Posted by EvelynMcH on October 29, 2005 at 09:44:14:
In Reply to: Re: CBSFM and WNEWFM Please Explain.... posted by Jeff Scheckner on October 28, 2005 at 18:01:58:
I'm with you. There were decades when my FM radios had only one station - WNEW. There were innovative, creative people behind the microphone, people who eventually had any ounce of creativity removed by the programmed formats that slowly ate away at the idea that intelligent human beings playing music for the moment were smarter than a programmer removed from the airwaves by distance and time. By the time the talk format took over, the creativity was gone.
I missed the old friend, but I could not and have not found a replacement. The days of creative control allowing a personality to program their own radio on a corporate owned station in a major market is long over. It makes corporations too nervous to gamble that the people they hire might have the intuition to listen to the audience. The audience now exists, in the minds of the Hollanders of the world, to be lead exactly and precisely to the corporate interests because they are too dumb to go there on their own. We are all too stupid to buy what they want us to buy without being grabbed by the nose.
Guess what? How many businesses back in the '60's and onward to the '80's advertised on FM alone and did succeed? A lot of them. Radio has forgotten that the purpose is to entertain, build an audience and make them listen to all that is on the air with some loyalty so that the repetition of advertising and personal identity drives that audience to the sponsor's products. Now, the preference is to study it to death and try to find new ways to subvert the obvious with scientific proof, in a media where the most important factor is success is emotional and unprovable.
I miss WNEW. I miss the ability to hear the new, the innovative, and the familiar in the same place. I miss getting to discover a new artist, discover or rediscover an old one, all in the company of someone who understands that it is all about the music. The music used to matter. Now it doesn't. And that is why the only radio I listen to now is news. And I know damn well I am not alone. This message board is full of people just like me. Young and old - desirable demographics and old farts alike. Why are we not being served anymore?