WLUP

DavidEduardo said:

While it has improved overall, the imaging (sweepers, promos, etc) is not "major market" in many cases. Probably too much work for too few staffers.

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Yes I agree with that too...they seem to want to do everything in-house, and that's apparently a bad idea. It gives them control and ownership, but quality suffers.

Still, as I said, they do shows, while Pandora, Spotify, and Apple just play songs. Two different approaches.

DavidEduardo said:

Then, I find many of the gold based channels go deeper than I appreciate. I hear songs that should have never made it out of the particular decade they were released in. Granted, one of the early selling points of XM was "deeper" libraries, but for the most part they have realized that adding semi-stiffs tot he playlist really was not a sales and renewal point. But there is still way too much of the playing of such songs; in many cases they are songs that I know do not test with the target of the particular channel.

While it has improved overall, the imaging (sweepers, promos, etc) is not "major market" in many cases. Probably too much work for too few staffers. But hey, I'm paying for it.

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Agree completely as a listener....and when my contract is up in a few months, it's one reason I'm leaning towards bailing. Too often I can punch down the row of such channels, I hear song after song that at best elicit a "meh" from me. Not that I've done a documented comparison, but my perception is I don't experience the same feeling doing the same exercise through my terrestrial presets. Notwithstanding the periods the commercials coincide, I rarely make it through my presets before finding something that motivates me to stop.

Side note on XM--the 80s on 8 repetition of the top 40 countdown is absurd...and while I get the novelty of some of those songs played in the context of a moment-in-time countdown, when you run the same show something like eight times a week, that's just too much--especially the earlier-in-the-decade countdowns where the tried-and-true classics are fewer and farther between.

I got off the Sirius/XM bandwagon years ago. I initially got it because of Howard Stern (I am a fan). But I got tired of paying a monthly fee to get what I used to get free. Granted, the show, to me, was much better, but still...

I also don't want any more "apps" on my phone. I don't want an "app" for rewards from a store, I DON'T want an "app" to pick up radio, especially in my vehicle which is already inclusive of this thing called an AM/FM radio, which is where I do 99.99999999% of my listening anyway. I also don't feel the need to constantly have it when I'm outside the vehicle... I'm all for dumbphones to be quite honest. So yea, I want regular ole AM/FM, broadcast freely, to me that anything with a receiver can pick up. So to me this form of media isn't dead.

Mmm So the Drive adopts Two for Tuesday 🤔I love it!!! Feels a part of the Loop is back. Good move to win over some loop listeners.

TheBigA said:

Yes I agree with that too...they seem to want to do everything in-house, and that's apparently a bad idea. It gives them control and ownership, but quality suffers.

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It's the most irritating thing about SiriusXM. Despite its being based in the nation's media capital, its promos and sweepers are full of small/medium-market "Hey! Look what I can do!" production gimmickry -- noisy whiz-bang sound effects, phased audio, voices pinched to telephone-line quality, etc. They seem to want to match each channel's imaging with a suitable stereotypical VO approach: a "slacker"-sounding female for the '90s grunge channel, a happy-sounding African-American male for NBA Radio, a painfully phony testosterone-laden "aggressive" VO with overtones of small-market "puker" for NFL Radio, a ridiculous, difficult-to-describe, "edgy" male VO for the promos for the MMA/wrestling channel Rush. Why?

Mmm So the Drive adopts Two for Tuesday.

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Wow. How creative. There are only hundreds of classic rock & rock stations across the U.S. doing Two-fer Tuesday or Three-fer Thursday.

Granted, much of the audience must enjoy the feature if so many stations utilize it!

CTListener - I actually like the imaging SXM uses for ch. 34 Lithium. I also like their imaging for Turbo (ch. 41) and Liquid Metal (ch. 40). I don't like the stuff they use for Octane (ch. 37), though. I agree with you 100% about the NFL channel voice, though. That guy stinks.

Only two reasons for listening to Sirius/XM.
1. There is a format that you like that is not represented on Terrestrial FM where you live (and that includes Sports)
2. You live where Terrestrial FM is next to nil.

MarkW said:

Wow. How creative. There are only hundreds of classic rock & rock stations across the U.S. doing Two-fer Tuesday or Three-fer Thursday.
.

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Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Bob Stroud introduced "two-fer Tuesdays" here in the Chicago market 20-or so years ago....if not earlier.

I remember hearing it on rock stations in Michigan during the late 80's when I was a young lad.

cyberdad said:

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Bob Stroud introduced "two-fer Tuesdays" here in the Chicago market 20-or so years ago....if not earlier.

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I was going to point that out too. I recall hearing it at least as early as 1985 on WLUP (that's when Stroud was there, as well as working on production/imaging I think). IMO it belongs on The Drive now!

CTListener said:

It's the most irritating thing about SiriusXM. Despite its being based in the nation's media capital, its promos and sweepers are full of small/medium-market "Hey! Look what I can do!" production gimmickry -- noisy whiz-bang sound effects, phased audio, voices pinched to telephone-line quality, etc. They seem to want to match each channel's imaging with a suitable stereotypical VO approach: a "slacker"-sounding female for the '90s grunge channel, a happy-sounding African-American male for NBA Radio, a painfully phony testosterone-laden "aggressive" VO with overtones of small-market "puker" for NFL Radio, a ridiculous, difficult-to-describe, "edgy" male VO for the promos for the MMA/wrestling channel Rush. Why?

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Not to be contentious, but with all encouragement, why don't you send them some of your work. I concur with your assessment and hear the same thing in the four major markets and numerous medium markets that I pass through in my non-radio job each month. It's follow the leader, flavor of the day stuff, whether the voice is male or female. The approach in a lot of companies and markets must be dictated by the PDs and managers of the stations who hear "what works" at other stations that have the same format, especially when one PD calls the shots for three clusters. That phone EQ technique came about at least 20 years ago from one of the highly sought after CHR voice guys who did about 30 stations. The guy passed away years ago, but he must have made a fortune with his detached, hipper than hip phone EQ presentation. BTW, Bill St. James has one of the most respectable deliveries and multi-format voices I've ever heard on radio and network TV. I've heard some stations that used him years ago and still run his stuff, probably without paying residuals. Some of it is hyper EQd and compressed with whooshes and zaps, too. I wonder if "voice only" imaging will make a comeback.