Whats up with WHAM??

[TheBigA]

How can it be "individualized" when it's all being canned at a central point?

Go to www.pandora.com and learn. This is not traditional transmitters and towers top-down radio. This is listener-oriented content, with playlists designed around the music tastes and interests of each individual. No gate-keepers like PDs or DJs. You tell the computer what you like, and it creates a personalized radio station that only plays what you like. And it's been available for ten years. They claim 80 million users, more than four times the subscriber base of Sirius. See statistics here: http://www.statisticbrain.com/pandora-radio-statistics After you see this, you'll understand why Clear Channel is going after this audience.

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Having had a Pandora free account for at least five to six years, I find myself checking in regularly for days, then forgetting it for weeks. Rating the tracks is a pain in the assets, but the service is free, so I do it. Pandora is novel. It can be addictive. I have about five radio stations set up, including a Steely Dan station and JPB-FM "Playing What I Want... or close to it." Some people have dozens of different playlist preferences. My Beatles Station, just played Hard Days Night, followed by Band On The Run. This Pandora financial statement is informative and tedious. As it is, Pandora is yet to turn a profit. It's built on the broadband if-come. Here's another review http://doxspot.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-can-pandora-make-money.html This said, even my friends who are fervent Pandora listeners and fans often walk away from it, calling it "Bland-ora."

 

[SirRoxalot]

Look, most of us hear are familiar with Pandora. It replaces your MP3 player on shuffle, not your radio, simply because there's little or no local content.

You were the one who brought up local traffic and weather.

There's no programming that is exclusive to radio. Pandora can do weather forcasts if it wants to. Just as Sirius does local traffic.

Now you say:

"I never said they were going to deliver local content. I said they deliver individualized programming."

Well, which is it, Bub?

Pandora can do a lot of things, but they're not gonna because it's simply not cost-effective. Local radio can provide content that Pandora can't simply because Pandora's not on the ground in that particular market. Radio's a shared experience. Pandora's all about pandering to what you already profess to like, and is essentially a music-only service. Radio is music and more, or at least it would be if you had live and local talent instead of syndication and VT. You see "gatekeepers" as a bad thing. Well, good gatekeepers keep out stuff you really don't want, and admit new things you hadn't really thought of. And that goes beyond music into local events of interest to broader demographic groups.

In short, radio can be hip if you let it. Pandora can't.

 

[TheBigA]

Look, most of us hear are familiar with Pandora. It replaces your MP3 player on shuffle, not your radio, simply because there's little or no local content.

You're the one who defines radio by local content. The dictionary http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/radio does not. Pandora clearly defines themselves as radio, as do their customers. Their customers view PDs and DJs as gatekeepers, and seek to by pass them. So move on.

Well, which is it, Bub?

THIS is what I said:

Pandora can create unique programming for individuals. That's better than the one-size-fits-all of programming to a market.

They have discussed providing weather and traffic, but haven't begun yet. Regardless, that content isn't unique to OTA radio, which my main point. Stop changing the subject.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Sorry, Bub, but you're the one changing the subject. Pandora can define itself any way it wishes, but that doesn't make it so. You're the one who said that Pandora can compete with local radio. It obviously can't. The mistake that too many corporate radio people make is trying to make radio compete with Pandora. It can't, just like it can't compete with MP3 players, CDs, DVDs, cassettes, LPs, or 45s.

The point is that radio should be RADIO - a primarily local service delivering locally-targeted programming that informs and/or entertains. That formula worked for many decades. Radio is hardly "one-size-fits-all of programming to a market". Pandora's more "one-size fits all" to a particular demographic, without regard to locale, what's going on in that location, or sense of timeliness. Even weather and traffic suffer from the time lag and lack of local knowledge when people with tenuous familiarity with a particular market try to deliver that content.

Radio is closer to "one-size fits all of a particular demographic in a particular area at a particular time of day". Or, at least it would be if there wasn't so much syndication and VT.

 

[TheBigA]

Sorry, Bub, but you're the one changing the subject. Pandora can define itself any way it wishes, but that doesn't make it so. You're the one who said that Pandora can compete with local radio. It obviously can't.

It obviously does. Every day. Those 80 million users didn't come out of thin air. They are customers of local radio who don't agree with you about what they want from radio.

What worked for decades isn't going to work any more. It worked for decades because people had no choice. Now that they do, they use other things. And those other things don't have some local guy in his 50s telling people what music to like, or what news is important. And I understand how that's hard for boomers to deal with. They grew up thinking what they did was important, and people respected what they did and said. No more. You have to wake up to new realities. And it's not just because your definition of radio is expensive. It's also because your definition of radio only serves one group of people, and there are lots of others who want something else. The companies that own the towers and transmitters can provide that other stuff, but not if they devote 100% of their staffing and resources to the old model.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Pandora competes with local radio only if you think that local radio is ONLY music. That's never been true.

Pandora is more of a replacement for MP3 players, bypassing the downloading and playlist-making that most people saw as a chore. And, it's free for most users, making a wider range of music available than most people would purchase, while assuaging their guilt over stealing music.

Radio is still the easiest way to listen to moderated content. If that content is properly targeted toward local listeners, and offers enough value added elements to overcome the annoyances of badly produced spots, it attracts many times the listening audience of Pandora, iHeart "radio", satellite, or any combination of the three.

What owners need to do is play to the strengths of radio - local, timely, well-moderated content targeted at local users. Trying to out-jukebox MP3s or Pandora is a fools errand. Since 93% of people sample radio, the key is to give them what they can't get elsewhere. That model has worked since the 1920s. The new reality isn't really that much different from the reality that existed with vinyl, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s. What's changed is the corporate will to invest in their product, and the recognition of the strengths of their medium. By and large, CBS is doing it well. Clear Channel, Cumulus, and several others are doing it poorly.

Lastly, the only advantage to utilizing other delivery systems is if you're delivering content unavailable elsewhere. That means you STILL have to invest in programming, and in sales in order to turn listening into dollars. CC and its imitators are doing a poor job of that, too.

 

[TheBigA]

Radio is still the easiest way to listen to moderated content.

And if the audience doesn't want moderators, too bad. What's wrong with those stupid people? Why do they want to do our jobs? Why can't they just let us have all the fun and tell them what to like? Let us tell our stories, read our liner notes on the air, and become hometown heroes, just the way we used to be? Don't they understand that WE know what they should like? What they want isn't as important as what we want. We're the ones who know.

 

[Savage]

Sorry, guys, was out of town doin' family stuff for a few days. In answer to Mr. Myers' very polite inquiry, no, transmitters do not consume more electricity warming up or getting up to power. When they're on, they eat electricity. When you turn them off, they stop. This is true of today's solid-state rigs and it was true in the "hollow-state" era as well.

Back in the day of vacuum tubes, many engineers liked to leave the filaments lit ("standby" mode) and only apply the HV when it was time to put the rig on the air. This practice claimed two advantages: one, the transmitter could instantly be put on the air without having to wait for the filaments to heat up, and two, there was a school of thought which went that the thermal shock the filaments suffered by successive cycles of heating and cooling shortened tube life.

Tube manufacturers disputed this theory, however, claiming that turning the tubes entirely off made no difference. This only served to launch an associated debate about whether the tube people were deliberately giving bad advice in their own self-interests. That argument has never been settled to this day.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Radio is still the easiest way to listen to moderated content.

And if the audience doesn't want moderators, too bad. What's wrong with those stupid people? Why do they want to do our jobs? Why can't they just let us have all the fun and tell them what to like? Let us tell our stories, read our liner notes on the air, and become hometown heroes, just the way we used to be? Don't they understand that WE know what they should like? What they want isn't as important as what we want. We're the ones who know.

And yet, what is Pandora but the ultimate automated moderator - with no local information, and no sense of time? It's a computer generating playlists, and you have a limited ability to skip songs unless you pay. Yes, you can say "never play this song again", but only if you're interacting with Pandora - which most people do on a very limited basis when they're sitting in front of they're computer and they're not busy doing anything else.

 

[listener-in]

....there was a school of thought which went that the thermal shock the filaments suffered by successive cycles of heating and cooling shortened tube life.

Tube manufacturers disputed this theory, however, claiming that turning the tubes entirely off made no difference. This only served to launch an associated debate about whether the tube people were deliberately giving bad advice in their own self-interests. That argument has never been settled to this day.

Your comment tweaked the interest of this retired scientist who once worked for a manufacturer of incandescent bulbs.

The common wisdom in the lighting industry is that the life of incandescent bulbs is a function of hours of use, with little or no dependence on number of on/off cycles. Over their lifetimes, the filaments lose mass through evaporation and eventually fail. By contrast, such failure is most unlikely in vacuum tubes because filament temperatures are much lower. Because the small mass of filaments precludes sustained temperature gradients, they should be inherently resistant to thermal shock. In practice thermal stresses can build up around inevitable flaws in the material, and the consequent failure may be a function of on/off cycles. Tubes can fail for a multitude of other reasons, many of them not to do with the filament itself.

In the grand scheme of things, the answer to whether a tube will fail because of the number of on/off cycles is a definite maybe. Though I take Wikipedia with a pinch of salt, I believe this link provides a good overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube#Failure_modes

 

[Bob1370]

"And if the audience doesn't want moderators, too bad. What's wrong with those stupid people? Why do they want to do our jobs? Why can't they just let us have all the fun and tell them what to like?"

That's not what a good radio personality is all about. The idea is, that a human voice is attached to a mind which provides some value added to whatever else is happening--whether it's information, insight, humor, gossip, opinion meant to stimulate listener thought and participation, or whatever. If the voice is more than just the voice of the liner-reader, it's a voice that's appreciated by listeners and adds to the appeal of the station. Not every live voice is going to be effective in that way, but many are--and those voices need to be part of the mix for the listener's benefit. Listeners know it--that's why they always choose a good personality show over an automated juke box.

 

[TheBigA]

Listeners know it--that's why they always choose a good personality show over an automated juke box.

Except when they don't. And as I've pointed out in this thread, millions and millions of people are willing to go out of their way to avoid "good personalities," because their interest is music, not talk. Those people should not be discriminated against just because they don't want gatekeepers or personalities. They are members of the public, and deserve to be served, even though their needs and interests are not the same as yours. There are lots of radio stations, and that allows for some to have personalities, and others to not have them. Some to be local, and others to provide content from other places. It's not that "automated jukeboxes" have zero listeners. They have lots of listeners. Maybe they're not #1 in their market, but the fact that they attract more than a 2 share indicates there's an audience. There are lots of other stations that feature live personalities that are attracting less audience than the "automated juke boxes."

 

[Savage]

And the debate over leaving tubes on or turning them off when not in use continues. "Le meme plus chose," etc. I did fail to close the circle in that post, however: I failed to note that of course, the transmitter filaments did continue to consumer power in standby mode - as well as the fact that most rigs employed cooling fans to direct air to the base of the tubes to protect the seals between the glass and the metal contacts. When the HV was energized of course the transmitters consumed much more electricity than they did on standby.

But there were other issues associated with the debate over leaving tube transmitters on "standby" (only filaments on) complicating the decision about whether or not to shut the rigs down "cold." Until the 1970s most tube rigs utilized HV supplies featuring mercury-vapor rectifier tubes. These tube supplies (8008, 857s) were notorious as the most troublesome area of tube transmitters, presenting dangerous hazards to operators as well as being known to arc. In cold weather, if a transmitter was turned entirely off, you ran the risk of having the mercury in the tube precipitate out in liquid form when the tube cooled off. Then when you tried to apply high voltage you'd get some arc-starvation fireworks. Most engineers couldn't get rid of the 8008s fast enough when plug-in solid-state replacements arrived on the scene.

 

[TheBigA]

Yes, you can say "never play this song again", but only if you're interacting with Pandora - which most people do on a very limited basis when they're sitting in front of they're computer and they're not busy doing anything else.

If there was a way to get my local station to stop playing songs that annoy me, I'd spend whatever it costs. But there isn't. The fact that I can get a centralized computer in California to provide that service, while I can't get that service from a locally programmed and staffed radio station, says it all. Local doesn't matter if it doesn't respond to what I want.

 

[TheBigA]

And the debate over leaving tubes on or turning them off when not in use continues.

Since I was the one who made the off hand and off topic comment that started this sub-thread, let me bring things back on topic by saying that I know of no major radio company that feels the need to shut down its transmitter in overnight hours to save money. Even the one that is $20 billion in debt. They will keep their transmitters on at night regardless of what it costs. However, since there is no legal reason to have every transmitter supported by its own staff and engineer, companies will continue to program those stations in ways that suit their needs.

 

[qman]

Well we've gone from a debate on live & local v syndication to a debate on whether transmitters should stay on or be turned off when the station isn't on the air. Lost in the shuffle is the apparent on-air sloppiness of 50Kw WHAM . they're probably happy you stopped talking about them lol

 

[Bob1370]

"Except when they don't."

Which Arbitron tells us, is almost never in almost every market.

"And as I've pointed out in this thread, millions and millions of people are willing to go out of their way to avoid "good personalities," because their interest is music, not talk. Those people should not be discriminated against just because they don't want gatekeepers or personalities. They are members of the public, and deserve to be served, even though their needs and interests are not the same as yours."

All fine and good, there may be people who want that kind of radio and they're welcome to it.

Problem is, if Arbitron teaches us anything, it's that the numbers of people who like that kind of radio are few and far between compared to the live radio-loving majority--and as a business, there's no future in that kind of jockless, bloodless radio. It's never done well in comparison with its non-canned, live personality competition, and it will soon be the cause of its own demise. You see, if you aren't going to provide value-added content on top of the music through information and personality, you aren't offering anything more than what people's own iPods and in-dash CD and cassette decks will give them, and you're giving them no reason to tune in and hear even a moment of whatever commercials you've sold rather than listen to their own tunes--don't forget, folks who use the mp3 or cassette or CD players get their music commercial-free, program the things themselves, and always know every tune will be something they like. Automated radio is, in the end, for people who won't be listening to it much longer, if they listen at all today.

 

[TheBigA]

Problem is, if Arbitron teaches us anything, it's that the numbers of people who like that kind of radio are few and far between compared to the live radio-loving majority

You can make a good living with a 3 share, and that's what Jack gets in Buffalo.

 

[Element9]

Problem is, if Arbitron teaches us anything, it's that the numbers of people who like that kind of radio are few and far between compared to the live radio-loving majority

You can make a good living with a 3 share, and that's what Jack gets in Buffalo.

What would you know about Buffalo, Michigan? Sweet Jeter! You can debate Pandora and terrestrial and the national zeitgeist of Clear Channel and Cumulus, but when it comes to what works and what's happening in Buffalo, would you please just freakin' defer to the rest of us plebes that work or live in the market?

Aside from the snapshot of Persons 12+, Jack makes enough of a dent in the 25-49 demo and the shares of 97 Rock and WHTT to keep both of those competitors honest. Jack's version of Classic Hits is younger than WHTT's and Jack plays a broader variety of 80s and 90s than 97 Rock. Buffalo Jack's not perfect, but it's one of the better Jacks still churning and it doesn't get lost in the shuffle because it's clued-in to what's going on in Buffalo and Western New York. Jack might do better with a live morning and afternoon show, as long as the personalities have a Jack Attitude and are in synch with what the station does and doesn't do. This won't happen because Jack performs well enough for Town Square, which runs the station on a shoe string. Its costs are almost nothing compared to Country WYRK, the Queen of the Cluster, which is live and active as just about #1 across the board.

As to the topic of this thread, WHAM at times is embarrassing. Driving the 90 to Oswego and back, I listened only to find that WHAM was as messed up as some of the posters here indicated. Gaps, local promos or commercials playing over the commercials of the sat shows and outdated weather. Not good.