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radio was great when there was one owner per station

oldies76 said:
Rewinding the clock means......DJ's that were more personal and cared about their listeners more,
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We have those, in morning shows. Listeners tell us incessantly that they generally don't want a lot of talk later in the day.

Radio used to be many people's contact with the outside world. "Your friend on the radio". We have social media for that now.

memorable music presentations,
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If you mean "specials" those were created to get diarykeepers to write things down. Not so in PPM. In fact, often counterproductive as you give listeners what they did not come to you for.

actual requests
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Except for rare special occasions and instances, we have not really done requests since the 60's.

The father of Top 40, way back in early '64, told me that "owning a telephone does not make a listener into a program director". I went on to beat nearly 40 other stations in my market by following that kind of advice.

and satisfying the listeners with the perception that you actually cared, instead of saying today, "Oh, we'll try to get that on for you, if we even have it", when in fact they never would because the song wasn't on the rotation for the day.
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We care about all our listeners, not just one with a phone or a texting account.

Fact: stations that play the "right" music don't get requests. In the instances where I have had large market stations with 20 shares or more, the phone practically never rang. In fact, the only times we got requests turned out, upon questioning, to be "fan club" members or a particular artist or people paid by the record label.

Not to mention, great jingles and bumpers
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The first station I was associated with that did not play jingles at all was Y-100 back around 1980 in Miami. They were #1, and the best sounding radio station I think I ever, ever heard. Anywhere.

Jingles have a place, in some formats. But they are not the end-all of programming.

and the music.......oh, the music! Methods that can be utilized today with the "newer" classic hits being played today. You keep your listeners by listening to them.
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Big stations... successful stations... regularly consult with listeners about the music they play. If a song is played, it is for sound reasons. And if one is not played, it is because it would damage listening levels.

Once again, I will reference the motto given by KFXM 98.3, near Lancaster, California on their webpage.

"We do not have consultants to tell us what to play.
We answer to a higher authority;
The Listener"
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Actually, they do no research and play the songs that the owner wants to play. KFXM is a hobby station, an LPFM. While it is nicely done for what it is, they only have about 15,000 persons in their 60 dbu contour in a market of 13,600,000 persons.
 
And something else I wanted to share...My own engineer advised me not to play every song that's on a particular CD. Just because one may like all the songs on that recording, doesn't mean he'll get to play them all. More food for thought.

Dan <><

P.S. The classic hits stations are doing their jobs right. They're playing those songs that test and still perform well. Over time, these stations will have to update their playlists again, if they want to remain on the air. (Adding more tunes from the early 2000s, if they haven't already)
 
oldies76 said:
And vinyl records are making a large comeback. Things do indeed cycle, and its a good thing.
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Large? Give me a break.

Vinyl has gone from "no sales at all" to "nearly no sales at all".

Just one song, "Despacito", has been played and downloaded more times in just a few months than all the vinyl sold in the last decade.

The top vinyl album last year sold 72,000 copies. "Despacito" was played or downloaded about 5 billion times.

This is just like a station with a 0.1 share that gets a 0.2 and claims that the audience has doubled; it does not matter as at either level, next to nobody is listening.
 
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DavidEduardo said:


And,as stated before, advertisers have an equal lack of interest in your age group.

No revenue = no programming targeting your age group.
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That's rich.....because it is my very own age group with most of the disposable dollars. The truth is those "marketeers" don't know what or how to sell me. They can't do it with the inane BS they use on the younger demos.
 
TheBigA said:
Actually you could if you went to the various aircheck sites where files from those particular DJs still live, even though they themselves are long gone.

And the reality is there are lots of DJs on the air today who tell stories about the songs, but not necessarily the songs you like, because they were popular before those DJs were alive.
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I've actually done that and I've talked with a handful of the "old guard" DJ's. To a person they have been interesting discussions and they haven't lost their radio personalities. There are a few still on the air and they sound as great as always - even one here in Phoenix in PM Drive.
 
The thing everybody seems to miss is that radio is a business. You would have to be about as intelligent as you seem to think radio station owners are, assuming they are not figuring out how to gain the most listeners to gain the highest spot rate and most income any given frequency can produce. When you lay out the kind of money and continued expense of operation radio requires,owners demand no less. Hate radio or love it. I can guarantee you are not going to create a concept that produces more listeners,longer TSLs and greater demand from businesses in any radio format than is currently being done. The arguments are always the same: radio has it wrong. Any rational mind based in reality would conclude differently. That thinking begins with realizing radio is a business.
 
landtuna said:
That's rich.....
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No, it's not rich. It's actually "poor" which is the state of more than half of retirees.

because it is my very own age group with most of the disposable dollars. The truth is those "marketeers" don't know what or how to sell me. They can't do it with the inane BS they use on the younger demos.
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That's a stereotypical observation.

Seniors who are no longer employed have a lower median income than folks in the 35-54 demographic. A huge percentage have only Social Security payments, average about $1000 a month... like the folks you see living in Dewey-Humboldt or Salome and low-income areas in the bigger cities.

You have to look at the median income, not the average income.

The median income in Sun City is $37,000. That's in a more "upscale" retirement area. After rent or a mortgage, utilities, insurance, transportation, food and clothing that leaves very little.

"Could you live on just $32,000 per year in retirement? Many retirees already do, according to a survey by Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies.
The estimated median annual household income among retirees is $32,000, and more than half of retirees (53%) live on less than $50,000"

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...retirees-low-income-social-security/83934392/

Considerably more money is spent by seniors on non-reimbursed health care and other aging needs.

Marketers know how to sell to you. But in most cases, they have discovered that the cost of convincing you is too high. The exceptions are products specifically targeted at a predominantly senior consumer... the ones that advertise in the AARP magazine or on MeTV. Or the news cable channels.
 
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