I've often heard it said about someone "They're a walking contradiction." I must say, I certainly fit that description. I like cars - a lot. Driving them, looking at them, watching races. And yet I also consider myself to be environmentally-minded. So how do I reconcile my dinosaur-burning, hydrocarbon spewing, mildly scofflaw-ish activity with my love for clean air and water and realization that there is only so much oil to go around and gathering, refining, and distributing it is a messy business at best and environmentally catastrophic at worst.
Well, here's my rationalization - as lame as it may be. In my 37 years of vehicle ownership, I have only owned one vehicle - a Ford Econoline van - that got worse than 20mpg. And that vehicle was driven only about two or three times a month as my DJ gear hauler. Even that had the smallest engine available and a manual transmission. Actually, I'm not even sure it got less than 20mpg because I never checked. I'm just assuming it did. Of my many other vehicles, I had one that got 40+mpg with 1970s technology. There were a few that averaged about 30mpg, and couple that got barely over 20. Most - including my current fleet of 3 - got right around 25mpg. Also, I try to avoid running into town for one or two things - if I have to drive somewhere to get something, I'll make a concerted effort to get several needed items to cut down on trips.
So I guess what I'm saying is, if all those SUV drivers had reasonable automotive transportation instead of motoring around in a 13mpg behemoth - alone - making a special trip to the grocery store for a loaf of bread and a quart of milk, maybe we wouldn't have to be searching for dissolved dinosaurs under a mile of ocean. Yet.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Friday, November 13, 2009
Why Music Radio Sucks
How did music radio get so bad? God-awful songs, interchangeable artists, and completely unimaginative programming. What happened?
Those of us who have been in the business long enough remember when radio was fun, there were new, progressive artists appearing seemingly daily, and many of the established ones changed their sound from album to album. Now The Fray sounds like Snow Patrol sounds like Five For Fighting sounds like (fill in the blank).
The problem? The listener/music buyer no longer has any say in what goes on the radio. Once upon a time, they had full control over what was a hit, and what wasn’t.
Back in the mid-50s, Billboard Magazine began charting the popularity of pop songs based on record sales. Music fans voted with their dollars. And radio stations looked at that chart and played the songs that people liked enough to part with their hard-earned money to buy.
Somewhere in the mid-1970s record companies and radio programmers woke up to the fact that they had little or no control over what they were selling and playing. And not many businesses like to have someone else control their livelihood. Also, the sales-based model made for some pretty dramatic changes in the chart. Once everybody who liked a certain song had purchased it, it dropped off the chart like a stone. So a radio station’s playlist would change considerably from week-to-week. Not a corporate-type programmer’s ideal situation. But what to do?
What if radio stations and record companies decided themselves what they want to play no matter what people are buying? “We’ll say what is a hit and what isn’t.” And so, the airplay-based chart (and Radio and Records) was created. The name of the magazine should have been the first clue – “Radio and Records”. And since smaller stations tend to look to the bigger ones for guidance, they wait and see what Z100 in NYC and KISS102 in LA add and drop before they make their moves. As these bigger stations are programmed by suits, they tend to be very conservative, slowing the music turnover. Moving into the late 80s, more and more stations are owned by two or three big companies, and each company has one programmer who decides what music get played nationwide. It’s a lot easier for a record company to leverage one programmer for 50 stations, than try to get 50 independent stations to play their artists.
Fast forward to today, and you have the entire music radio programming – all formats - controlled by about, oh, 15 people. Is there any doubt it’s going to be bland, boring and unimaginative?
Of course, the doomsayers are telling us “the portable music player and the Internet are the problem. Radio has to be very narrow to reach our target audience!” Okay, tell me this – if playing the same 30 songs over and over for months on end is what people want, why do we have 40 and 50gig mp3 players with thousands of songs on them? Or websites like Pandora and Jango that play songs people – you know, listeners – select themselves?
So if music radio is dying, there is no foul play involved - it's a suicide.
Those of us who have been in the business long enough remember when radio was fun, there were new, progressive artists appearing seemingly daily, and many of the established ones changed their sound from album to album. Now The Fray sounds like Snow Patrol sounds like Five For Fighting sounds like (fill in the blank).
The problem? The listener/music buyer no longer has any say in what goes on the radio. Once upon a time, they had full control over what was a hit, and what wasn’t.
Back in the mid-50s, Billboard Magazine began charting the popularity of pop songs based on record sales. Music fans voted with their dollars. And radio stations looked at that chart and played the songs that people liked enough to part with their hard-earned money to buy.
Somewhere in the mid-1970s record companies and radio programmers woke up to the fact that they had little or no control over what they were selling and playing. And not many businesses like to have someone else control their livelihood. Also, the sales-based model made for some pretty dramatic changes in the chart. Once everybody who liked a certain song had purchased it, it dropped off the chart like a stone. So a radio station’s playlist would change considerably from week-to-week. Not a corporate-type programmer’s ideal situation. But what to do?
What if radio stations and record companies decided themselves what they want to play no matter what people are buying? “We’ll say what is a hit and what isn’t.” And so, the airplay-based chart (and Radio and Records) was created. The name of the magazine should have been the first clue – “Radio and Records”. And since smaller stations tend to look to the bigger ones for guidance, they wait and see what Z100 in NYC and KISS102 in LA add and drop before they make their moves. As these bigger stations are programmed by suits, they tend to be very conservative, slowing the music turnover. Moving into the late 80s, more and more stations are owned by two or three big companies, and each company has one programmer who decides what music get played nationwide. It’s a lot easier for a record company to leverage one programmer for 50 stations, than try to get 50 independent stations to play their artists.
Fast forward to today, and you have the entire music radio programming – all formats - controlled by about, oh, 15 people. Is there any doubt it’s going to be bland, boring and unimaginative?
Of course, the doomsayers are telling us “the portable music player and the Internet are the problem. Radio has to be very narrow to reach our target audience!” Okay, tell me this – if playing the same 30 songs over and over for months on end is what people want, why do we have 40 and 50gig mp3 players with thousands of songs on them? Or websites like Pandora and Jango that play songs people – you know, listeners – select themselves?
So if music radio is dying, there is no foul play involved - it's a suicide.
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