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Thank You Sam Kopper!

D

DavidZ

I just want to say thanks Sam for FreeForm ‘BCN. I listen to your station on-line as much as possible. An absolutely fantastic music mix combining the older songs with fresh new music. IMHO, this is what radio should be. Free to take chances and programmed locally. For the first time, I’m considering purchasing an HD radio although I do think there is a place for this format on a primary signal.

I could never understand the path that radio has taken with their music mix. I don’t buy the argument that “research” says that people want just their favorite songs all the time until they’re drilled into the ground.

Take a stroll through any of the urban chic stores in Cambridge, Somerville, etc. and listen to what is being played. Adventuresome eclectic music! Corporate owners and their so called research don’t have a clue.

IMO, Radio needs to start listening before programming anything…their audiences are not as predictable and set in their ways as they think.
 
DavidZ said:
I just want to say thanks Sam for FreeForm ‘BCN. I listen to your station on-line as much as possible. An absolutely fantastic music mix combining the older songs with fresh new music. IMHO, this is what radio should be. Free to take chances and programmed locally. For the first time, I’m considering purchasing an HD radio although I do think there is a place for this format on a primary signal.

I could never understand the path that radio has taken with their music mix. I don’t buy the argument that “research” says that people want just their favorite songs all the time until they’re drilled into the ground.
Click to expand...

My tastes are aligned with yours, I think FreeForm 'BCN is a great idea. I'm certainly enjoying it (on my HD radio), and I was a listener to WBCN in their original "free form" days forty years ago.

However, our tastes are not the tastes of the masses which commercial radio must pander to on their primary signals. There have always been people on these boards who say "I like it, so everyone should like it", not realizing that, outside of this board, we are a minority of radio and music geeks who have had our ears glued to the radio practically every waking moment for years, so we're sick of the same short list of hits that the casual listeners, who greatly outnumber us, always want to hear as the background to their commutes and their workdays. The majority of casual listeners wouldn't want to listen to FreeForm 'BCN. Too much music that they would consider unfamiliar or obscure. They want songs that they already know, and that they can sing every lyric or play every air guitar lick to.

DavidZ said:
Take a stroll through any of the urban chic stores in Cambridge, Somerville, etc. and listen to what is being played. Adventuresome eclectic music! Corporate owners and their so called research don’t have a clue.
Click to expand...

The number of customers of urban chic stores in "hip" towns like Cambridge, Somerville, etc... are greatly outnumbered by the customers of WalMart's, Targets, and Best Buys in the cities and the suburbs. Commercial stations must program their primary signals to serve that majority in order to get ratings, sponsors, and survive.

Perhaps niches of aficionados will form to support eclectic programming on HD channels as it has on college and public radio. I certainly hope so, but every attempt at putting more eclectic programming on primary FM commercial signals has failed in this area ever since after the original "FM underground free-form era", back when the masses were getting their music from Top 40 AM radio, and FM then was like today's HD subchannels, attracting deeper "hip" music aficionados with eclectic programming on shoestring budgets. After the great migration of mainstream music and its audience from AM to FM in the '70s, eclectic music has unfortunately not been able to compete for ratings and sponsors on commercial FM.
 
Free Form BCN is indeed niche radio, but I think it's SO damn good ;o)
 
Agreed. Sam please program tracks from the first John Lennon solo LP, "Plastic ONo Band". Mother, Isolation, Remember, I Found Out, God ; all great tracks......
 
I think after so many years of radio apologists saying that "it's all about ratings" " The glory days are over"
" you can never go back", blah blah etc.
It's time for the pendulum to swing the other way.
Freeform BCN is just what folks like me want to hear when we turn on the radio
 
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