rbrucecarter5 said:
Show me how many ad buyers care about how many children listen to radio? And don't give me Radio Disney...it's there for branding purposes, not so much to be an advertising success.
Look...oldies has appeal. And certainly, the music by the Beatles continues to be popular among all age groups. The 50's, though...has waned...not that it means it should be totally lost among these stations. But the changes made by stations to push the format into the 70's and 80's was dictated by the advertisers, which is really my point. Stop blaming the PD's and Corporate and "young jocks who don't know the music". Every bit of that is simple BS. The advertisers dictated it.
And, to the others: voice tracking, I contend, can still allow for personality...if...(and it's the big if), those who do it know their audience and take the time to go for a connection with them. It's just that today, the connection is not a request line...it's social media like Facebook, and the personal touch on the street.
I loved stations like KHJ, too, guys. They were fantastic stations in their times. (I still remember the chill I got on an 80 plus degree day in southern California on my first vacation from radio, walking into the lobby on Melrose Avenue in 1975. No, I was too young and, frankly too scared to even think I was good enough to apply for a job there. I just wanted to see what it looked like.)
The KHJ's are just never coming back in their original form. I say, instead of whining about their loss, we as an industry need to do what radio has always done...take what we learned from those great jocks and apply it to the needs of modern day broadcasting. And do it in :40 seconds or less. Morgan? Steele? They could do it. Listen to the airchecks.
The PPM is the modern day Bill Drake, if you really think about it. Its' rules are the same. Keep the music flowing, keep the chatter to a minimum...but entertain. What a lot of today's jocks have forgotten (or never learned)...is that this is still "show business". OK, I agree this is frowned upon in some companies, but a long time ago, a wise PD turned GM once taught me that "you have to know when to break the rules". The real entertainers of the future will follow that dictate.