radio...not red hot anymore..its ice cold..
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radio..ice cold
- Thread starter samliguori
- Start date
radio ice-cold
yes nigelwick, if i tune into talk radio, we have wilk and the talker, i hear the same callers on wilk, and talk, for the most part is by the hosts. i want to hear a stream of callers who have different comments and ideas for what ever the topic might be, not from one host,or the host and the producer, who think they know it all. this week robs been doing corbetts show, on wilk and what a different out look. rob allows caller after caller to speak their mind...and doesnt talk over them. if he agrees or doesnt agree he lets them give their opinion... and then replies .
i know everything changes as we move on, but it should change for the better. radio, in my opinion, has not done that. and not just radio,but television also. now theres 4 or 5 hosts sitting around a big table, and not doing news, but all talking about lady gaga or some other non important person. yes once in a while they will do a news headline.so thats a little synopsis of my radio and tv of today.
yes nigelwick, if i tune into talk radio, we have wilk and the talker, i hear the same callers on wilk, and talk, for the most part is by the hosts. i want to hear a stream of callers who have different comments and ideas for what ever the topic might be, not from one host,or the host and the producer, who think they know it all. this week robs been doing corbetts show, on wilk and what a different out look. rob allows caller after caller to speak their mind...and doesnt talk over them. if he agrees or doesnt agree he lets them give their opinion... and then replies .
i know everything changes as we move on, but it should change for the better. radio, in my opinion, has not done that. and not just radio,but television also. now theres 4 or 5 hosts sitting around a big table, and not doing news, but all talking about lady gaga or some other non important person. yes once in a while they will do a news headline.so thats a little synopsis of my radio and tv of today.
I think radio HAS changed, but you haven't. You listen to the same stations, and it's boring to you. I understand that. But there are a lot of other stations outside your safe box that you could be listening to, and they're talking about people and things that are happening now. You're just no longer interested in that stuff. So this is more about you than radio. It's a typical boomer problem. "Life was so much better when I was younger."
That's a subjective judgment based on the opinion of the listener. To the boomers who want to hear older music and stimulating talk, it's probably gotten worse. To younger people who want current music for free on a convenient device, it's probably gotten better. The fact that audience levels have remained basically unchanged in terms of a percentage of the population who listen to radio, that says to me that radio has remained unchanged. What HAS changed is the age of the specific people who listened 25 years ago. And the amount of competition for the people who listen.
There are some significant differences between the audiences of today and those of yesteryear (particularly the 50's and 60's).
When I was a teen (and actually a pre-teen and post-teen as well) radio, specifically T-40 radio, was THE communication device second only perhaps to the phone. When we got home from school we flipped on the radio because the PMD DJ's were usually the best of the bunch on any typical station. We listened while doing our homework and before bedtime and, if enough time was available, before heading off to school in the morning. We knew the DJ's by name, station and significantly, in person because they showed up at functions (including our birthday parties). The music was great and so were the "personalities" (GAWD how I hate that word!). In short, they were an integral part of our growing up experience - even the ones on static-y AM's far, far away.
Today you would be hard pressed to find a teen listening live at any time of the day. Instead of the radio they are plugged into their smart phones and the only music they hear is from YouTube videos. I haven't seen a DJ make a personal appearance (outside a paid wedding, etc.) in decades. The most popular DJ in my town is a female AC in AMD. Although she is pleasant to hear she is probably an unknown among the youngsters.
The major difference in radio then and now is engagement and today it is almost totally missing. And listening to the radio as a child, teen and young adult sets the stage for a whole lifetime. It isn't happening today and so, when today's young people reach their 50's, 60's and 70's they will have no radio to fall back on with fond memories and great tunes. The industry, at least the music part of it, will have died.
A big part of that though is the audience. Radio set the stage when you were a kid because there was nothing else. There was no MTV. There were no cell phones. There were no video games. And even the buying of music was a very careful thing. Back then, kids didn't buy everything that came out. They thought long and hard about how they spent their money. If they could just make a copy of their friend's music, it would have been so much better. Now they can. One of the biggest ways music is heard is by peer-to-peer transfers. That was not possible in the 60s or 70s. Until cassettes became more common. And as cassettes became common, you began to see the deterioration of radio as the center of young people's world. The very minute people had another option, they took it.
The engagement you talk about has been replaced by real people. Young people in the 60s were isolated. Talking on the phone required using the family phone, typically located in the kitchen. Very few young people were fortunate enough to have a phone in their own bedroom. If they did, it wasn't a private line. Kids don't want to engage with other adults. They want to engage with other kids. People in the 60s were the same. The main purpose of the DJ was it got them in touch with their favorite artist. Today, young people can tweet their favorite artist directly. No need for an intermediary.
The amazing thing about teens today is they still listen to the radio. We know because they show up in every survey that's done. But they don't listen to it via a transistor. They listen in cars, on phones, or on computers. Twenty years from now, that's the memory today's young people will have. Their use of the content has changed too. Most boomers still own the vinyl records they bought as teens. Not so with teens. They download songs, and delete when they're tired of the song. Or they don't even download. They just stream it from a cloud site. No storage. No memories. It's all very disposable. That's how today's teens are treating music. Why should they have more engaged memories from the thing they hear that music on?
i enjoyed reading all your posts concerning radio. but as i use to tell people who didnt like what we put on the air..turn the dial...so im taking my own advise, and turning the dial...TO THE OFF POSITION.
But it's too bad that you're making that decision based on a couple of radio stations. It's like deciding not to eat food any more because you don't like cheese.
The other thing I'd point out is that for most of us in radio, radio isn't strictly what you do on the air any more. So if all you're consuming is what's on the air, you're probably missing the rest of the show.
The other thing I'd point out is that for most of us in radio, radio isn't strictly what you do on the air any more. So if all you're consuming is what's on the air, you're probably missing the rest of the show.
You missed the point. It wasn't about the music (entirely, although the music was profoundly better) but rather the engagement of the hosts, be they on radio, TV or some other medium. And you are correct when you said we didn't have MTV (but we did have Bandstand) and cell phones (but we did have phones....and street corners) and video games (we had real games where, you know, you actually played). We had face-to-face time whether it was in school, at the park, at the game or just hanging out at the burger joint. And I have news for any kid today that thinks texting a girl is better than actually sharing lunch with her in person.
We were definitely not "isolated". True, we didn't have the electronic means of communication that exist today but we had something much more meaningful - face to face contact. I never had a phone in my room so if I wanted to talk to my girlfriend I walked down the street to a public phone or to her house. We lived in communities, not mega-metropolises where people never met F-T-F. We wrote notes to each other, and not in some kind of Martian code we thought our parents couldn't understand.
The entire time I was growing up I never met anyone who actually wanted to "get in touch" with their favorite artist. Those performers were unapproachable and were seen as such never mind that they lived hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles away. There were magazines that had features where you could write in asking someone a question or making a comment but it was only for the severely obsessed pre-teen girl. I never knew anyone who actually did it. Like thousands of other boys of the day I had a crush on Annette Funicello but I also knew she lived in a different world and one that I would never occupy. It might today be possible to tweet Miley Cyrus but you would be no closer to her world than I was in Annette's.
This last paragraph is perhaps the saddest commentary ever written. One of the reasons the Boomer generation is still so tightly wedded to the music of their youth is that it was not disposable. Most of it meant something at the time and we still understand those feelings (you don't necessarily lose them as you age). Today's crap (and I am being very generous with that description) is definitely disposable and I expect the only time you will hear any of today's "music" 20 years from now is at the occasional high school reunion when the alums make fun of the songs of their youth. You don't find Boomers (or in my case, pre-Boomers) doing that. They will also, in all probability, not be reminiscing over the likes of the personalities they identified with so strongly as kids because, like the music of today so is the talent largely disposable.
I get what you're saying 100%, and I'm glad you brought it up. You talk about the "engagement of the hosts." A lot of that was in your mind. Because it's doubtful there ever was any REAL engagement there. I had the chance to work for the radio station I listened to as a kid. I thought, as you did, that the hosts "engaged" with the listeners. Then I got to work there, and realized there was no real engagement from their end at all. It was all in my imagination. I asked them about it, and they didn't see it the same way. Today, on air hosts engage with listeners directly using social media. That's direct, one on one, two way engagement. It really didn't exist in the 60s, except in listener's imaginations.
We all have to live in the time that we live in. That's just how it is. Yes today music is disposable, and so is everything else. That culture was created by boomers and post-boomers. We can't go back to the past, and we can't make radio today as though it's still the 60s. So yes, everything is disposable. But the fact is that the personalities you identified with as kids were figments of your imagination. Kids today probably don't have that.
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More than a few times the "figment of my imagination" would invite me into the studio to show me the workings of his show. Frequently the "figment" would appear at high school functions, store openings, skating rinks and movie theater stage shows - even private birthday parties. This, in addition to their paid performances at car dealers etc. If I called the station during a program I usually got the DJ himself. Not a recording or a tweet. Chris Borden, a AMD DJ for KTKT in Tucson lived a few blocks from me. He went out and bought an old relic of a fire truck and created the "Hot Times" club. He and the truck were constantly moving from event to event. That wasn't any "figment". After I moved to San Francisco in 1960 I used to call in to KYA's Buck Herring and he would answer the phone. Better than a tweet? You betcha!
Only that which is not worthy is disposable. My kids were born in the 80's and cannot remember the names of anyone they listened to as children. Neither do they listen to the music of their eras. They do not have the same memories of their youth that I do because, in large part, it isn't worth remembering. And it seems to get less so every day.
I am not commenting on whether a return to the radio heyday's of the 50's and 60's is possible. I am just giving a reason why music radio is a dying industry. It is only one reason but it is a big one.
I got the same treatment...that's how I got to work there as a teenager. But that treatment was unusual. I'm talking about engaging the general public. As far as personal appearances, it still happens today. Every concert, every community event, every grand opening, there's a radio station there with people giving out swag. Radio stations still have banners, tents, and remote vehicles that are out and about. And quite often the station is owned by a company that people like to call cheap. They may be cheap, but they're not stupid, and this cheap radio company does a ton of community interaction. They even built a community room in their studio building for listener appreciation shows and other activities. So yes, there's real F-T-F engagement, as you call it. It's going on right now. Radio may be dying for you, it's still pretty alive for these people.
The only thing I notice in my market are the "current junk" music stations (what DO you call today's terrible music anyway?) with their wild-haired, pierced and tatted 'role models' holding "find me" contests for trinkets. Appearances don't seem to draw crowds any longer and the only advertising you see for these people is at events like Country Thunder where they may emcee but not perform.
As I said, we live in our time, which is very different from the 60s. The remotes I see are packed, and people line up to get autographs and "selfies" with the DJs. I'm not kidding.
The good old days weren't all that good. They were what they were. I don't know how you can't call any number of songs from the 50s, 60s and 70s not "disposable".? "Honey"? "I was Kaiser Bill's Batman?" Didn't even Phil Spector call his music "little symphonies for the kiddies"? He had no inclination anyone would be playing it in five years, let alone 50. Yes I love a lot of older music, but with a somewhat selective filter. I can give you the perspective of someone who grew up in a smaller town. We listened to the great, legendary CKLW by day (pattern change and PJB eliminated them at night). Great as they were, my classmates in junior high would have been hard pressed to name the daytime jock lineup in the Drake and just post-Drake era. In addition, we weren't about to be allowed to call Detroit long distance (by the way, if you did call The Big 8, you didn't talk to the jock, you talked to one of the Hitline Girls). We had WOWO which had great personalities and was the default choice because of signal. Another Fort Wayne station signed on with top 40 in 1971, WMEE. We had a local top 40 for a couple of years, and I did have some of the experiences of seeing them broadcast from a tent at the county fair (bringing turntables, cart machines, the phone, etc.). I got to come by and watch one of the DJs at the studio. Too bad this format didn't last until I was old enough to drive, because I would have loved to work there. On the other hand, I had plenty of friends who were just as happy to listen to the automated TM Stereo Rock station. Folks were already starting to "engage" with other people by CB. Radio personalities (giving my market as an example) do still engage with audiences. The known personalities are everywhere, pumping gas for charity for one thing. My daughter was born in the 80s and does remember the music she liked in the 90s. I can definitely tell you my parents thought my music was disposable garbage.
Many of your complaints have nothing to do with radio, but the fact that your and my generation's experience wasn't frozen in time (if you had what you say you want, we'd be having this conversation in print). Radio can't operate as though it were 1967 and expect society to follow. I have co-workers who have titles don't even remember dial-up internet.
Many of your complaints have nothing to do with radio, but the fact that your and my generation's experience wasn't frozen in time (if you had what you say you want, we'd be having this conversation in print). Radio can't operate as though it were 1967 and expect society to follow. I have co-workers who have titles don't even remember dial-up internet.
I've always been an advocate of live and local. However, look at the growth areas: podcasts, music on smart phones, satellite, internet. Live and local is no longer a "must." The audience has spoken. They don't seem to notice or care about voice tracking. As for talk, it's uninformed hosts yammering on about the same things. Because of other ways of getting information and entertainment, local radio has become passe.
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