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This site is DEAD!
- Thread starter emo474
- Start date
It's not just here, Emo.
To paraphrase from the Clinton years: 'It's the stupid economy'. It's everywhere.
In New York, for example, the biggest 'radio' story of the year threatened to be the Rapture. In fact, Family Radio's inert WFME there has gone up the past two books. Fortunately (?) 101.9 and Randy Michaels decided to be Gotham's Joker to steal some radio headlines.
But the ratings sameness in the PPM markets and the diary markets all come off in recent times like corporate-issued jigsaw puzzles that you can assemble blindfolded.
It's in every market. Music radio on FM is slowly being eliminated. Such-and-such is not a rock market. So-and-so passed away. HD radio is being given Extreme Unction by the clergy at Radio Shack. W(fill in the daytimer) is not powering down at night. When will the first pirate station make the ratings .... et al.
As long as WWSM plays my Country-Western and keeps putting that unlikely signal here, I'm fine with the stagnancy. And I guess I'd like to hear more about that 1450 in Milford, which I'd probably hear first here instead of that new FM of theirs. And me being an AM geek, the progress of that collection of Scranton smoke signals under the aegis of an an AM station on 1460 is fun to observe.
But when the curator and moderator of a renowned radio board has issued just two editorials for comment in the last six months, you know things are slow all around.
So anyway, which will be the first station in NE PA to start with the Christmas music? The day after Labor Day is only three weeks from now.
To paraphrase from the Clinton years: 'It's the stupid economy'. It's everywhere.
In New York, for example, the biggest 'radio' story of the year threatened to be the Rapture. In fact, Family Radio's inert WFME there has gone up the past two books. Fortunately (?) 101.9 and Randy Michaels decided to be Gotham's Joker to steal some radio headlines.
But the ratings sameness in the PPM markets and the diary markets all come off in recent times like corporate-issued jigsaw puzzles that you can assemble blindfolded.
It's in every market. Music radio on FM is slowly being eliminated. Such-and-such is not a rock market. So-and-so passed away. HD radio is being given Extreme Unction by the clergy at Radio Shack. W(fill in the daytimer) is not powering down at night. When will the first pirate station make the ratings .... et al.
As long as WWSM plays my Country-Western and keeps putting that unlikely signal here, I'm fine with the stagnancy. And I guess I'd like to hear more about that 1450 in Milford, which I'd probably hear first here instead of that new FM of theirs. And me being an AM geek, the progress of that collection of Scranton smoke signals under the aegis of an an AM station on 1460 is fun to observe.
But when the curator and moderator of a renowned radio board has issued just two editorials for comment in the last six months, you know things are slow all around.
So anyway, which will be the first station in NE PA to start with the Christmas music? The day after Labor Day is only three weeks from now.
This board, like others, is a reflection of everything having trickled up the past decade, not down.
Just some observations here from an ex-radio employee, music director, PD, newsman and jock ....
With all the processing and studio glitz and digital vitamin-drinks put into music mixdowns in recent times, it's difficult sometimes to distinguish voices. So when I consider that the three most attention-getting songs I've heard while on various jobs the past few months were by someone as average as Lady Gaga, I have to think that the music industry bears a lot of blame in the radio malaise. Nothing meant negative here toward her ; just against the sameness of music. It's not thrilling anyone ; it's not saying anything.
Since Niching became a growth industry, at least for middlemen like regional PDs and consultants, there hasn't been any real social trend. Other people will know better which -- music or radio -- is the cause and which is the effect.
Perhaps if this talk about re-instating the armed forces draft picks up momentum, we'll get a form of newer music from youth. Or maybe those 700-head marches on Wall Street and other places will spark some form of grass-roots unison and spawn an awareness, if not an outright genre of music (incidental or not). Rebellious, generation-defining music used to be this country's most gracious export.
Mostly, I don't like the idea that some new, streamlined, 'visionary', disinfected and homogenized format (like the Merlin company's WEMP and proposed clones) is debuting in the biggest markets without 'the farm system' having given it a run-through first. From the roof of my house I can see about thirty new windmills in the hills. Word has it that this region gets bypassed ; that the generated power goes to Philadelphia. There are at least three nuclear plants located along eastern Pennsylvania rivers, nice and relatively safe from those big markets. It is as though management society in general, and radio management society in particular here, are saying that places like Allentown and Scranton and Sunbury no longer are considered productive or important. All of a sudden, amid this almost insidious evaporation of music from FM dial, there is no more need for a farm system.
Yeah. Explain that contrived reality to students at a school next to some smokestack in Liverpool. Teach that to young students in a tree-less slum like Hoboken. Have your big company (which symbiotically helps subsidize a trucker school via flash hirings) insist on inoculating students from Tupelo with that dead-end wall upon orientation.
Radio and its music (plus those voices originally from the farm), full of enthusiasm and ideas wholesome mischief, used to help guide youth and its ambitions. It did so for decades. Today radio is guiding no one under age 30. Music radio (and its cranky music relatives, heirs from the musical efforts of authentically creative people) has been giving the over-40 population the finger for too a long while. Now both industries have to answer to the younger end as well -- the one it has treated for thirty years as though males and females were issued separate currency.
If and when, it will be fun to watch the social skirmishes when they trickle down to the forums of smaller regions. Considering the past several years, the fallout will have been the first thing ever to've trickled down to coal , farm and medium markets.
Cheers!
Living here near Allentown
Just some observations here from an ex-radio employee, music director, PD, newsman and jock ....
With all the processing and studio glitz and digital vitamin-drinks put into music mixdowns in recent times, it's difficult sometimes to distinguish voices. So when I consider that the three most attention-getting songs I've heard while on various jobs the past few months were by someone as average as Lady Gaga, I have to think that the music industry bears a lot of blame in the radio malaise. Nothing meant negative here toward her ; just against the sameness of music. It's not thrilling anyone ; it's not saying anything.
Since Niching became a growth industry, at least for middlemen like regional PDs and consultants, there hasn't been any real social trend. Other people will know better which -- music or radio -- is the cause and which is the effect.
Perhaps if this talk about re-instating the armed forces draft picks up momentum, we'll get a form of newer music from youth. Or maybe those 700-head marches on Wall Street and other places will spark some form of grass-roots unison and spawn an awareness, if not an outright genre of music (incidental or not). Rebellious, generation-defining music used to be this country's most gracious export.
Mostly, I don't like the idea that some new, streamlined, 'visionary', disinfected and homogenized format (like the Merlin company's WEMP and proposed clones) is debuting in the biggest markets without 'the farm system' having given it a run-through first. From the roof of my house I can see about thirty new windmills in the hills. Word has it that this region gets bypassed ; that the generated power goes to Philadelphia. There are at least three nuclear plants located along eastern Pennsylvania rivers, nice and relatively safe from those big markets. It is as though management society in general, and radio management society in particular here, are saying that places like Allentown and Scranton and Sunbury no longer are considered productive or important. All of a sudden, amid this almost insidious evaporation of music from FM dial, there is no more need for a farm system.
Yeah. Explain that contrived reality to students at a school next to some smokestack in Liverpool. Teach that to young students in a tree-less slum like Hoboken. Have your big company (which symbiotically helps subsidize a trucker school via flash hirings) insist on inoculating students from Tupelo with that dead-end wall upon orientation.
Radio and its music (plus those voices originally from the farm), full of enthusiasm and ideas wholesome mischief, used to help guide youth and its ambitions. It did so for decades. Today radio is guiding no one under age 30. Music radio (and its cranky music relatives, heirs from the musical efforts of authentically creative people) has been giving the over-40 population the finger for too a long while. Now both industries have to answer to the younger end as well -- the one it has treated for thirty years as though males and females were issued separate currency.
If and when, it will be fun to watch the social skirmishes when they trickle down to the forums of smaller regions. Considering the past several years, the fallout will have been the first thing ever to've trickled down to coal , farm and medium markets.
Cheers!
Living here near Allentown
1
111222
Guest
Don't you think the lack of passion on this board reflect the same lack of passion the public has for radio?? I remember the days these boards were popping. Now? Nothing at all. Very sad.
Bulls-eye, 111222.
With all the layoffs and cutbacks, everyone's enthusiasm has been blunted. If industry people have been jaded to any 'new' strategies in recent times, how is the remaining general audience expected to respond eagerly to the homogenization?
My point was that this apathy is not limited to this board. It's everywhere.
With all the layoffs and cutbacks, everyone's enthusiasm has been blunted. If industry people have been jaded to any 'new' strategies in recent times, how is the remaining general audience expected to respond eagerly to the homogenization?
My point was that this apathy is not limited to this board. It's everywhere.
I was always taught to look at things from the point of view of the listener. There are some good morning shows out there. The rest is satellite, voice track and automation. We're not engaging the listener. Young people are growing up with ways of getting their music outside of radio. Information/news on radio is dead. Talk shows? Uninformed hosts and the same three callers.
If the listeners are bored, imagine how people in the industry feel.
No wonder there's a lack of activity here.
If the listeners are bored, imagine how people in the industry feel.
No wonder there's a lack of activity here.
Scranton/Wilkes Barre is a dead market, it doesn't offer a whole lot anymore. Ch 16 makes all the money around there. At least ONE station should be doing something but there aren't any people around to do what has to be done.
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