Staples: Driving Down the Highway, Mourning the Death of American Radio

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "John F. McMullen" <observer () westnet com>
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2003 11:24:26 -0400 (EDT)
To: "johnmac's living room" <johnmacsgroup () yahoogroups com>
Cc: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Subject: Staples: Driving Down the Highway, Mourning the Death of American
Radio

> From the New York Times --
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/opinion/08SUN3.html?th

Driving Down the Highway, Mourning the Death of American Radio
By BRENT STAPLES

Brooklynites who park their cars on the streets sometimes post signs
"nothing of value" and my favorite, "no radio, no nothing"  pleading with
thieves not to break in. The smash and grabs are less frequent than they
once were. But those of us who live here are no longer surprised by the
pools of shattered glass  known as "sidewalk diamonds"  left by the
thieves who make off with air bags, radios and anything else they can
carry.

My aging Volvo will be parked safely in a garage after getting the new
compact disc player that I hope to install by summer's end. Burglar magnet
that it is, the CD player symbolizes my despair that commercial radio in
New York  and most other major markets  has become so bad as to be
unlistenable and is unlikely to improve anytime soon. I listen religiously
to the public radio station WBGO in Newark, the best jazz station in the
country. Man does not live by juzz alone. If you want decent pop, rock or
country, you pretty much have to spin it yourself.

Commercial stations in New York are too expensive to be anything but
bland, repetitive and laden with ads and promotions. A station that could
be had for a pittance 30 years ago can go for more than $100 million in a
big market like New York. Congress increased the value of the stations in
1996, when it raised the cap on the number of stations that a single
company could own; now, three corporate entities control nearly half of
the radio listenership in the country.

I grew up glued to radio and was present at the creation of legendary
album-format stations like WMMR in Philadelphia and WXRT in Chicago. These
stations played rich blends of rock, pop and jazz, and sometimes featured
local bands. (This wide-ranging format enriched the collective musical
taste and paid dividends by producing ever more varied strains of popular
music.) Commercials were typically kept to between 8 and 12 minutes per
hour, and 20 minutes or more could pass before the announcer broke in to
give the station's call letters.

This format was profitable, but not on the money-raining scale required
since Wall Street got wise to the radio game. Faced with pressure from
investors and more corporate debt than some nations, the megacompanies
that acquire a hundred stations each must squeeze every cent out of every
link in the chain. They do this by dismissing the local staff and loading
up squalling commercials and promotional spots that can take up as much as
30 minutes per hour during morning "drive time."

The corporate owners then put pressure on their remaining rivals  and
often force them to sell out  by promoting national advertising packages
that allow commercials to be broadcast on several stations, or all over
the country, at once. Disc jockeys are often declared expendable and let
go. Where they remain in place, they are figureheads who spin a narrow and
mind-numbing list of songs that have been market-tested to death, leaving
stations that sound the same from coast to coast.

Critics have focused on the way corporatized radio fails to cover local
news and on free-speech issues, like the one that emerged when a country
band, the Dixie Chicks, was booted from corporate air for criticizing the
president over the war in Iraq. If the stations find the Dixie Chicks too
challenging to tolerate, it's easy to imagine them marginalizing genuinely
controversial news and programming.

Corporate radio's treatment of the Dixie Chicks argues against those who
wish to remove all remaining federal limits on corporate ownership  not
just of radio, but of television as well. The dangers posed by
concentrated ownership go beyond news and censorship issues, to the heart
of popular culture itself. By standardizing music and voices around the
country, radio is slowly killing off local musical cultures, along with
the diverse bodies of music that enriched the national popular culture.

Independent radio even 25 years ago was as important to a civic landscape
as city hall or the local sports star who made good. The disc jockeys (or
"on-air personalities," as they came to be called) embodied local radio to
the public. You could hear their distinctive influences when you drove
into Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis or Wheeling, W.Va.; radio stations
could be identified not just by the call letters but from the unique blend
of music that was played in each place.

Pre-corporate radio commonly played established, nationally known
musicians along with unknown locals and traveling bands. In town for a
show, a young, unknown Elvis could swivel-hip down to the local station
for airplay and some chat. This sort of thing was still possible in the
early 1980's, when an unclassifiable band out of Athens, Ga., called
R.E.M. became hugely popular while barnstorming the country in a truck.
R.E.M. forced itself onto the air without conceding its weirdness and
became one of the most influential bands of the late 20th century.

Radio stations where unknown bands might once have come knocking at the
door no longer even have doors. They have become drone stations, where a
once multifarious body of music has been pared down and segmented in bland
formats, overlaid with commercials. As record companies scramble to
replicate the music that gets airplay, pop music is turning in on itself
and flattening out.

Those of us who are breaking with radio are saddened to leave the
community of listeners to which we have belonged for most of our lives.
But we realize as well that the vitality of the medium, like youth, is
lost and forever behind us.

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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   "When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra
   "Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson
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                          John F. McMullen
                 johnmac () acm org johnmac () cyberspace org
              ICQ: 4368412 AIM & Yahoo Messenger: johnmac13
                  http://www.westnet.com/~observer


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