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WLS FM hires Ron Parker as afternoon host

gr8oldies said:
CBS-FM did run jockless all day for quite a while. It was called Jack FM. We know how that worked out.
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Yeah, it significantly increased the 25-54 demos of the station over the oldies format.

They only changed to classic hits (not oldies) because they were party to the early PPM tests in Philadelphia and saw how much better a more 70's based format could do once the PPM went currency.


"Jockless" is not the same as automated with voice tracking.
 
benale said:
Getting back to Ron Parker, he is an adequate jofck, nothing special. He did middays at CBS FM after Bob Shannon left and before Scott Shannon came in and moved Dan Taylor to middays. His ratings at CBS were very good, as were Bob Shannon's and Dan Taylor's. It's the shift,not the personality. CBSFM could have run a jockless format from 10 to 3 and it would still be #1.

WLS FM is a dull sounding station. Same late 70's 80's songs and very little personality from the talent. Murphy was good,but he didn't do much on the air. He was much better in AM drive. I would imagine anybody who can read liner cards would have fit in. Parker was a friend of Brian Thomas and I would imagine he is working for less than Robert Murphy.
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Murphy was not allowed to entertain and do his thing. Sadly WLS-FM is just a jukebox with commercials and the way it's run now it really doesn't matter if they hire Chicago personalities or someone from out of the market.
It's too bad because they have some good people there.
 
radioman148 said:
Murphy was not allowed to entertain and do his thing.
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Or perhaps "his thing" no longer works with today's audiences. Or maybe he simply can't do exactly what he once did. I was watching Neil Diamond a few weeks ago on the Fallon show. He was once a very dynamic entertainer. Watching him now, he seemed to be going through the motions. Not that he wasn't allowed to do anything. Just that he can't. Could be the case with DJs from that era.
 
Silly question, is Ron voicetracking the shift from NY or is he doing this in Chicago?
 
TheBigA said:
Or perhaps "his thing" no longer works with today's audiences. Or maybe he simply can't do exactly what he once did. I was watching Neil Diamond a few weeks ago on the Fallon show. He was once a very dynamic entertainer. Watching him now, he seemed to be going through the motions. Not that he wasn't allowed to do anything. Just that he can't. Could be the case with DJs from that era.
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Ron Parker is no Robert Murphy in Chicago. As usual this isn't being done with the local listener in mind.
 
radioman148 said:
Ron Parker is no Robert Murphy in Chicago. As usual this isn't being done with the local listener in mind.
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What do you mean? They've hired practically every living Chicago personality for this station at one time or another during the past five years. Maybe it's time to try something else.
 
TheBigA said:
What do you mean? They've hired practically every living Chicago personality for this station at one time or another during the past five years. Maybe it's time to try something else.
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They don't let them entertain just read liner cards. Under those circumstances you could hire anybody from out of the market.
As far as trying something else, maybe the music presentation is the problem.
 
Honestly, do any of us still want to be entertained in the way a John Landecker or Robert Murphy did in our youth? Our views, our tastes, what's now important has all changed with age. What we want from a radio station has changed too. Example, Lujack and Edwards. I loved Animal Stories on WLS as a kid. Have all the albums. But that same feature, twenty years later on WRLL was painful to sit through. Tedium personified. Sometimes it is better to just play the music.
 
radioman148 said:
They don't let them entertain just read liner cards. Under those circumstances you could hire anybody from out of the market.
As far as trying something else, maybe the music presentation is the problem.
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What do you mean by "entertain?" Do you want them to tell jokes? Sing? Nobody put restrictions on Brandmeier on the AM, and it didn't make a difference.

Are they "entertaining" at WJMK? Does it really matter? This is Chicago, not Moline. You're an adult, not a kid.

Truthfully, a good DJ can put personality into liner cards. Casey Kasem read a script, and no one complained about that.
 
Ron Parker co-hosted a very popular morning show in San Francisco on KFRC FM and AM (Oldies) in the 90s, and a couple of years after 2000, IIRC. Ron was always pretty entertaining, though I found his co-host (Cammy Blackstone) difficult to listen to.
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
Wait a minute--this is Chicago. Don't you have to have an AFM member running the turntables? The ghost of Petrillo may be watching!
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The AFM long ago required stations to have a studio orchestra or band if they were going to play recorded music. But they did not represent, as far as I can find, technicians and board ops. That was often the IBEW or similar unions.

I do not know about the Citadel stations, but there are other Chicago stations that are combo operations or even all automated.
 
I'm trying to picture "Boogie Check" with 60 year old callers, as opposed the pre-teens that were calling in the 70s. At second thought, no.
KayJayJay said:
Honestly, do any of us still want to be entertained in the way a John Landecker or Robert Murphy did in our youth? Our views, our tastes, what's now important has all changed with age. What we want from a radio station has changed too. Example, Lujack and Edwards. I loved Animal Stories on WLS as a kid. Have all the albums. But that same feature, twenty years later on WRLL was painful to sit through. Tedium personified. Sometimes it is better to just play the music.
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TheBigA said:
Maybe it's time to try something else.
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And here's your something else in both cases - as I indicated earlier in the thread, BOTH Parker and Thomas have CONSIDERABLE experience in the classic hits format - BOTH are also experienced programmers (Parker having been a PD at KLDE in Houston) - I say give them a chance!
 
DavidEduardo said:


The AFM long ago required stations to have a studio orchestra or band if they were going to play recorded music. But they did not represent, as far as I can find, technicians and board ops. That was often the IBEW or similar unions.

I do not know about the Citadel stations, but there are other Chicago stations that are combo operations or even all automated.
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I thought most of the top market clusters had a CWA or IBEW person on the premises 24 / 7, in case something gone wrong. Several missed commercials or a couple of quarter hours of no PPM would make this expense seem minor.
 
secondchoice said:
I thought most of the top market clusters had a CWA or IBEW person on the premises 24 / 7, in case something gone wrong. Several missed commercials or a couple of quarter hours of no PPM would make this expense seem minor.
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Depends on what year. Most top markets have had spot breaks automated since the early 90s. No need for a union guy who might fall asleep. And I used to be one.
 
TheBigA said:
Depends on what year. Most top markets have had spot breaks automated since the early 90s. No need for a union guy who might fall asleep. And I used to be one.
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And most of the union board ops were not engineers capable of fixing something. They knew how to run the board, take readings when that was required and often nothing else. Union contracts preserved the jobs for as long as they could, but they could not hold on forever.

Just as BigA was a union member, I was many times involved on the "other" side... having had to cross IBEW and UPAGRA and other picket lines as a manager or PD and having decertified shops more than once.

Between BigA and I, we know the situation from all sides should you have questions.

In the last 20-some years that the stations I have worked with have had all commercials automated, I can say that the cost of having a body there 24/7 far exceeds any lost revenue (which is usually quickly handled by make-goods).
 
TheBigA said:
Depends on what year. Most top markets have had spot breaks automated since the early 90s. No need for a union guy who might fall asleep. And I used to be one.
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Reminds me of pulling into the parking lot at an LA station back in the 70's. I sort of noticed a big cable running out the door to the parking lot. When I went into the studio, the jock was there, but no union board op. The commercial break came up, and the spots ran, but still no board op.

I then followed the cable out to the parking lot. The board op was on a dolly under his car doing some mechanical work. He had a remote control to all the cart decks, and fired them when the DJ gave him a cue.

Obviously, he was of no help in an emergency unless the emergency involved the spark plugs.
 
Wait a minute--this is Chicago. Don't you have to have an AFM member running the turntables? The ghost of Petrillo may be watching!

Even months later this would be a good post for this month, what is happening later on this month?
 
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