"Radio" in the Year 2068

[Ma “Contrarian” Gee]

Well........the best time for radio was in the 1975-1989 time period. Creativity, music, programming, jocks....etc...nothing will ever duplicate the magic this period had to offer on the FM (and AM) dial.

All you left out was reverb on the audio chain and jingles from Jam...

But enough of the rose colored glass revisionist history.

1975 to 1989?

That's the time when audiences abandoned AM for FM. When any small town FM near a larger market was bought up and moved into the big city. Countless jobs and learning opportunities in those small towns were lost. The market for talent, real talent who, starting out in those now lost small town radio stations, over the years had crafted their abilities and who could daily create a great show, was stretched thin. The result being countless speculator broadcasters hoping for a quick dollar with one of those rimshot FMs ending up with great voices but marginal talent. Once programmers quickly found that entertainment value couldn't be maintained, restrictions were instituted. Playlists, liner cards, all the litany that most nay sayers still list today as the sins of corporate radio were given birth. More players meant smaller pieces of that proverbial ad revenue pie for everyone. Costs started to be cut. Once strong AM stations ended up with automation, network programming or a flip to the easy money of paid religion. Markets that once had a handful of FM signals saw that number double or triple. And those new move-in FMs, few to none making the same money as their FM predecessors, were always willing to cut their rates to get the buy. Add in the mistake of docket 80-90 as the 80s ended and you should clearly see that if anything, the era you claim as "best time" was actually the era that created all the problems you and others endlessly bitch about as wrong with radio today.

 

[TheBigA]

Everyone likes to think of their era in culture as the best. Imagine running a radio station that didn't play records. Imagine a time when if you wanted to play music on the radio, you had to hire actual musicians. Imagine a time when if you wanted to put entertainment on the radio, you had to hire actual entertainers. The DJs in the 50s and 60s grew up with that kind of radio. DJs in the 8os and 90s didn't have that experience. That was their parent's radio. In the 1920s and 30s, if you were creative, you wanted to be in radio. If you're creative now, you want to be on Netflix. Introducing someone else's records isn't very interesting or creative. I read where Apple is leasing office space in several cities because it wants to get into the content creation business. That's interesting. What are they going to create? DJs introducing records? Or are they going to actually create content they will own? If you want to think about media in the future, you need to think beyond DJs introducing records. That's not creativity. The real creativity happened when the music was made. I think what Apple will discover is the hardware business is much easier and cheaper than the content business.

 

[TheBigA]

Now, with major corporations in charge, controlling everything imaginable, radio today is run-of-the-mill, bland, ho-hum, everything sounds and is presented the same.

I hate to burst your bubble, but the corporations that owned radio in the 70s and 80s were much bigger and much more controlling than the corporations today. In the 70s, you don't get much bigger than RCA, GE, and Westinghouse. These were the companies that founded radio. They built radios and owned radio stations. Some of these companies also owned record companies. RCA owned RCA Records, home of Elvis. CBS owned Columbia Records, home of Michael Jackson. So the companies that owned radio stations also owned the music those stations played. When you think of it that way, today's radio companies are small in comparison.

 

[b-turner]

Extremely good points made in the past few posts.

A few things: I knew Paul Kallinger. I knew his son too. By that time his media work was appearing for some event or maybe for an interview on TV. He ran a furniture store in Del Rio. I asked him about the difference in 'talent' in the 1980s and in his heyday. I opined those of us today lacked the level of talent he had. His answer was very diplomatic if not generous. When he started in radio stations ran network programs when they didn't run local programming. He stated a storm might take down the network feed and it fell on you, fully unprepared, to do something until the feed returned. Playing records then was not always an option. You might be talking on the microphone a couple of hours. He said his talent was born from such incidents and he stated if any 1980s air talent faced the same challenges he did, they'd surely rise to the occasion.

Radio seemed so exciting growing up. I had something weird happen. On a trip to Nashville at Christmastime, I was thrilled to listen to WKDA, the dominant top 40 AM. I loved radio and I actually wrote down what they did on the air. That's partly why I remember this. (as a kid I'd write notes and then I'd practice playing the same songs and doing all the on air stuff to try to sound as good as them. I literally had about 90 minutes of what WKDA did memorized from trying to emulate them exactly on that old reel to reel deck I had). Decades later I click to listen to an aircheck of WKDA. The person that rolled tape did so during the very time I had listened. Listening now I was amazed. The guy didn't have a great voice, sounded unprepared most of the time and nothing he did really set him apart from anybody else you'd hear on any other station. He did sound like he was having fun. I really did enjoy that years later. I wonder if that was because I could relate because I had been on air and remember the fun factor. Simply put, the station was rather boring. The difference in what I heard as this great station then was a boring, nothing special listen decades later from a jock that sounded pretty green.

I listened to Top 40 back in those days as my format of choice. Every station was very cookie cutter. The songs were the same. The presentation was pretty much identical. It was, to put it bluntly, about like any flavor of format today where the station call letters seem to be the major difference between stations. And the playlist was so tight it squeaked.

I think the thing we might feel is missing is the 'fun' feeling the jock had versus the typical jock of today. I think there was the illusion of being part of something bigger back then, more so than today where we are more detached from the DJ. I think the concept of requests made us feel we could be heard and responded to by the station that now utilizes online sites that take that to another level. In short, I have come to the conclusion radio wasn't better back in the day but rather for the time and available technology it made us feel it was fun, exciting and inclusive. If done today I doubt we would be so impressed.

 

[TheBigA]

I have come to the conclusion radio wasn't better back in the day but rather for the time and available technology it made us feel it was fun, exciting and inclusive. If done today I doubt we would be so impressed.

Keep in mind that at the time, recording artists were unreachable for the general public. The radio DJ was the connection. Today, Twitter is the connection. You can follow your favorite star, and when they retweet you, that's as good as having them speak to you personally. The DJ is no longer part of that connection.

So DJs have to come up with some other thing that makes them part of that chain. Big name DJs get to interview the stars. That puts them in the chain again, and gives them value. Otherwise, there's not much else for them to do on a typical music radio station.

 

[gr8oldies]

But I keep hearing radio needs chatty DJs on music stations talking about nothing but local things. Every break, potholes in town, concerts coming to town, local craft breweries,,just local everything and it's a guaranteed #1. Though I doubt it

 

[TexasTom]

I would say the commercial loads were greater in the past...usually 4 or more breaks of 3 or 4 spots. In some small markets I worked it was more like 24 units an hour. I'm hearing two breaks an hour and about 6 to 8 units totaling about 5 or 6 minutes. I used to think 4 units per break was too much back in the 1980s when stations did 3 or 4 breaks an hour.

4 breaks with 3 or 4 spots each is 12 to 16 units/hour. 2 breaks with 6 to 8 units is also 12 to 16 units/hour. So by your count it hasn't actually changed, other than clustering the commercials into fewer but longer breaks -- which I personally find more annoying.

But my recollection from the late seventies and eighties is that there was a lot of variation between stations in how many commercials they played. On the low end, one TM Stereo Rock station )KNWR Bellingham, WA) in a small market that I listened to limited their commercials to 12 units/8 minutes maximum per hour, giving four breaks running a maximum of 3 units/2 minutes. Another TM Stereo Rock station ) KDSQ Denison/Sherman, TX) set their limits at 16 units/10 minutes. In larger markets, KUBE Seattle (starting in it's "New 93) days) played 12 units/8 minutes maximum per hour, and KHYI Dallas/Fort Worth (Y-95) played 12 units/9 minutes per hour. At the other extreme was Dallas/Fort Worth's KVIL -- which, in their heyday ran seven breaks an hour, each of which was limited to (I think) 3 units/2 minutes.

But the bottom line for me is that the two never-ending spot breaks that most major market stations run today are far more annoying than were the shorter and more frequent breaks of the seventies and eighties -- with the exception of KVIL, where those seven breaks an hour were pretty annoying. That said, KVIL was breaking a ten share consistently in those days, which suggests that spot loads were perhaps not so much of an issue to most listeners.

 

[CTListener]

But I keep hearing radio needs chatty DJs on music stations talking about nothing but local things. Every break, potholes in town, concerts coming to town, local craft breweries,,just local everything and it's a guaranteed #1. Though I doubt it

You're probably not hearing it from anyone young enough for radio advertisers to still want to reach.

 

[joebtsflk1]

2000 foot guyed towers will be a distant memory.

 

[oldies76]

the era you claim as "best time" was actually the era that created all the problems you and others endlessly bitch about as wrong with radio today.

Obviously if people are "bitchin'" about something, then there's obviously a problem. Problems just don't arise out of thin air and people don't bitch for the hell of it. Hey, nothing's perfect, it wasn't in 1981 nor in 2018, but myself and many others would wholeheartedly prefer radio programming in its glory, including the jingles.

I'm all for the modernization of radio, but there are some things that should have been left alone. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

[TheBigA]

Obviously if people are "bitchin'" about something, then there's obviously a problem. Problems just don't arise out of thin air and people don't bitch for the hell of it.

That's not been my experience.

 

[b-turner]

As far as being on air, I'd rather be live, firing off CDs and all other elements without the 'help' of the computer simply because it was on you to make it happen flawlessly. I would describe it as somewhat of a 'runner's high', you got from the pressure and actually doing it. At the end of a shift you were ready to vegetate a few minutes or wind down so you could get back to normal. I mostly worked CHR...talking up the intro, hitting posts, playing records, taking calls and at one station, firing off a shotgun jingle so short the 3/4 turn back on the Technics turntable to not 'wow' the record meant it had to be started at the same time you hit the start button on the shotgun jingle cart.

I was working a station that didn't rely on the computer other than as a cart machine, because of the format. I'm with an engineer from a group of FMs in my market at their studios and I am introduced to the jock at one of the stations. As the song winds down and the last stop set of the hour is coming up, as a show of respect, I offer to step out before they key the microphone. The jock say's it's okay for me to stay. Any second I'm waiting for the headphones to go on and I am wondering what is going on as I hear the jock's voice fired off by the computer. The break had been recorded a few minutes earlier. That was years ago. Another DJ friend uploads his breaks in the morning, does his production and then sits in the studio posting on social media as his airshift plays out on the computer. I rather like his plan but it is a far cry from what I was doing when I was a jock.

I don't know radio was ever broken. I think the creativity allowed radio to evolve. Some claim radio died when Bill Drake introduced more music radio. I remember when a personality top 40 (with great talent) was beat for the first time in years by an FM that played 3 top 40 tunes uninterrupted and back announced them. It was PDs looking to create a uniqueness in their station that opened radio to new delivery techniques for a format that were outside the box. Radio evolved as the most popular were copied and modified. I recall a few years later an FM switched to top 40 going commercial free for the first book taking them to #1 in their target demos. It was very outside the box then and perhaps why so many new formats launch with 10,000 songs in a row.

 

[semoochie]

As far as being on air, I'd rather be live, firing off CDs and all other elements without the 'help' of the computer simply because it was on you to make it happen flawlessly. I would describe it as somewhat of a 'runner's high', you got from the pressure and actually doing it. At the end of a shift you were ready to vegetate a few minutes or wind down so you could get back to normal. I mostly worked CHR...talking up the intro, hitting posts, playing records, taking calls and at one station, firing off a shotgun jingle so short the 3/4 turn back on the Technics turntable to not 'wow' the record meant it had to be started at the same time you hit the start button on the shotgun jingle cart.

I was working a station that didn't rely on the computer other than as a cart machine, because of the format. I'm with an engineer from a group of FMs in my market at their studios and I am introduced to the jock at one of the stations. As the song winds down and the last stop set of the hour is coming up, as a show of respect, I offer to step out before they key the microphone. The jock say's it's okay for me to stay. Any second I'm waiting for the headphones to go on and I am wondering what is going on as I hear the jock's voice fired off by the computer. The break had been recorded a few minutes earlier. That was years ago. Another DJ friend uploads his breaks in the morning, does his production and then sits in the studio posting on social media as his airshift plays out on the computer. I rather like his plan but it is a far cry from what I was doing when I was a jock.

I don't know radio was ever broken. I think the creativity allowed radio to evolve. Some claim radio died when Bill Drake introduced more music radio. I remember when a personality top 40 (with great talent) was beat for the first time in years by an FM that played 3 top 40 tunes uninterrupted and back announced them. It was PDs looking to create a uniqueness in their station that opened radio to new delivery techniques for a format that were outside the box. Radio evolved as the most popular were copied and modified. I recall a few years later an FM switched to top 40 going commercial free for the first book taking them to #1 in their target demos. It was very outside the box then and perhaps why so many new formats launch with 10,000 songs in a row.

Was there something wrong with your turntable? I thought a quarter turn was sufficient.

 

[Kelly A]

Was there something wrong with your turntable? I thought a quarter turn was sufficient.

Must have been one of those belt drive turntables.

 

[b-turner]

Yep,, belt drive. The 'rumble tables' as they were called, a quarter turn was plenty.

 

[Oldie919]

Let's not forget those Gates 16" jobs......with IDLER WHEELS!!!
A "bump" in that idler set the thing off.....as a "metronome"!!!!!
(THUMP - THUMP -THUMP......)

 

[Kemosabe]

In the year 2068, radio will be considered s-o-o-o-o-o 20th-century—a time when disc jockeys probably had to cue Edison Cylinders on steam-powered phonographs. Dunno, but there may have been something called vinyl back then, too. Not sure why they didn't just play CDs, whatever those were. I even heard someone mention the word "cart." Did they transport cylinders on those?

 

[TheBigA]

In the year 2068, radio will be considered s-o-o-o-o-o 20th-century

Keep in mind that the telephone is older than radio. So are movies. So are trains. So is the automobile. The electric light.

The age of the device doesn't matter. It's how that device adapts.

 

[Kemosabe]

Keep in mind that the telephone is older than radio. So are movies. So are trains. So is the automobile. The electric light.

The age of the device doesn't matter. It's how that device adapts.

My comment was intended as a whimsical exaggeration, not an actual prediction.

 

[b-turner]

I get the whimsical. Reality: explaining what a record is to a kid and why it has a hole in the middle of it.