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Petty Complaints About 107.9 The Track

B

badstevie

Guest
I've found myself listening to The Track a lot lately because I like the music. I Like hearing the 70s and 80s titles mixed in with some newer stuff, but a couple things sound really sloppy to me:

I don't mind the automatic back-announce voice or whatever they call it, but there are many, many mistakes with this system. The wrong song is often back-anounced, and worse, the song or artist name is sometimes just wrong. Yesterday I heard it say "Pete Townshend, Let Love Open The Door." Bzzzz. Wrong. Or this one: "Party All The Time, Rick James and Eddie Murphy." Wrong again. There are lots like that. This may be a minor complaint, but if you're a fan of an artist and they get it wrong...well, it makes it seem like the radio station doesn't know what it's talking about.

Also, they back-announce all the old familiar songs, but then they rarely use it on new or more obscure titles. Okay, everybody knows who did "Every Breath You Take," and they'll backsell that, but then next they'll play a newer release you may not be familiar with and neither the jock or the auto-voice will identify it. Well, what's the point of this tagging thing if you're not going to identify ALL the songs? Sloppy.

And what's with these weird liners that say stuff like "This song's for all the Nobles in Noblesville?" Or "This one's for all the Crawfords in Crawfordsville?" I don't get this. Is this supposed to be "local content?'' If you want to do do local reference, give us something funny or topical about these towns! Doesn't make sense.

So, answer me this: Who's programming this? Is Willie B. still there? Haven't heard him lately. I suspect this station is being neglected and just waiting for a format change. Too bad, cause I'll miss the music.
 
I was wondering about Willie B. myself.

Scott Sands in disguise is featured on the video pre-roll that plays when you log in to their website. Maybe he's in charge again. Sands handled the programming after Tom Watson was let go and before Willie B. did those duties.
 
Willie B moved to Memphis a couple of months ago. He was voice tracking a shift for an Entercom station in that market...he moved there and has been voice tracking his shift here up until earlier this month..He is no longer doing anything for the Track, now all Memphis.

bobh
 
I've had a question about 107.9 in Indy ever since Entercom bought the station several years ago. When Mystar owned it & it was WTPI, the station had a very clean signal. It sounded very good. However, ever since Entercom has owned the station its signal has sounded muddy or muffled. Did Entercom make equipment changes that made the air quality worse? I know absolutely nothing about engineering or the the final steps that the sound goes through before hitting the airwaves, but The Track's signal is muddy & muffled and I've never listened to the station for that reason alone.
 
And now, a couple more friendly corrections for the people cutting and producing the auto-back-announce liners on 107.9 The Track. Heard these recently:

The Elvis song is "Jailhouse Rock," not "THE Jailhouse Rock." One of the greatest songs in rock & roll history. Gotta get this one right.

The lead singer of Scandal is Patty Smyth, with a long "I" sound. "Patti Smith" is a different singer. Very different.

The Fleetwood Mac song "Rhiannon" is pronounced "re-AN-en," not "re-AHN-en." You're thinking of the singer.

"Your Mama Don't Dance" is by Loggins and Messina, not "Jim Messina and Kenny Loggins." Close, but not exactly right.

"December 1963" was billed as just "The Four Seasons" and not "Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons."

Yeah, I know, I'm getting fussy here, but I want you to know that I'm giving you these not because I hate the station, but because I like the station and want to hear it sound better. People look to a radio station (or used to anyway) as the authority on music. Hurts your credibility if we get these little things wrong.
 
I'm out of the market but I wondered if they were using that "Text To Speech" website that AT&T labs has. If they are, I sure hope they're paying for it. Friend of mine found out the hard way that they will find out if you're using it for broadcast and they will not be thrilled about it unless you're buying it.
 
Maybe Bob should have protested that he was being hassled by the man. Great way to get invited to the white house for a beer.
 
107.9 is an amateur player in this market. They do things half-a**ed and maybe that is why Hoover got the boot.
With something like the song tagging, it doesn't cost any money. It just means that someone is lazy and doesn't care to update the new songs or check that artist and title are correct.


btw, who's Bob Dylan?
 
bhorner said:
Willie B moved to Memphis a couple of months ago. He was voice tracking a shift for an Entercom station in that market...he moved there and has been voice tracking his shift here up until earlier this month..He is no longer doing anything for the Track, now all Memphis.

bobh
Click to expand...

Wow, I wondered what happened to Willie B. Well there goes the last DJ I liked on the track. I guess they still have J.C. on Saturday nights. Also I feel the same about the same as badstevie about the track. I really like the musical variety but the programming is horrible. I think they would do much better if they just switched to a "Jack FM" type station.

BTW who is doing afternoons now that Willie is gone?
 
Sounds like Kelli Jack is doing afternoons now, and they're jockless for mid-days.

Here's another painfully wrong tag that I heard yesterday: "Let 'Em In, Paul McCartney and The Wings." Really guys? The Wings?

I can't blame the voice-over woman doing the tagging. She may be young and may have never heard of "Wings" or "Jailhouse Rock," but I agree it's sloppy programming all around.

The "Saturday Night Live" show with JC is well done, with lots of phoners and requests. HOWEVER, they make such a big deal about how "That's right, we are LIVE! Tonight we are LIVE! All that does is point out to listeners that they're not live the rest of the week. It should sound like this all week.
 
"The Track", i'm not sure you could call what they're doing RADIO.
 
bigtime said:
Oh ok. I think i understand. the Track 107.9 is owned by the Cosa Nostra.
Click to expand...

i don't care who owns them, i still don't think what they're doing is anything one could call Radio.
 
badstevie said:
"December 1963" was billed as just "The Four Seasons" and not "Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons."
Click to expand...

You are right on most of what you said, but nowhere do I see the song, "December 1963" (which started life as "December 5th, 1933" for the night prohibition died) billed as "Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons."

Here's a YouTube video with the 45 playing... it doesn't have Frankie Valli on it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8QFNrTq9oo
 
badstevie said:
"December 1963" was billed as just "The Four Seasons" and not "Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons."
Click to expand...

Technically you are right, but you have to be careful about technicalities. Sometimes being technical doesn't fly over too well with younger programmers. They don't really give a crap about what was going on when these records were originally released.

With that being said, It was actually the Phillips label that separated Frankie Valli from the rest group by labeling the songs "Featuring the "sound" of Frankie Valli". This kind of stuck with the public and that informally morphed into Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. It was a common thing to say. Not technically accurate but became common, and because of that programmers will defend its accuracy.

A lot of todays programmers don't know in-depth information when it comes to these classic hits and they go by today's billing of the music. If Rhino Records says they are Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (and they do by the way) then by God that's who they are.

Originally this song was billed by Warner/Curb as: The Four Seasons - December 1963 (Oh, What a Night).
 
Yeah, as I said, I knew I was being fussy with that one, and that's one I'd have let slide if there weren't so damn many other mistakes. I mean I heard them back-sell "re-AHN-en" by Fleetwood Mac again today. Well, that's not getting technical; that's getting the name of the song wrong over and over! Same thing with "Let Love Open My Door" How exactly does love open Pete Townshend's door? Wait, don't answer that. Anyway, all you have to do is listen to the song and you should get it right.

My point is that if radio can't even get the very basics correct, like song title and artist, then that just adds to the feeling that radio is in decline. Doesn't cost much to get it right. Look 'em up online.

If you think the Four Seasons thing is getting too technical, I won't bothering telling you how much I hate it when she says "Thu Eagles" instead of "THEE Eagles." It's a Hoosier thing, I know. We don't pronounce the long "E" of "the" before a vowel.
 
badstevie said:
My point is that if radio can't even get the very basics correct, like song title and artist, then that just adds to the feeling that radio is in decline.
Click to expand...

I'm totally with you on that. It's more than a feeling though, it's a symptom of radio actually declining. No doubt some of those songs were downloaded off of the net from a user with the title wrong and they didn't care to research it. The jocks probably aren't listening while the songs are playing either. Radio isn't what it used to be when it was actually hard to stump a DJ musically, and when being a jock was an art form and taken more seriously. Just a bunch of kids within those 'classic hits' formats with ambitious of doing something else far removed from radio.
 
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