Well, that's the way Top 40 radio was back in the day. It worked then and who knows, it might work again.

I think that it could work well IF they shaved off the ultra extremes.  And the extremes are?  Sinatra and Metallica.  The rest could work if programmed with a flow in mind.  To just drop them in willy-nilly would not attract a large and loyal audience.  You can't just play anything and everything.  There has to be rhyme and reason or it crashes and burns.

I don't care what 'research' suggests.  It's a self-serving lie.  [bullshit salesmen with mouthfuls of samples.]  The audience wants more...not less.  Imagine if a restaurant programmed its menu like a radio station does.  There would be NO customers in NO time.

It can work if the programmer KNOWS the music.  If all you can do is read old charts...you'll be toast.  The audience clearly knows stupid.  They also know cool.

Old Codger wrote:

Imagine if a restaurant programmed its menu like a radio station does. 

They do.
 

RadioActive wrote:

"What if a station played, oh, say, a set of music featuring Frank Sinatra, Bob Marley, Billie Holiday, Johnny Cash, and Led Zeppelin? Or Metallica, Patsy Cline, Ella Fitzgerald, Muddy Waters, and Frank Zappa?

Sounds like what I have on my phone, although my own music library is much more diverse.

Remind me again why I need a "radio station" to accomplish this?

Next thing you know people will start suggesting I buy newspapers again even though I haven't had any small birds in the house for years.  (The star was the pefect size for one of my flight cages.)
 

Last edited by Peter the K (May 13, 2017 12:22 am)

According to stationratings.com, WLKK has a 1.4 share in the Buffalo winter 17 book. That is good for 12th place. The only stations below them are RB/Oldies 1400 WWWS at 1.2 and and ESPN1520 at 0.6. Their "Rock" competitors sit as follows. 6th 96.9 5.4 share 10th EDGE103.3 3.9 share 11th JACK92.9 2.9 share.                                                Regarding "FickleFM" 93.3 WFKL is now owned by Stephens Media Group who also own two other Rochester area stations. Soft Rock 101.3 WRMM and Alternative 94.1 THEZONE WZNE. I don't know when the sale from Entercom took place. I also was curious about Fickle's ratings. Apparently, Stephens Media does not subscribe to the Neilsen/Arbitron service, so ratings for their stations are not published.

Having just read this thread I'm a little confused regarding the core argument here... so excuse my
ignorance from the start. 

I'm based in London, and here we have heaven knows how many stations... dozens, yes, a hundred? 
Well there're upwards of that many on my DAB radio, but the point is that each does have its own,
known identity. Yes, the output is predictable because that is what each stations respective audience
expects and wants, but when each station takes to the air its the authority behind it that chooses the
genre, and not the listener. Is that the same in Canada?

I might nominate any number of stations, the reggae specialists, the dance yourself into a quandary
crowd or the heavy metal brigades, but lets take as an example, Absolute Radio. It has one channel,
the namesake. Then there's Absolute Rock, Absolute '70s, ditto '80s ; 90s and the 'Norties'. There
was an Absolute '60s but that seems to have evaporated into the ether at some point. So I'm left
wondering if people here think that a mixture of all the above is now not a viable form of entertainment?

Speaking from something of an experienced viewpoint, my impression is that the majority, although
perhaps only at worst, marginally, prefer a station with a good cross-section of eras and genres, or
have tastes changed that much in say, 30 or 40 years? Have listeners been conditioned in some way,
and if so, as influenced by what? M. London.

Radiowiz wrote:

Mark wrote:

I'm based in London, and here we have heaven knows how many stations...

How's the regulation there? Here in Canada we have to play 35-40% Canadian content.
This is one thing that makes a world of difference. There are many formats that simply do not air on AM or FM here for that very reason. 
The true all dance format (mainly with UK music, UK chart attack, etc) simply can not be done here. (to name one format)
The whole "We play anything" idea is restricted as a result of this very rule here. 
Outside of that, you have a good point about how some formats might not mingle so well with others...   
 

Hi Radiowiz.

Ref 'How's the regulation there? Here in Canada we have to play 35-40% Canadian content.'

Well, may I be frank? That's plain insane! Do you live in a Democracy - or a Dictatorship???!
There are, to my fairly good ken, no such restrictions here whatsoever, Governmental or 
otherwise (such as Broadcast Organisation guidelines,etc) and if there were, then two things
would likely happen... 1) They'd be ignored, and 2) They'd most politely be told to get stuffed!

A radios format is left totally to the in-house authorities and is primarily on the singular basis,
based upon a niche-market demographic... if there seems likely that some specialist market
can be catered for then the hole in that map will be plugged, and it works very well in London.
I can sort of appreciate the 'Canadian' way but such constraints are often counter productive.
 
Ref : 'The whole "We play anything" idea is restricted as a result of this very rule here.'

As someone who has been passionately interested in Radio for 45 years I would say that I
firmly believe in the broad-format concept. The greater the cross-section of music here in the
UK, the greater the listenership generally. Certainly, specialist stations gather a following but
that's only because their fans like the predictability of the output - they can rely on hearing a
wanted particular, whereas the majority like variety... its like having the choice of seeing one
stand-up comedian doing his stage show alone, or having him feature as part of a cabaret -
we in the UK prefer the latter, if you get my meaning.

As for DAB, I hear that it hasn't caught on in Canada - correct?
Well just to give you an insight into what London radio life is like, and because I'm a nutter,
allow me to do the following.

Six years ago I bought a Roberts Sports DAB Radio, its about the size of a fag packet. If I
turn it on the following stations can be heard... here goes...

ABN RADIO
ABSOLUTE RADIO
ABSOLUTE 70s
ABSOLUTE 80s
ABSOLUTE 90s
ABSOLUTE ROCK
AHOMKA RADIO
ARROW      "
ASIAN FX
ATHAVAN
AWESOME
BBC R1
BBC R1X
BBC R2
BBC R3
BBC R4
BBC R4EX
BBC R5L
BBC R5SX
BBC R6M
BBC WS
BBC ASIAN
BBC LONDON
BBC SURREY
BFBS
BLOOMBRG
CAP UK
CAP XTRA
CAPITAL
CHILL
CLASSIC
COUNTRY
EAGLE3
EAGLE
ENCORE
FIX
FUN KIDS
GAYDIO
GOLD
GOLDEN
HEART 80s
HEART EX
HEART LONDON
HEART SURREY
HEAT
IBC
JAZZ FM
KERRANG
KISS
KISS FRSH
KISSTORY
LBC
LBC NEWS
LYCA1035
LYCA1458
MAG SOUL
MAGIC
MAGIC LDN
MATRSHKA
MELLOW M
MI-SOUL
MY MUSIC
P GOSPEL
PANJAB
PLANET ROCK
PREMIERC
PREMIERP
PRL
RADIO X
SHARE
SMOOTH
SMOOTH EX
SOUT
SPECSINO
SUNRISE
TALK RADIO
THAMES
TALK SPORT2
TALK SPORT
TALK SPORTLDN
UCB1
UCB2
VIRGIN
VOISLAM
WIRELESS

A full draft of the London area Telephone Directory will follow shortly!!!!!!!

Regards. Mark (You now know my location!)



 

Fitz wrote:

Here is the irony. During the 60's and 70's and probably well past that, the choices were very limited in the UK due to the BBC monopoly. All you had was the BBC and a few off shore pirates. In contrast, North America during the 70's had a lot of radio choices on AM and FM in all of the major markets including here in Southern Ontario.

I had cousins that lived in the UK and they would visit us almost every summer and I used to ask them "so would do you think of our FM rockers" because I knew it was all new to them.. In this area and throughout the continent we had a number of what was called free form FM stations that stretched the boundaries in terms of genres. You could hear everything from classical to jazz to bluegrass to rock on one station. Rock was the dominant genre but the surrounding diversity on these stations was wonderful.

Have tried to give people a glimpse of that great format and have featured most of the great stations within the SOWNY listening area and  have also highlighted other stations on the continent that were doing the same. One of the best examples was WBCN FM from Boston.

Here are two examples of that tremendous station. Naysayers will tell you that such an open format cannot work but it was quite successful and you could not drive in Boston during the summer without hearing the station coming from somewhere. 

WBCN FM 

More WBCN FM

Hi Fitz.

Ref : ' During the 60's and 70's and probably well past that, the choices were very limited in the UK due to the BBC monopoly. All you had was the BBC and a few off shore pirates.'

That really wasn't the case. I grew up listening to the radio from the mid 1960's onward's and the BBC Light
Programme did play a good selection of 'Pop' music, and even more so after it became Radio 2 in 1967 - when
BBC Radio 1 was also launched. Their Local Radio counterparts were at the same time starting to appear on the map and included chart stuff and LP tracks on their playlists, so it was far from the earlier 1950's Bow Tie Brigade.
In addition, ILR - or Independent Local Radio, was getting a foothold, especially between 1967-73, and they were
very much commercial in sound and orientation (hence the name?), focusing in on the old favourites and the new
offering that appeared each week. Unlike many U.S./Canadian stations, they were not tied by regulations, such as
not playing a record before it was in the shops - on the contrary, radio stations promoted the record and that's what
made it sell. It might at least become a 'Turntable Hit' into the bargain and so take off later on.

The 1970's saw new stations taking to the air on a regular basis, and so there was never a shortage of choice.
And comparatively, what of UK radio now, is it better or worse or what? That's really up to each person to decide,
but what I would say is that there are no more real 'personalities' behind the mike... people who have a certain
extra zaniness for example, like Kenny Everette or Timmy Mallett, to name but two.

Yes, music format is very important in successful programming, but if you can add a jock that people can become
fond of, or already are - then you cannot do anything more to win the necessary numbers to survive. Perhaps this
only backs up what I just remarked about Personality Jocks, that they seem to be in short supply or aren't
wanted anymore, because a number of stations just play automated playlists of back-to-back music. A little sad. 

Regards.

Mark. London. (Creator of Second Side Up, the cassette-format radio show)

Not sure if this 100 % relaible but I may have found the answer to the first commercially licened NON BBC station in the UK:

Legal commercial broadcasting began in the United Kingdom in 1973, with the launch of LBC, though offshore pirate radio stations operated in the 1960s to 1990s, usually from ships anchored off the coast of Britain.

Mark wrote:
Pirate Radio in the UK arose because of the burgeoning technology of the time that was then rapidly evolving.
allowed the youth in society to express themselves. They were becoming more maverick, rebellious, enlightened
and anti establishment - the old order was then out of step with the times and what resulted was a perfectly naturalxand almost predictable splintering of the accepted 'norm'. It was therefore to a lesser extent to do with 'The BBC'.

The same technology was available in North America but pirates did not come become dominant here and one reason may have been the fact that commercial stations themselves became "more maverick, rebellious, enlightened" even on AM. Now some of this may have been faux, more of an exploitation of the counter culture but some was real.

There's also the fact about size of the North American continent versus the UK and that may have been a factor. Also perhaps the legal legal systems and their ability to deal with pirates. There were and in fact still are some pirates in North America but it seems that high powered ones were never able to get any sort of foothold.
 

Last edited by Fitz (May 22, 2017 11:20 am)

geo wrote:

ig wrote:

Sounds like an angry ex radio guy, my guess is 50+ and desperate to prove (like hundreds of other currently unemployed angry radio people) that owners, management and consultants aren't data driven but operate on wild hunches.  Yet, I've noticed it's amazing how their attitude changes when they're re-hired by a terrestrial station again.  Suddenly their massive and dedicated 'online community' of 4 listeners, (3 in Asia) that they know by name discover the station has gone offline never to return.   He'll be sorry to find out there are probably 450,000 online 'internet' radio stations out there, with audience between them measured in the 1's, tilting at exactly the same windmills.    I'm so tired of hearing this speech over and over again, in different areas, but all the same message, if we just went back and did it the way we did it 'nn' years ago it would all work again, even though every single possible element in the equation, with the exception of the orator, is different.   Much like one of my Facebook friends who had "500,000 listeners to his northern Canada audio stream, but they cut him off because he was too popular" (You do the 128k per stream bandwidth calculation yourself.)    What a load of shite.   I'm just so tired of hearing the bullshit.  It's like the dog lying on the grave waiting for his master to return.   Anyway, 2 years ago it was an IndieGogo campaign that generated $800 of the $17k required, then closed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP2RnSk8erg     Whatever.
 

Don't be subtle . . . just go ahead & get it off your chest

geo

A bit of a comical if otherwise belated observation there Geo, but that aside, I do think that 'Ig' has a valid point.
The crux of his disposition seems to be the way that people harp-on about the way radio once was and that the
transition in the present day isn't as good, and that they're professing that if it returned to the former state that it
might improve things (at least that's my attempt at the gist of what he wrote - I might be wrong?).

And yes, I for one agree with the majority of what he said, and understand the underlying tone of his writing, yet
don't see it as someone that's full of rancor, more annoyance.

People, in this instance, listeners and media professionals and alike, generally romanticize the past - the memory
is a fickle mistress and tends to make us see the past through rose-tinted glasses, blocking out the many forms
of monochrome and grays that also, in reality, existed. We apply past notions and standards to the present due to
a simple dislike of inexorable changes that occur, but in truth, a lot of this wish-boning isn't all nostalgia based but
factually a true reality. Radio was better in a number of ways back then, particularly during the late '70s and early
to mid '80s.

In the UK radio after this time became what was considered more modernised and streamlined, it was less of a
wild stallion and became a tamed and trained horse that obeyed its superiors commands... it could no longer run
free, it had to be made to conform. This was done by making it more 'proper', more Politically Correct and those
holding the reins would pull any jockey up that failed to ride the way they were told to, and if the rider of the air-
ways continued to dig his stirrups into the beast then he was thrown off, often never to return to the circus arena!
(Mind you, Kenny Everett did 2-3 times with 'Aunty', and the same authority is wielding that same questionable
axe even today - look how Tony Blackburn has been treated for example).

As for format of radio output, there is no harm whatsoever in debating whether the old way was better than the
present day - I personally do believe it was and that it is lacking right across the dial. As already stated, I much
prefer to listen to a station playing all forms of music than just one type as it otherwise become predictable. Its
great to hear the sounds of the 'Modern' pop market, and yes, I mean from the 1960's onward's. That's when the
youth of that era came into their own and made the music that can still be appreciated even now, and the many
generations that followed in the decades that came thereafter.

Regards.

Mark. London.