• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

R.I.P. Morning Talent (Are the days of good morning shows officially over?)

W

Wildstyle K

ARE THE DAYS OF GOOD MORNING SHOWS OFFICIALLY OVER?

This has been a question that recently seems to have begun to roam freely in my subconscious for some time now, but I've just been failing to introduce the topic here. However, now with certain recent events in mind, those thoughts have now begun to solidify to the point where I must come out and ask the question:

ARE THE DAYS OF GOOD MORNING SHOWS OFFICIALLY OVER?

Just look at what has been going on these past few months / years. It seems that all the top well known morning shows for multiple formats have been coming to a close these days with no one ever being able to find replacements to top them, and a few stations have even resorted to just doing music mornings. It seems like in 2 0 1 0 and beyond, this entire decade may bring a new style in radio show arrangement formatting.. Are we pretty much done with traditional morning shows? Has it come to the point where we'll only be mediocre at best, with only the remaining shows that are still fully intact being the ones to rule the airwaves in popularity? And what will happen once those that are still around are gone as well? It seems like

IN 2010, THINGS ARE HAPPENING. A LOT OF ACTION IS TAKING PLACE.

My question is:
Is all this a beginning to a new trend in radio? Is it all temporary? Or is this a sign of things to come long term, 2010-2019, starting now and lasting until the next big advancement in broadcasting technology takes over? ..And lets say that Internet Radio does become the next big thing. Will it make sense to still have a morning show, using the handle "Morning Show" when it's obvious that in many timezones it may not be morning? The old days of Soap Opera's on t.v. seem to be falling apart these days. Will morning radio be like the "modern soap opera" of radio?

"Like time passing through an hour glass, so are the morning shows of our state."
~ KDM
 
Interesting conversation. I believe this may be true, but only for music radio. Morning personalities on music stations are not only fighting PPM methodology but also new technology that is in the long run, potentially the most hurtful to music radio. It is probable the bigger stars and more talented personalities will migrate to spoken word formats, but still, these stars must learn to evolve, remain topically relevant, embrace new technology and learn to use it to their advantage. Radio is far from dead, but it is up to creative minds and top air talent to drive it successfully into a new era. Change is good!! In general, radio has become stale as management has cut costs and killed on-air product quality. Accept the current struggles and poor state of personality radio as a lesson to be learned, and look at the future as a bright opportunity!
 
Here's something to consider...

The days of high-dollar morning shows are every bit as over as the days of high-dollar sitcoms on television.

Remember the 1990s?

NBC had sitcoms like "Friends" and "Seinfeld" where each cast member had a seven figure paycheck for each episode.

CBS and Fox figured out that they could pay one cast member a seven figure paycheck for an entire season of Survivor or American Idol.

The future of morning radio is a person who can deliver a seven figure morning show on a six figure budget.
 
High dollar morning shows are still available for top proven talent but only in spoken word formats. Music radio stations and morning shows on music stations are becoming more archaic every day. Ford has a creative observation. However, the morning show problem still exists if those shows are carried by music radio stations. Music radio stations, and especially morning shows on music stations, are quickly becoming about as relevant as 8-track tapes.
 
Dave Pratt said:
High dollar morning shows are still available for top proven talent but only in spoken word formats.
Click to expand...

If by "spoken word formats" you mean talk radio, I'm not convinced.

The players in talk radio seem to be in the mid-day and afternoon slots (Limbaugh, Hannity, etc.) and also seem to be for the most part syndicated as opposed to local.

Off the top of my head I can't think of a high dollar local morning show in the talk radio arena. Maybe you're going to be that guy, but it is an uphill battle.
 
Ford said:
The future of morning radio is a person who can deliver a seven figure morning show on a six figure budget.
Click to expand...

Is there a 'farm team' where the next generation of spoken word radio talent is developing? I listen to a number of podcasts and so far I don't know if any of them could be developed into major market quality radio shows.
 
Do the math. As more and more FM stations transfer to spoken word formats, more opportunities will open for quality personalities in morning drive. Don't look at spoken word radio the way it is today and get stuck in the assumption that it will always stay this way. It won't. Radio must change to survive. Look towards the future. The winners will be the stations and personalities who recognize the new currency and take early advantage of it. As for developing up and coming talent, unfortunately, current programmers are dropping the ball due to short-sightedness, fear of losing their own jobs, cost cutting or sheer apathy. Keep in mind that budget crunching has depressed programming and management as well as on air personnel. Most of the best programmers and managers are sitting on the bench just like most of the better air talent. If radio gets competitive again, this will change.
 
I may be taking a flying leap here but....

If today and tomorrow's "youthful" listeners prefer more music to less talking I don't see how FM talk radio will survive long term any more than AM talk radio did/does.

I recently asked a high school bus driver to poll his riders one morning. Show of hands: how many were listening to radio as opposed to texting on cell phone, listening to MP3 players etc. Out of perhaps 50-60 students not one hand was raised when radio was mentioned.
 
Landtuna - You are exactly right. Of course kids prefer more music and less talk. They are still kids, and kids are using music radio less and less. My 16 year-old son and his friends were in my truck recently without their ipods. They were at a complete loss for music. They couldn't even name a radio staton or a favorite frequency. On the other hand, spoken word radio has never been youth oriented. And so far, spoken word radio had been somewhat protected from new techonology that delivers music. In turn, as this generation gets older it is more likely that if they use radio at all, it will be some type of spoken word format. So hey Landtuna, we agree!
 
I'm not sure what you mean by "good morning shows". If you mean large-cast morning zoos, yeah I think their days are numbered. Partly because of cost, partly because they don't perform well in a PPM world, and partly because the concept has pretty much run its course. Keep in mind though, that these types of morning shows didn't really exist much before the mid-ish 80s or so. Prior to that, morning shows tended to feature a fair amount of music (though less than other dayparts) and were often just jock with newsperson (who sometimes acted as sidekick). Have we come full circle?


landtuna said:
I recently asked a high school bus driver to poll his riders one morning. Show of hands: how many were listening to radio as opposed to texting on cell phone, listening to MP3 players etc. Out of perhaps 50-60 students not one hand was raised when radio was mentioned.
Click to expand...

But consider the situation. The pack mentality rules in school aged kids, always did. Not may want to be the first one to speak out on anything. If none of the "cool" kids step forward it's not likely anyone else will.
I wonder if you asked the same group of kids one-on-one the same question what the response would be.
 
Oldbones. You just nailed it. Music radio is "not cool" with kids. And if by small chance some still enjoy it but are embarrassed to admit it, how pathetic is that? In that case, the problem is even worse than we imagine.
 
Dave Pratt said:
Oldbones. You just nailed it. Music radio is "not cool" with kids. And if by small chance some still enjoy it but are embarrassed to admit it, how pathetic is that? In that case, the problem is even worse than we imagine.
Click to expand...

Back when I was a kid growing up on the Big Red Radio, if you wanted to hear a new album before it came out, you'd stay up until Midnight and tape it off the Friday Night Six Pack before you could buy it the next Tuesday at Rolling Stone Records. Now, you find the torrent. We have to change our mindset to stay relevant.

Radio is first and foremost an entertainment medium, whether it's music, talk, or a mixture of the two. I don't think people have abandoned radio because it's radio. They've moved away from radio because it's usually not entertaining. It's not the technology, it's the content.

Let's look at what passes for morning talent at your typical FM. In CHR/Hot/AC/AC you have ___ & ___. The parts are interchangeable. Male lead or male team with female sidekick whose job is to say "oh, stop you guys," laugh at their lame jokes, and do the celebrity gossip report. Stuntboy (also referred to as Intern (insert name here) will go stand on street corners and do "wacky" bits on a cell phone. You'll play Battle of the Sexes & War of the Roses. 95% of the morning's discussion will revolve around one of several reality TV shows, and you must play clips from the show the night before. Why, nobody really knows, but you have to play clips from what everyone in the audience is assumed to have already watched the night before. Usually you'll sit in traffic listening to this wishing they'd just shut up and either play a song or do a traffic report.

Rock stations do similar teams, except they talk about strippers to be "edgy" instead of playing battle of the sexes and discuss who they'd like to bang. In the South they'll talk about NASCAR.

But if you watched the same TV shows the night before and you've already read Dlisted, TMZ, and Perez Hilton, do you need to go to work or school hearing clips from the shows you've watched and hearing someone else read the same blog entries you've read (while passing it off as his/her own)?

The morning shows I grew up on (Pratt, Brandmeier, Bruce Kelly, etc.) used their share of prep services & ACN back in the day. (Not that I knew it then, but I recognize it now.) The difference is I couldn't get that material myself - I had to listen to the radio to get it. Today's challenge is to be unique & entertaining instead of rewarming & repackaging last night's TV and yesterday's blogs because that content isn't exclusive to radio. Those who figure that out will do well. Those who spend the broadcast day recapping TV need to think about putting something compelling on the radio.
 
johndavis said:
Let's look at what passes for morning talent at your typical FM. In CHR/Hot/AC/AC you have ___ & ___. The parts are interchangeable. Male lead or male team with female sidekick whose job is to say "oh, stop you guys," laugh at their lame jokes, and do the celebrity gossip report. Stuntboy (also referred to as Intern (insert name here) will go stand on street corners and do "wacky" bits on a cell phone.
Click to expand...

Can we blame Scott Shannon for this "morning zoo" mindset that has proliferated for much too long?
 
Oldbones said:
landtuna said:
I recently asked a high school bus driver to poll his riders one morning. Show of hands: how many were listening to radio as opposed to texting on cell phone, listening to MP3 players etc. Out of perhaps 50-60 students not one hand was raised when radio was mentioned.
Click to expand...

But consider the situation. The pack mentality rules in school aged kids, always did. Not may want to be the first one to speak out on anything. If none of the "cool" kids step forward it's not likely anyone else will.
I wonder if you asked the same group of kids one-on-one the same question what the response would be.
Click to expand...


Probably not much different. My experience is much like Dave Pratt's. I have a 16 year old son and an 18 year old daughter. They grew up with radio in the car on the way to school in the morning (Dad listening to his friends)...listened to Radio Disney in their pre-teens and then graduated to The Edge, with Mix 96.9 as a fallback.

But since they got their iPods, radio may as well not exist. The idea of some other person deciding what songs, in what order and with how many, how frequent and how long interruptions makes absolutely no sense to them when everything they like is in their pocket...the size of a pack of gum. They never....ever....listen to the radio. On the rare occurrence that they don't have their iPods or the batteries are dead, switching on the radio usually ends in frustration at the limitations of the medium (happens within 10 minutes). They'll ask me if there's something I want to listen to, switch it off, talk to me or each other, or bring out the cell phones and text friends.

How do they find new music? Those text messages from friends often have links to YouTube clips or Facebook pages from new acts.

And really, I'm not a lot different. I still listen, but it's frustrating (especially the lengthy spot breaks and...with a handful of exceptions....the lack of jocks with something interesting or entertaining to say) and I'm trying to remember the last music I bought because I heard it on the radio first. 15 years, anyway. I usually find out about an upcoming album by reading about it online.
 
I grew-up in the era of Morning Zoo's and large morning shows. I sometimes miss those days and still enjoy listening to John Holmberg on KUPD. Most of my radio listening is done in the car, or periodically on my iPhone, if the station has an app so I can listen. I don't keep a radio at work. In the morning, on my drive into work, I'm usually bouncing between KUPD, KT'R (TOH/BOH news only) and The Peak.

Radio is definitely competing with Torrent, iTunes, Pandora, Slacker and other music services. My company gym pipes in XM/Sirius and I usually listen to Slacker or Pandora while I work out. In my wife's van, we are almost exclusively using my iPhone or her Android phone for music.

A few months ago, I had a conversation with a young woman about her radio listening habits. She said she rarely listens to the radio anymore and relies mostly on CD's and a MP3 player for her music.
 
I came up in the era before the Zoo concept, where one person had to pretty much carry it all. Sure, there were support people, newscasters, traffic reporters...but by and large one person (Dick Whittinghill, Bob Crane, Dick Whittington, Robert W. Morgan, Charlie Tuna, Charlie Van Dyke, Dr. Don Rose) got the morning show done.

The rarities were two-man shows...Lohman and Barkley, Hudson and Landry, Charlie and Harrigan, Hudson and Bauer. They worked, in my view, only when the timing was dead-on. It's what kept the show from descending into chaos.

In a way, those shows pioneered the zoo concept, because most, if not all of them, worked characters (voiced by one of the duo) into the mix. But again, only two mouths and less of a chance of stuff jumping the track or diluting the impact of the content.

For older listeners, a return to a strong single person (male or female) doing mornings on a music station might make some sense....playing to the strengths of PPM, reducing the intrusion of chatter about stuff we already know from the web or last night's TV.

For younger listeners, though...and by that, I mean under 30...I think music radio is pretty much over, and foreground morning shows with it.
 
+1 to above.
my 22-year-old son has No CD's.
(well, except the Bank CD his grandmother gave him)
he has No iPod/Nano....it's all in his cellphone.
i changed the oil in his car while he visited during
Christmas...his presets were static. i had to find
ESPN to play while i worked. for him, radio is
the same as newspapers, landlines, and
the library.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom