This post appears to have been written in early November of 2018 for the Radio crytic, but never got posted up there. It seems to have held up well in the subsequent five and a half years, so with a few corrections, here it is. Also of note, there may only be one more post that originally was written for, or actually appeared on, that site to be moved over here, so either next week or the week after you’ll start seeing content not based on anything that was up there. So, here’s this week’s post.
A recent thread on radiodiscussions.com had me thinking about the state of radio today. Is radio better, worse, or the same as it was 50 years ago? Let’s take it piece by piece.
Localism
Where radio has fallen short the most in my opinion is giving the listener a sense of place. There are still stations that do this, but usually they are in smaller markets and locally owned. I feel like this peaked in the 80s and 90s, just before the internet became everywhere. This is when you still had a live and local night show on a CHR, and lots of stations had on-air segments telling listeners what was happening around town.
Automation
Keep in mind that, while everyone remembers the big live and local AM top-40 stations, many fm stations of the day were automated, using formats such as Stereo Rock and Hit Parade. I am too young to remember any of these, but from airchecks I’ve heard, I will take today’s Jack FM over any automated format of the 1970s. This was largely before imaging, and I find the formats to be bland when I am presented with old airchecks of them. I don’t have any aircheks of it, but from what I understand, the owners of KXRX here in Seattle tried to run the format completely automated, complete with voice tracks and it was rather a disaster. That’s rather ironic, as the station at 96.5 today is a largely automated Jack FM station. I’m not really sure where to put this, but I think it’s worth mentioning, that is when live stations go to prerecorded bits. I’ve heard several airchecks from the early days of Top 40, and you could easily tell when they went to prerecorded bits because the audio sounded significantly different. Today, assuming the broadcast equipment and your prerecorded file are both in stereo, you really can’t tell the difference. I’ll have to do some more investigating, but I think this started to change around the 80s or 90s, maybe not even until the introduction of computers.
Voice Tracking
While the most controversial of the points I’m going to bring up, there’s no denying that voice tracking is here to stay. I worry however that it is being used in place of a local voice who would ordinarily be taking that place. I can think of several examples of which a station is staffed in what seems like it should be a prime daypart, by someone tracking from out of market, rather than by someone local who may want that position. If you really can’t find someone who wants to work that overnight shift, then go ahead and have it tracked from out of market, but this shouldn’t be your first thought. A great example of voice tracking was one I was involved with a couple weeks ago. I had KITI-FM from Winlock, a couple hours to the south of here, on one Monday afternoon, and called in to request a song. The DJ took a request live, then answered my call, recording it for playback at the end of the current song. That’s exactly what happened, and I thought that was a very appropriate use of voice tracking.
Other observations
Many of the other gripes I have about radio today have to do with individual stations, clusters, markets, or companies. For instance, iHeart ruining a once great station, or all the stations in Rapid City seemingly having lacking imaging. The biggest complaint I have in this category is the mandated syndicated show. For instance, why do all Townsquare stations have to run Pop Crush Nights? That evening slot could be used for a local night show, and many of the stations now running that show had local night shows before they were replaced with the syndicated show. That, though, is about it for me.
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