[BC] Underground = Classic

[DANA PUOPOLO]

I agree with Rich.

These days, creativity = ZERO!  It's been this way for almost the past two
decades. Look at NYC. It went FOUR years without a CHR until Z-100. They
literally went from "Worst to First". Within six months there were no less
then FIVE CHR's that came on.

Or..even more recently: JACK (BOB, MITCH, Daryl, Moe, et al).

No one takes any chances any more. It took a radio group in CANADA to try out
Jack! Otherwise, it might not even be on the air. The unique formats are
happening on satellite and Internet. The last people who took chances at the
big companies were Steve Rivers (Infinity) and Randy Michaels (Clear Channel).
Notice that neither work there any more - both replaced by business dwebes in
Brooks Brother's suits!

But of course, there's a KISS in every town and despite what's claimed, I've
been in half a dozen markets recently and they all sound pretty identical to
me! They even use the same promo material (the ugly ball).

Now they want to spread their (lack of) creativity to IBAC. Why bother? Look
at what Arbitron says: that time spent listening to the radio has dropped
every year for the past decade. 

At the same time, satellite and Internet radio has EXPLODED...along with
IPOD's and other portable players.

Within the next few years, cell phones will become media players.

Radio is dying...and if it wants to survive it must wake up and: "Smell the
roses" so to speak. 

Unfortunately, I'm not hopeful that this will happen until it's too late (if
ever), thanks to the myopia of the heads of the consolidators.

-D





------ Original Message ------
Received: Mon, 09 Jan 2006 08:20:52 AM PST
From: Rich Wood <richwood at pobox.com>
To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Subject: Re: [BC] Underground = Classic

------ At 11:15 PM 1/8/2006, Robert Meuser wrote: -------

>That is the biggest pile of crap.

What do you really think? My point was that WBCN was owned by an 
individual, not a large corporation. You won't get much of an 
argument from me that large corporations are rarely creative. The 
exceptions to that rule seemed to be RKO and Metromedia. When people 
rave about creative radio of the past both companies are almost 
always included. Compared to today's companies, they were tiny. At 
that time the rule was 7-7-7. Not even 12-12-12, yet.

There's an old story about GE not being able to figure out how to 
make a pop up toaster. A tiny company finally did it. I worked for 
GE. The story came from within the company.

>  I was there as well. The bottom line was the FCC demanded separate 
> AM and FM programming and the major companies of the day responded 
> with the cheapest thing available, a bunch of students/hippies 
> playing whatever.

WBCN had no AM. Remember that Mitch was a founder of the NAFMB.

Companies that did it cheap on their FMs because the FCC required 
separation are now doing it cheap on their major stations because 
Wall Street requires it. Only the villains have changed.

It's Deja Vu, all over again. IBUZ secondaries will take the same 
approach but add Gargantua International's creativity. At least WBCN 
and all the stations mentioned could be received by more people than 
just you and Bob Orban. WJIB was #1 10am-7pm with only 35% set 
penetration. FM was actually an audiophile format resulting in some 
of the finest FM tuners ever made. iBorg says their 7000 Boston 
Acoustics are gone. That's one receiver for 1/2 the number of 
stations on the air. At this blinding rate I see market saturation 
any day now. Now we have to get receivers to actual listeners. Radio 
station employees who attend conventions can't fill out Arbitron 
diaries. Let's go absolutely bonkers and say there are 50,000 IBUZ 
receivers in the field. That's 3.57142857 per licensed radio station 
(based on 14,000 stations). It takes my breath away. I'm clutching my 
chest with excitement. When it increases to 4.57142857 sets per 
station other anatomical parts will be clutched.

The difference between the separation of AM and FM is that no one 
predicted that FM would be our salvation, so they didn't spend a lot 
on it. IBUZ will rescue us from oblivion, we're told, primarily 
because of secondaries. I don't see stations programming them like 
they believe it. WCBS-HD2 is a perfect example. Castrate the format 
and expect miracles. Will secondaries programmed like iPods on 
shuffle sell a lot of $500 radios? Maybe we should ask WCBS-FM. It 
seems to me that something that sounds like iPods on shuffle will 
sell a lot of iPods set on shuffle for $200 less.

Rich


Rich Wood
Rich Wood Multimedia
Phone: 413-303-9084
FAX: 413-480-0010


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