decades I have mentioned, you remember radio being so central, so delicious.

Then there are left-brain people and right-brain people. There are people who live for music... there are people who, as we say out in the country, "couldn't carry a tune in a bucket!"

I don't know that there is a scale to measure GOOD radio times and BAD radio times. We each know what we like... and what we dislike.

As my co-worker used to say... at least once a day... "Everybody to his own taste....said the farmer.... as he kissed his cow."
No, no, no. I really didn't say your favorite radio station is a cow!

 

[bobdavcav]

That's interesting. Maybe part of the problem today is radio is not the central part of life it once was. I am almost 20, so I would not remember anything before the mid-90s, although I've listened to a few airchecks from before I was born. It will be interesting what I think about this in 20 years.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

There are two things that pretty well come with "change guaranteed":

Your outlook and your tastes will change. My wife and I were married already when we were your age. We bought a full set of furniture (which I thought we would never get paid off!) and when I go through family photographs and see the furniture, I shake my head and grin. It was US! It was IN STYLE for the age. It pleased us very much. Actually I guess I don't GRIN when I look at those pictures... I laugh out loud.

The world in which you live will change. You can't go to a store anywhere and buy furniture that looks exactly like what we bought back then. So 20 years from now you will wake up some morning and there will things on your to do list: I want to listen to the radio. I want to eat breakfast. I want to go to work and impress my boss. I want to eat lunch out today rather than carry a brown bag to work. (Who knows... going to work may not be on your list. Work may be waiting for you in the next room at your work center/computer center. And you will start by turning on the radio and it will sound different than it does today. And you will be eating a new breakfast cereal or something because what you ate this morning is not available. And who knows what restaurants will be operating 20 years from now.

And you have a good chance that during your first 30 waking minutes you will bang your fist against the wall and yell: Why isn't there anything on the radio I want to listen to?

Finally you will make peace with your listening device. But 40 years from today you will go through that whole process all over again. Why can't I buy the same underwear any more? What is wrong with these companies anyway.

And if you are still "forked-end down" 60 years from now.... I have interesting news for you. You will have this same conversation all over again....

 

[LKellerIII]

As we grow older, nostalgia rears its head, and we all have a natural tendency to think "the old days" were the best days. When I was a kid, I used to roll my eyes when people in my parents' generation said things like "What's wrong with kids today..." or "(Fill in Blank) was so much better back then..." Now I catch myself doing it.

For me, I do remember - more in the 60s and 70s than the 80s, when radio had mostly live DJs, many of whom were funny or interesting. That's what made me listen - I could listen to music on LPs and singles...I didn't need radio for that. These days, it's even easier to get music - downloaded from the internet. So I have very little need for music radio - except to educate myself about new music, which I do periodically. Lately, I've been listening to Hip Hop station KMEL in the Bay Area, even though I'm decades out of that demographic.

But people forget - and as I recall, radio in the 80s was mostly boring - Much More Music, and DJs who may have been "live," but rarely opened the mic. People posting here like to blame it all on the deregulation in the 90s, but as I remember it, 80s radio was not great.

 

[Hot Hits]

"Radio Radio" (sometimes written "Radio, Radio") is a single by Elvis Costello and The Attractions released in the United Kingdom in October 1978. The song had already appeared on the US version of their second album, This Year's Model, released earlier that year. The song is a protest song concerning the commercialization of radio broadcasts and the power wielded by the recording studios and radio companies who decided what songs were heard over the airwaves, especially the more politically explicit side of punk rock. The lyrics claim, "You better shut up or get cut out/They don't wanna hear about it/It's only inches on the reel-to-reel" and "They don't give you any choice 'cause they think that it's treason," a veiled reference to the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen".[

 

[bobdavcav]

Come to think of it, it seems like personality-driven radio comes and goes. It seems like there was some good personalities in the early 2000s, but now it's gone back to more music.

 

[Tom Wells]

I so appreciated the feel of huge-sounding 50kw coffee-and-smoke powered big clear stations in the 60s and 70s,
that I wasn't satisfied until I could in some way maintain /italics/ this particular sound/italics off/ for my own enjoyment.

This took the form of pt 15 transmitters of many variations, tapes, CDs and eventually Zara Radio, Breakaway audio processor
and STILL a vacuum tube transmitter.

When I first heard the Elvis Costello song, it only confirmed what my instructors at VTI and Larry Lujack told me,
the radio biz is not what you'd ever imagine, and it's only becoming less so....

I will still put a 100 mw signal on the air that sounds like a slice of the days when radio was a lot more art than business.
Ahh, change......
For all the "change" I see touted, so much of it seems to be people simply buying blindly whatever the market shoves at them.

I do still hear good radio, and I was pleased to hear some of "What does the Fox Say" on WGN this morning on the way to work.

 

[jd]

I do still hear good radio, and I was pleased to hear some of "What does the Fox Say" on WGN this morning on the way to work.

I live in Texas and as a youngster I really enjoyed listening to WGN. Occasionally when I'm driving at night I still tune them in and generally like what I hear. The station had so many legendary personalities back in its "full service" days, and one of my favorite ID's ever: "This is WGN Chicago, radio home of millions throughout Mid-America." It could be argued that at the time, the statement was not unrealistic.