Posted by carlvanorden on June 14, 2006 at 09:05:56:
In Reply to: The Dumbing Down Of Radio posted by Allan Sniffen on June 13, 2006 at 21:51:12:
As Allan mentioned, radio has been dumbing down for a long time now.
I do however remember the beautiful music formats of WVNJ, WPAT and WRFM (and for that matter WTFM, now WKTU). WPAT had on air people; poster Ken Lamb being one of them, and WRFM had Jim Alyworth in the mornings. But it was a true background music format, and in my opinion, there really wasn't too much to talk about in terms of the music, in general. WPAT had a lot of their music recorded especially for them in England, so some of those songs could have been unknown to Americans, and an announcer was used. However the other three stations played cover instumentals of generally well known songs, although in re-doing them they almost were totally new songs, and hard to recognize. In this format, I didn't really see a need for a full-time announcing staff.
Just as WABC, WNBC and other stations across the nation were abandoning music, in whole or in part, along came Scott Shannons WHTZ-100 in July 1983 (I remember the date well because that was when I got married!). Z-100, full of personality, sparked other stations, albeit on FM to go the same route, and it was a historically positive thing to happen in radio. I believe that, had WHTZ NOT occured, then personality radio today, as dismal as it apparently is, wouldn't exist AT ALL. And with todays automation systems, as good as THEY are, there really is no need to have people present in a studio...except for commentary and live cm reads, they do nothing else.
The last station I worked for with an automation system was fully 11 years ago. That automation system, on computer, for what it was was pretty amazing. It did have it's hiccups but in most cases, staff could take a three-day weekend off, with only one person visiting the station for a very short period of time to update things such as wx (me!). We only had 6 people on our airstaff then, and I realized in 95 that we could do the whole thing with just 2 of us....sad, but true.
Today, just about every NYC station has a full time airstaff. It is true the highest paid personalities are being let go in favor of card readers, but at least there is still a live airstaff for better or worse. In reality (and I'm a disc-jockey, so I'm the last one to say "they" don't need us!) stations can let us go. As long as the commercials air at the right time and there is music as filler between them, radio will make money.
This is not my opinion; it is just the way I see the reality of it.