I'm not sure what to tell you. Hendrie was a brilliant topical parodiest.
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WABC starts petition to save AM radio
- Thread starter RadioGuy1864
- Start date
Pop music for youth has to improve greatly, and inspire that young and recently apathetic demo, before any radio dial is 'saved'.
12-17's have been replenishing radio's reach for over 60 years now. Kids from sock-hops to Greasers to surfers to Brits to anti-war Vietnam protestors to disco to .... whatever ..... have kept the AM and FM dials alive. Not anymore, though.
And with the FM dial's CHR stations topping out at measly 5.0 shares, those genius programmers stand to be on go-fund-us sites soon (and the music industry is equally to blame for the youth void).
Corporate/political garbage invited this condition. They're stuck with it.
12-17's have been replenishing radio's reach for over 60 years now. Kids from sock-hops to Greasers to surfers to Brits to anti-war Vietnam protestors to disco to .... whatever ..... have kept the AM and FM dials alive. Not anymore, though.
And with the FM dial's CHR stations topping out at measly 5.0 shares, those genius programmers stand to be on go-fund-us sites soon (and the music industry is equally to blame for the youth void).
Corporate/political garbage invited this condition. They're stuck with it.
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No, the advent of successful FM created this change. Instead of a single broad Top 40 format, we got urban leaning, AC leaning (Hot AC) and traditional Top 40 as well as Superstars Top 40 rock formats. The 15 shares a top 40 might get in the 60's became a 4 or a 5 share by the end of the 70's.
Markets that had only 6 to 8 good signals... New York, LA, Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and so on... suddenly had 12 to 15 good, full FM signals plus the AMs that survived for a while so shares were spread across 20 or so stations instead of five or six.
They're still listening to pop music, just not what's on the radio. It "inspires" them to listen to media other than over-the-air radio. You (and I) may not understand that music, or may think it's garbage, but the opinions and tastes of their elders have never mattered much to any generation in its teens and twenties.
And, as David keeps saying, since advertisers found that there's little money to be made off teenagers and children, the content and presentation of CHR is aimed at listeners in their 20s and early 30s, primarily female. The other problem for CHR is that in many parts of the country CHR's share is being eaten into by country radio, which wasn't a major factor in 18-34 until only a decade or so ago.
Trying to appease all appeases none in the talk and opinion arena.
In a battle for save the planet /we want electric cars/ fossil fuel bad vs AM radio that the old white conservative guys listen to, you can bet your backside AM radio is going to lose that battle.
Where were these people when every electronic device made in the last 40 years raised the noise floor so high signals that were once staples can no longer be heard?
Where was the FCC when tower sites were being sold and nobody could build a new facility because radiation is bad, NIMBY and every other BS excuse. The FCC had no problem carving out a across the board permission for "OTARDS" less than 1 meter in diameter regardless of what the condo board or building owner wanted. That sure helped the sat casters didn't it. They did the same thing for cell phone sites, local zoning means nothing, a cell site can go almost anywhere due to the FCC.
Where were these people when every electronic device made in the last 40 years raised the noise floor so high signals that were once staples can no longer be heard?
Where was the FCC when tower sites were being sold and nobody could build a new facility because radiation is bad, NIMBY and every other BS excuse. The FCC had no problem carving out a across the board permission for "OTARDS" less than 1 meter in diameter regardless of what the condo board or building owner wanted. That sure helped the sat casters didn't it. They did the same thing for cell phone sites, local zoning means nothing, a cell site can go almost anywhere due to the FCC.
Just truth, not fiction.
Cleveland especially is a market that has and had only one good AM signal which covers the entire market around the clock, that being 1100, now WTAM. All others had structural deficiencies or were never built to accommodate suburban sprawl, so when the likes of WMMS, WDOK, WQAL and WGCL burst onto the scene, AMs like WJW, WIXY, WHK, WGAR and WERE slowly fell into irrelevance. WGAR effectively moved their call letters and legacy from the AM dial onto 99.5 in the late 1980s before selling off their once-venerable AM signal. Not even talk radio could save a deeply impaired signal like WERE, which went all-brokered in 1992.
WTAM is one of the VERY rare cases of an AM station to emerge from ratings mediocrity in the late 1990s and that was almost entirely attributed to the station poaching Cleveland Indians play-by-play as well as afternoon host Mike Trivisonno (a former house caller to Pete Franklin’s Sportsline). And even in 1998, Trivisonno publicly wished to have his show be on the FM dial instead or to take over as morning host on WMMS.
Yes, anything other than far-right fascism is "socialism". But I suppose if you don't owe a hospital $150,000 to a hospital you aren't even an American.
Plenty of countries have thriving capitalism, probably more personal freedom (no'Jesus sex police' in their bedroom) and yes, pay high taxes but actually get something for them. I pay almost a 10% sales tax for my state government to hoard while hospitals close and doctors are pushed out by an enforced theocracy.....and the governor proposes private toll roads. It's also not "freedom" for every man, woman, child and dog to have all the guns they want, no questions asked.
I didn't like Leno's interviews of people on the street who were so dumb I thought maybe they were putting us on just so they could get on TV. As for Imus, some of his stuff was okay. Steve Allen did funny pretend interviews. I don't think it's funny when you make fools out of your listeners/viewers, it's just mean.
Not to get political but isn't that the whole point of Fox News?
I guess you weren’t a fan of Candid Camera.
Well, what if the callers are participants in their own ignorance? Some of Hendrie's topics were so outlandish that it's amazing people would fall for it. That's on them for having no critical thinking skills. You hear on WBEN everyday. Hendrie was a master at parody.
There are several other markets like that that are both large and fully served by few if any AM stations.
Houston and Phoenix are among the largest, with just one and no full day and night signals respectively. Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Antonio, Austin, New Orleans, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Atlanta, Raleigh/Durham, Richmond VA, Tidewater VA, Providence, Albany/Schenectady/Troy, Columbus, OH, Indianapolis, Little Rock, Jackson MS, Des Moines, Madison WI, Lansing MI, Toledo, Birmingham, Mobile, Albuquerque, Tucson, Spokane, Monterey CA, Springfield MA, New Haven CT, Louisville KY, Nashville and Knoxville TN and many others have no full day and night signals or maybe one full signal and perhaps another "almost all of the market" ones.
Add in the increasing noise levels and there are more and more markets where no AM covers the entire Federal MSA or the Nielsen MSA completely all day long.
Hendrie’s free podcast (The World of Phil Hendrie) is great, and he sometimes has old radio show clips as part of it. Also there are great mp3 segments on archive.org like these:
If radio companies spent less time trying to buy translators, and constantly de-emphasize AM radio, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Companies spent so much money on FM sticks that offered no guarantee of higher listenership. Instead they should’ve invested more into mobile radio streaming and trying to profit from that. I still can’t believe the major radio groups haven’t profited from streams, when my company did it 10 years ago
Rember, folks - This is "entertainment" which means that it's often not 100% unrehearsed reality. Anyone who's actually worked in the business, especially in the studio during some of the more outlandish and creative "bits" knows that magic does sometimes spontaneously happen and there are some callers who truly are as dim or eccentric as they sound on the air, but in many other cases some of the best stuff is not spontaneous, the caller is in on the bit, it's someone known to the hosts who's playing along, or in the case of stations that used (or I guess still maybe still use) a show "prep service", it's completely pre-recorded and scripted.
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And how long ago was that Rubber Duck?
So far, nobody has found a profitable way of streaming advertising sponsored music programming. "Moving" and AM to FM, even a low power one, can be very profitable... particularly in geographically small and medium markets. Streaming costs more than it can produce, so there is no profitable way to move the "one for many" free to the user model to streams.
But Loverofradio says his company has been doing so for 10 years. I can only assume it is with programming that uses absolutely no music, not even as bumpers or beds. Otherwise... COULD ... YOU ... BE ... WRONG!?!?!?
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