In article ,
(David Kaye) wrote:

But you yourself have dissed the idea of getting an education many times.

For myself. I always included the disclaimer that anyone who chose
formal education as a path for himself had my deepest respect.

Radio broadcasting is a mature industry. There aren't that many different
ways to do things. There are some interesting used of soundscapes, however.
I suggest you listen to "Radio Lab" on KQED Radio. It's a documentary series
that mixes some very clever sound collaging with the meat of the topic. It
comes from WNYC.

With all due respect, that is spoken just like someone who is not in the
business. I am days off the NAB convention floor, and even I was a bit
overwhelmed by some of the new tools for production and transmission
that have come out in just the past year. I can't imagine anyone
currently in the business saying that "there is nothing new under the
sun in broadcasting".

I'm told that the commercial broadcasting schools were to varying degrees
shuck and jive. Sure, they might prepare one for a ticket, back when those
mattered, but that was about it.

I never went near one of those schools. But I cannot imagine that such
schools did not teach production, broadcast management, script writing,
technical basics, and the various performance techniques. If they didn't
teach all of those things, they not only should have failed when they
did, but they should never have been in the business in the first place.

Why do we need broadcasting schools now? The industry is 1/10th the size it
was, and is likely to shrink even more. Sure, there will be a need for
broadcasters just as there's a need for blacksmiths, but I suggest that it's
not a wise use of resources to dedicate school curricula to it.

Even leaving local broadcasting out of the discussion, are you saying
that not a single talented human being is utilized in syndication,
satellite and Internet audio services? That's truly incredible.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

In article ,
(David Kaye) wrote:

I guess we blame it on Bill Drake -- "More music, more music, more music,
more
music." For the most part people don't care about DJs and local content.
That much is in evidence with the ear buds people wear today. They ain't
listening to the radio...

It was explained to me by the owners of some very successful stations
that music is simply the glue that holds what a station really does
together and keeps the audience from tuning away. The station interacts
with listeners, in person and on the air. The station keeps listeners
informed about important local events. The station provides news and
timely information to help listeners plan their days and get about
smoothly. The station helps its fellow community businesses succeed and
prosper, not just by selling spots but by working with them individually
to devise and execute a plan which maximizes their success.

How can I get it across to you that radio broadcasting is so much more
than playing records into the airwaves? If that's the way you see it,
then it is no wonder that you have so little use for it. May I remind
you, however, that I am actually working in this industry and I am as
enthusiastic about local broadcasting's role in the community as I have
ever been; maybe even more than ever.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

John Higdon wrote:

With all due respect, that is spoken just like someone who is not in the
business. I am days off the NAB convention floor, and even I was a bit
overwhelmed by some of the new tools for production and transmission
that have come out in just the past year. I can't imagine anyone
currently in the business saying that "there is nothing new under the
sun in broadcasting".

Sure, there'll always be new equipment. But, you weren't talking about
equipment. You were talking about *doing* broadcasting -- the production end
of it and I was responding to that. I also pointed out the sound collages
that "Radio Lab" is doing, which wouldn't have been possible in a pre-digital
age, or as easily possible at any rate. You were talking about the teaching
of skills that would lead to innovations in programming. That's where I said
that broadcasting is a mature industry and that there's only a certain amount
of things you can do with the medium.


I never went near one of those schools. But I cannot imagine that such
schools did not teach production, broadcast management, script writing,
technical basics, and the various performance techniques.

When I did a talkshow at KKEY, we had interns from a commercial broadcasting
school, I think it was Columbia. The bulk of what the interns knew were board
opping and talking into a mic. Broadcast management? Shirley, you jest.


If they didn't
teach all of those things, they not only should have failed when they
did, but they should never have been in the business in the first place.

Remember the ads? They showed some guy in a booth talking into a mic and
moving a fader and clicking a switch. "Hi, this is Joe Schmuck. You can be
on the air just like me..." They never showed anybody looking at Arbitron
printouts, writing checks, or for that matter even looking into the back of a
transmitter. They always showed the DJ. So, this was not false nor
misleading advertising. They taught people who to be DJs in an already
overcrowded field of DJs.


Even leaving local broadcasting out of the discussion, are you saying
that not a single talented human being is utilized in syndication,
satellite and Internet audio services? That's truly incredible.

No, but I believe in what Rich Wood (syndicator of Sally Jessy Raphael,
Wolfman Jack, and a ton of other people, along with op mgr for XETRA, WOR,
etc) has always said: "I can teach people how to do radio, but only if they
have something to say when they open the mic."

But again, you led off the reply with talk about equipment and finished with
talk about production. Equipment is not mature, production is, for the most
part.

John Higdon wrote:

It was explained to me by the owners of some very successful stations
that music is simply the glue that holds what a station really does
together and keeps the audience from tuning away. The station interacts
with listeners, in person and on the air. The station keeps listeners
informed about important local events. The station provides news and
timely information to help listeners plan their days and get about
smoothly.

In your 1977 world, yes, but people simply don't listen that way any longer.
Yes, there are your stations, which do that sort of thing, but the majority of
big stations are jukeboxes.

Take news for instance. Most stations have ONE news person for a cluster of 4
or 5, and they usually do the mornings and record some drop-ins for other
hours if they offer them at all. In our day, say 1977, KIOI had one news
person and KFRC had at least 5.

For someone so close to broadcasting you don't seem to be seeing what's been
going on. First, you didn't even know that stations, even your suburban ones,
tested music before they played it. You thought that it was purely seat of
the pants decisions! And you're right up there in it every day and you didn't
know this.

I suggest that if you want to learn a little more about the
production side of broadcasting you talk with people in the business as I do,
and find out what's going on.


The station helps its fellow community businesses succeed and
prosper, not just by selling spots but by working with them individually
to devise and execute a plan which maximizes their success.


Again, that's not how most of the big stations work. Sure, they'll join the
local chamber of commerce and donate money to the Little League, but gone are
the days when KKSF used to bankroll ambient music CDs to benefit AIDS
charities. Today, KGO stands out as one of the few big stations anywhere that
does anything for its community. But look at the other Citadel stations -- I
don't even think KABC or WABC have any live local talent at all anymore,
except maybe a weekend gardener infomercial talkshow.


How can I get it across to you that radio broadcasting is so much more
than playing records into the airwaves?

In your world it is, but step outside your world and it's jukeboxes. Hell,
listen to KOIT, the most successful music station in town for over a decade
and what is it? It's a jukebox that sounds automated even when it's live.
The extent of community service they do is reading 2 PSAs an hour and giving
the weather forecast, something that could be done from Albuquerque.

John T wrote:

Among our instructors were Aldy Swanson of KYUU, former KGO-TV
reporter Paul Wynne, and a former PD at KSOL, whose name I don't
recall. Oh, and a guy (whose name I *should* recall but don't) heard
on several stations for his sports reports from the Oakland Coliseum.

Sal Bando?


The problem with Bailie and other courses was that the days of local
personality radio were coming to an end. The conglomeration of the
industry was just beginning, and the school lost relevance within a
couple of years after I was there.

Exactly.

In any case, Bailie was a legit operation at that time, and was a
stepping stone for many into small to medium market radio and/or TV
work-- and for a few it was an entrance directly into the SF market.

Again, as I said to JH in another post, the ads were not false or misleading.
They did teach people how to be DJs.

In article ,
(David Kaye) wrote:

But again, you led off the reply with talk about equipment and finished with
talk about production. Equipment is not mature, production is, for the most
part.

Well, in my reality, I know that it is a very foolish thing to even
imply that all that can be has been invented when it comes to broadcast
technology. A little voice also tells me that there will always be room
for production and content innovation as well.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

(David Kaye) wrote:

I suggest that if you want to learn a little more about the
production side of broadcasting you talk with people in the business as
I do,
and find out what's going on.

Would Mike Amatori, production director of KGO, San Francisco do, or his
associate Craig Bowers? We talk about this all the time. Actually, I imagine
you are joking...since I have been in this business full-time for over forty
years, and it would be inconceivable that I would not speak with those by
whom I am surrounded on an everyday basis, don't you think?



--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free

David Kaye wrote:
John Higdon wrote:

It was explained to me by the owners of some very successful stations
that music is simply the glue that holds what a station really does
together and keeps the audience from tuning away. The station interacts
with listeners, in person and on the air. The station keeps listeners
informed about important local events. The station provides news and
timely information to help listeners plan their days and get about
smoothly.

In your 1977 world, yes, but people simply don't listen that way any longer.
Yes, there are your stations, which do that sort of thing, but the majority of
big stations are jukeboxes.

This is true, but it's also a really bad thing.

The vast majority of radio stations on the air don't actually provide any
real benefit to the public. They aren't relevant to the listener, and
people don't specifically tune into them. They just happen to hit the station
for their normal 2.4 minutes as they are scanning their way down the dial.

How can I get it across to you that radio broadcasting is so much more
than playing records into the airwaves?

In your world it is, but step outside your world and it's jukeboxes. Hell,
listen to KOIT, the most successful music station in town for over a decade
and what is it? It's a jukebox that sounds automated even when it's live.
The extent of community service they do is reading 2 PSAs an hour and giving
the weather forecast, something that could be done from Albuquerque.

What makes it sucessful, though? Do people really go out of their way to
listen to it, or do they just happen to turn it on because it's the loudest
thing on the dial as they tune by and it happened to be playing a song they
like?

From my perspective, I think much of what is wrong with radio is that the
bands are too crowded with stations that are all playing the same song at
the same time. I think the only thing that will save radio is for the
marginal stations to go dark. We need to see a _lot_ of stations going dark.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article ,
David Kaye wrote:
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

See, you could make that into a fun tour, talking about the history of the
station and what used to be in this room and what used to be in that room,
and how technology has changed things both for the better and the worse.

Would if it were. The history of KDYA 1190 is Lou Ripa's KNBA in Vallejo with
a totally different format and nothing remarkable in its history (unless you
consider Lou's morning restaurant interviews of 40 years ago).

KDIA 1640 is an extended band drop-in with no history. The KDIA callsign used
to belong to a totally unrelated station (KMKY 1310).

THAT is interesting. That's something worth talking about... how we got
into the situation where the whole extended band was created. THAT is an
important part of radio history.

The offices are in a generic office building in Richmond, which could have
been a law firm or any other generic office.

There's no there there.

What is interesting about the station isn't anything that is in the station
itself, it's how the industry got to be where it is and how the station got
to be there. It doesn't look very exciting and the tour itself isn't much,
but there's a lot of interesting stuff that happened in order to get things
to the point of that PC automation system sitting in an office park.

And this isn't unlike other stations. Today's radio stations are computers
like people have at home, mixing boards like one might see in a DJ booth at a
nightclub, though not as sophisticated, transmitters are in distant locations
that nobody but the chief engineers visit. There's really not much to see.

No, but there's a _lot_ to talk about. Everything is in little boxes in
racks that look like every other rack in every other industry, but how it
got to be that way is the story of radio.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"John Higdon" wrote:

Would Mike Amatori, production director of KGO, San Francisco do, or his
associate Craig Bowers? We talk about this all the time. Actually, I imagine
you are joking...since I have been in this business full-time for over forty
years, and it would be inconceivable that I would not speak with those by
whom I am surrounded on an everyday basis, don't you think?

But you didn't even know that your own stations test their music before
playing it. You thought they operated on hunches. If you didn't know this
fundamental aspect of today's programming, there's probably more things about
modern radio that you don't know.

Okay, I went to school with Mike Amatori. I want to be as supportive as
possible, but unfortunately, when it comes to production he's fairly blind to
modern ideas and techniques. His stuff, unfortunately, sounds 40 years out of
date. Frankly, he's not very good. His delivery is singsongy. He makes
little use of music beds, no use of sound effects, speed changes, etc. Heck,
there are spots he could do with multiple voices, back and forth banter, lots
of things, but he just knocks out the same old same old day after day.