Air check preferences

I have had this discussion with several "long timers" and thought I would open it up for some input. Just like with sports and politics, there seems to be a lot of disagreement over what constitutes the best possible air check.

Personally, I enjoy an unscoped hour or more of a program. Keeping the music and commercials in as they ran back in the day. To me, it is not "just" the air personality, it is the overall sound of the station and the difference that hopefully he or she made while on the air.

If all I hear is the DJ sounding totally pumped coming out of a Kiss record and then 10 seconds later I hear him sounding mellow introducing Neil Diamond, it comes off as having something missing. The music of that very hour, plus the commercials, and often the news headlines, all added to the sound of the show no matter how great the personality may have been.

However, for the most part, there is nothing we can do about a scoped aircheck. The music and commercials and all the rest are, for the most part, gone forever. Many of the airchecks were either edited down many years ago, or were taken from the studio tapes when PD's would record only when the microphone went on. (And I can understand that.)

It is probably too late to find and preserve the vast majority of these, if they even still exist, but I often wonder what became of the old slow speed reel-to-reel tapes of everything that aired that most radio stations kept in order to meet FCC requirements. Those would have it all. If only I thought about it years ago when the reel-to-reel machines were first becoming outdated.

I equate thorwing away the "raw" hours of recordings of music stations across the country to those of us who tossed out our boxes of baseball cards in the 70's that would have rivaled our 401k's in value if we still had them today. At least I can't blame my mom for throwing away hours of radio tapes.

At least I have some "entire" hours to enjoy. As today's over-the-air radio continues to go downhill with conservative, non-local, often pre-recorded air personalities and 500 song playlists, I'm finding myself listening more and more to radio as I still want it to be. To what got me excited about it many years ago and made me want it as my career until I just couldn't take it anymore.

But they leave me wanting more!

Smaller stations try a different format.........

Let's try another format! Some smaller stations have decided to start all over again within the past few days.

In the Chicago area, the 3-station suburban cluster known as "Nine-FM" with a moniker of "We Play Anything" has given up the battle after barely registering in the ratings books for the past three years. As of last week, they are now simulcasting 820 AM, giving the market a simulcast of 4 different AM/FM signals all with a talk format. FM talk stations have traditionally not done well in the Chicago market. Long time talker Steve Dahl recently had his 9 - 10 AM hour taken back so that "JACK-FM" could add an hour of music into morning drive in hopes of building some ratings. And now, just days before the Presidential election, a cluster of stations goes talk. Wonder what there will be to constantly talk about after the election hype finally ends.

Maybe they will do a continuous open line, and change the slogan to "We Talk Anything".

In Madison WI, "the Lake" changes to "Jamz". 93.1 FM goes from The Rolling Stones and Aerosmith to hip-hop. Talk about a total audience change. Or attempt to change over the audience. WIBA-FM figures to be the big winner, as the likely choice of even more classic rockers. At least in this instance, it is to become the first hip-hop station with a signal strong enough to cover the Madison area.

It is possible, but I'm not sure there are enough local advertisers in the Madison area to make "Jamz" a fit.

a Boyce from the past

There won't be anyone left to care. While I would like to congratulate Phil Boyce on his work at 77 WABC New York over the past 14+ years, his leaving the station could be a big blow for the industry. Under Boyce's regime, the talk station generated its best numbers since the good old days of Musicradio.

The thinking is that Boyce will join with Sean Hannity, who continues to grow in syndication which happened to begin under Boyce's tenure.

Tough act to follow for whoever gets the chance.

Air checking - October 9th....

C'mon radio people. Please stop shooting yourselves in the foot. I understand that there are some concerns about the new PPM ratings system. But airing the dirty laundry is going to result in permanent damage if we don't take a different course.

Certain stations in markets such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, have shown significant drops in listenership based on the early PPM numbers just released. I can understand they are upset, but they need to take a step back.

These stations have sold, and more significantly, continue to sell a high inventory based on the "old" numbers. Obviously, year after year, a station such as WGCI in Chicago has done well for its advertisers or they wouldn't be as financially successful as they have been - at any ratings.

Now here are stations such as KRTH in Los Angeles and WDRV in Chicago "suddenly" showing tremendous numbers that help to call attention to the surge in music formats not shown in a number of years. So what happens? Other radio station executive have screamed so much that politicians have been called upon to look into this matter.

That should be warning enough. If the politicians "looking into this" do the same as they have done for the nation's current economic system, people will be giving away radios by the end of the year.

The publicity surrounding the PPM's should be about how many formats were UNDER reported all these years.

Radio executives continue to forget that radio is not one choice out of a couple of options like it used to be. And giving potential advertisers reason to doubt the system at such a critical time is absolutely the worst possible strategy.