As tributes poor in for Ron Lundy it got me thinking about why DJs from the late 50/60s and into the 70s were so popular. I'm assuming that most of the ones posting about him are anywhere from late 40s into their 60s. I think as we were growing up, we didn't have as many "things" to listen to, you had your choice of AM radio and TV and records and that was about it. Cassette tapes weren't really introduced to the mid 60s and the audio quality wasn't very good at first and the players weren't really all that portable. {I got my first cassette player from my grandpa in 1968, I still have tapes from then that I recorded stations and other stuff on} FM radio didn't get big till mid 70s and that just made the DJs sound even better. Then came boomboxes, CD players and more. EVERY city had the DJs that were popular over a large area of whatever state they happened to be in but the ones from NYC and LA seemed to be popular all over the USA. Nowadays, kids and young adults have so many choices of where they can get the music they like....the Internet with all it's 10s of thousands of web sites they can pick from, 500 cable channels, Apple's Itunes, Pandora, Slacker...it goes on and on. I hardly know of any kids that actually listen to radio stations anymore unless they're true radio geeks. Go ahead, go ask anyone under the age of 25 who their favorite radio DJ is, I'll bet you they can't name one. Who's fault is that? Technology marches on and something may come along that will replace the internet as the place to access music but the biggest culprits are the mega radio corporations who have decided that DJs are an unnecessary expense but that's a rant for another thread. So celebrate the DJs from the past that are still among us and if you see one say thanks for making me laugh, smile, and get excited about music and for playing some of the best damn music that ever existed. Because once they're gone, we'll be the only ones to remember them and once WE'RE gone there will be no one to remember them....except by the airchecks they left behind.
I do love the ones from the past and I have many aircks of them, I am trying to move on to the ones now on radio and someday they will be gone, other places, hopfully not. I love them all on wcbsfm now, but if any should leave for other radio stations, I hope to keep in touch with them. Facebook is good on that. I think more people today and from the past should go on facebook so their fans can write to them and tell them how they feel.