| EXPERIENCED RADIOMAN: Remember when radio had all night announcers instead of repeats of daytime shows? When announcers talked to the listeners not to each other? (You add some) MYSELF: Sure! "When the announcers were live", "when radio stations had complete news departments", "when radio used equipment like cart machines, turntables, tape recorders, now obsolete equipment"... EXPERIENCED RADIOMAN: I think we should cut to the chase and start a radio station and call it KRAP radio or "Radio KRAP". Home of annoying announcers, a few stale songs, old news , commercials you love to hate, inaccurate weather. Think of the slogans. "Wake up in the morning to KRAP". "Listen to KRAP all day" "Todays News tomorrow" "Listen to us and guess what time it is" "KRAP No Clue Weather" "We're what Radio is ...KRAP". " KRAP, listen to shit all day." MYSELF: A TV show already has done that. WKRP. Almost same call letters. It was a satire based on your above ideas. By the way, even back in the 60s, a lot of rock stations were considered crap. The very first time I saw George Carlin (back when he was a neat new comedian, before he morphed into a pissed-off old man) was on the Hollywood Palace when George did a marvelous impression of a rock and roll DJ at a typical radio station, this was in about 1967. Just by coincidence, you can see that very routine at: Carlin's First Appearance on Hollywood Palace EXPERIENCED RADIOMAN: Anyway, I couldn't sleep and thought of all the things that we have lost in the passing years. I don't know what radio is like in Denver but it's terrible here. Weekends and nights are repeats of weekday shows, they even play announcers talking about old news, weather and giving wrong time. Everything sounds like radio school. Are the AM signals getting worse? MYSELF: There are reasons for all of that: 1. There's about three times as many radio stations crowding the radio bands as opposed to our day 40 years ago. So, the money and the talent is spread thin - a station can only get a small slice of the advertising pie, so to speak. 2. These days we've got hundreds of cable channels to watch, we've got the internet to listen to (including internet radio), ipods and the like, who listens to this thing called "radio"? 3. Most of radio is listened to in the car these days -- 'cause you can't watch TV or surf the Internet in the car if you're the driver. So, it's lots of news/traffic/weather/sports/talk. 4. Radio stations are only surviving by multiple ownership. "Clear Channel" here in town owns 8 radio stations in one building, including KOA, KHOW and the like. Only three stations are in the black. The rest of the stations are in the red, but survive from the money of the three stations. And they share the talent, a newsman does the news for 3 stations, for example. One person owning one station doesn't cut it anymore. It's not financially feasible. 5. Stations put on whatever they think will get ratings. By the way, the new ratings method of "People Meters" are changing some things -- for years KOA was number one in Denver -- when the People Meters came in, suddenly KOSI playing Christmas Music was at the top! EXPERIENCED RADIOMAN: I would hate to be out there selling advertising. MYSELF: I hear ya.. But I'm an optimist -- I see incredible opportunities in the media that didn't exist at all 40 years ago. Or even 20 years ago. Let's take a look at the GREAT things that are going on -- for example: Have you ever listened to satellite radio? You can tune into uninterrupted easy listening pops symphony music if you want, whatever is your bag. A LOT more intelligent choices than current AM radio. You can also get Internet radio of just about anything through your computer. Most radio stations have their own site, where you can listen live to their programming. So you can listen to an AM station across the country if you want. Get an MP3 player you can put into your pocket. YOU program your own music from your computer, you can listen to it in full stereo by headphones wherever you are. You can get maybe 40 hours worth of music or Prairie Home Companion or your old record albums into the thing. And you can reprogram it whenever you want. By the way, a few months ago I bought a very low cost MP3 player complete with headphones at Target for NINE bucks. Price is no object! It's got a USB plug that goes straight into your computer. You can "pour" the music into it! Want to listen to your old record albums on your MP3 player? No problem. A week ago I bought a turntable from Sears -- it has a USB plug on it that goes directly into your computer. The software AUTOMATICALLY separates each song into a separate MP3 file. You fill out a "chart" of the artist's name, album title, and song title. Then you dump whatever MP3 files you want into your MP3 player (or IPOD) and you've got YOUR own music to listen to! Want to own your own radio station and do it the way YOU think it should be done? No problem. Get a website, put on your own station. Yep, you don't have to spend money for a transmitter, either!! And the whole world has access to your "station". People can find your station by "Google". Want to own your own TV network? No problem. Put videos onto YouTube. The whole world can see your TV program starring yourself. It doesn't cost you a thing! My thing in radio was doing creative production and working with sound. I used to have to have a full room full of $5000 worth of equipment to make spot announcements and such. I can now do the same thing with a ten dollar sound editing program! With the sound editing programs I have in my computer now -- I can: 1. Record audio with no background hiss whatsoever. No tape is involved. 2. Multi-track audio. Hey, I can go 16 tracks, don't need any Les Paul reel to reel recorders. 3. Edit my sound on screen with no splicing tape, much faster and more accurate. 4. I can do a variable speed/pitch thing. I can change one without the other. For example, remember when you'd record a spot that was supposed to be 60 seconds long, and you'd have a perfect take, except it was 63 seconds long? No problem, on the computer you can squeeze your spot down by speeding up the spot, but the pitch isn't affected, you're just talking faster. 5. It has a whole control board where I can add on various echo effects and ambiance. I can do a ten band equalization on segments. I can do a compressor/limiter thing on it. 6. I have a separate "audio cleaning" program where I can take out hiss, record clicks, and background noise. I can take a "sample" of background noise, and it will digitally subtract that noise from the whole audio piece. I can also spread out segments of the audio waveform into a "sound-gram" of sorts, and "retouch" out spots of unwanted noise. For example, let's say while you're talking, a dog barks. That can be "retouched" out of the waveform, so that there's no interruption! Can you imagine what this program can do to your old audio tapes from years ago?? 7. If being a DJ is your bag, there's audio programs where you can use your laptop to run a whole radio program! So, that's my replay as to "What Happened to Radio?". By the way, when I think back of the frustrations I used to put up with working with equipment and other announcers -- all of those problems have been SOLVED with modern inventions. Remember when other staff members would louse up the production room equipment? Or maybe they'd mess with your tapes or erase them? No problem -- your whole "room" is now on your laptop -- all of your production work is backed up on hard drive and CD copies you have safely stored at home. Remember the "dumb" people you'd have to work with? Hey, people with a phony First Ticket to keep the station legal don't need to be hired for things, the FCC changed the rules - people are now hired on the basis of talent! And the "dumb" people aren't computer literate -- they aren't working in radio these days! So my point is, it's a whole new radio world these days, and I think it's a much better one!! Don (I sent the above to my radio friend, and here's his reply:) EXPERIENCED RADIOMAN: "Excellent! I love the positive look at this enormous change in our profession. The past in this case was exciting because of the power of radio and the personality element in 'the old days'. I miss that, I miss the need to turn to radio. I listen to talk radio and happy it is there. You can tell the real radio guys doing the talk thing and they are fun to listen to. The questions I ask is did radio programming change, did listeners taste change, did technology change radio or did non radio people buying more and more and losing site of the purpose of radio broadcasting, going to automation and dropping community. Did it all have to happen or did we just let it go? I'm not an old person when it comes to change, some is good but what did we lose or what will we lose in the future? Thanks for your thoughts. You could set up a forum for thoughts on this subject. Dan" |
| I started doing "radio" in 1967. With 40 years plus under my belt, I was a DJ, a radio newsman, a radio network newsman, an audio production guy. I worked at a number of "WKRP's" in my time! I've splice enough audio tape to get a lot of iron oxide in my blood! I could walk into a station of 40 years ago right now and do my board shift without a hitch -- except stations ain't what they used to be -- you run a lot of things with a mouse now! And single ownership radio stations hardly exist -- it's not financially feasable these days for someone to have his own radio station on "Hiway 50 West" with it's own transmitter and make a living. But there are "romantic" memories of the stations of the 50s and 60s, when personalities ruled the airwaves. So what am I getting into with this preface? Well, thank goodness I'm outta radio and semi-retired -- I love to play with video stuff these days -- and I'm in contact with a dozen radio people many of whom I used to work with. And I belong to some broadcast clubs where I meet the radio announcers of yester-year! But I see some guys my age and older lamenting the fact that "radio just isn't the way it used to be" , broadcasting is going to heck, you can't get a job as an announcer anymore, blah blah. Good grief, people my age talking like old men?? One very capable correspondent of mine, who DJ'ed and managed a number of radio stations in the last four decades wrote me a few months ago talking about the "good old days" of radio. As I'm prone to do, I answer my letters with long essays -- cuz that's the way I am -- so, you might be interested in his comments and my comments, here we go: |
| RADIO JUST ISN'T THE WAY IT USED TO BE, RIGHT? |
