"Mark Jeffries" wrote in message
...

Just think--all you needed in the old days was a tymp roll, Bill Drake
saying "And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Real Don Steele--on Boss
Radio!" and the Johnny Mann Singers singing "93 KHJ--Los Angeles!"
And all of that at the top of the hour. Guess times have changed.


The big change came with the digital dial. You can not be "93" anymore, you
must be 930. In some formats, especially in youth and younger adults, up to
80% of Arbitron diary mentions are by digital dial position. The next group
is by name, and the lowest by calls.

Mark Jeffries had written:
|
| It's not just modern rockers--burying the legal in the :50 stop set is
| common in *every* music format (it seems that talk radio still
| believes in call letters over image name). Either that or whispering
| what they don't really want you to hear like this example: [...]

I guess the San Francisco Bay area is a little different...KOIT,
KFRC, KDFC, KBLX, KFOG, and KMEL are all examples of music stations
that continue to identify with their call letters. Until its
makeover as "The Bone" about four years ago, KSAN did as well.

Back when KITS still was owned by Entercom, running a true modern
rock format, it only announced the call letters once per hour. But
when they did it, it was not hidden. My favorite was (in
alternating left and right channels) "K -- I -- T -- S" followed by
an equally dragged-out "San Francisco! Live! 105!"

The present-day Live 105 has none of the imagination and flair of
what came before it. Yet another consultant-whipped PD strikes again.

| Just think--all you needed in the old days was a tymp roll, Bill Drake
| saying "And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Real Don Steele--on Boss
| Radio!" and the Johnny Mann Singers singing "93 KHJ--Los Angeles!"
| And all of that at the top of the hour. Guess times have changed.

Music stations also didn't hate news in those days. It was viewed
as a complementary part of the format. Try to imagine "The Big 89"
(WLS) without Lyle Dean.

--
Mark Roberts |"The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the
Oakland, Cal.| Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the
NO HTML MAIL | ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run
for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face,
those are the same qualities that led the president to
lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath
and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when
the bill started to come due." -- Josh Marshall

On 27 Aug 2004 01:44:50 GMT, (Mark Roberts)
wrote:


Music stations also didn't hate news in those days.

Actually, they did, but by government edict, they had to do it.

Try to imagine "The Big 89" (WLS) without Lyle Dean.

The better stations elected to do news well, since not doing it was
not an option under the regulations then governing the industry. But
most of them were pretty much rip 'n' read operations with no real
staffing even then.

Mark Howell

Mark Howell had written:
| On 27 Aug 2004 01:44:50 GMT, (Mark Roberts)
| wrote:
|
| Music stations also didn't hate news in those days.
|
| Actually, they did, but by government edict, they had to do it.

Then why did (at least some of them) promote it so much?

It certain added to the feeling that if you didn't tune in, you
would miss something. That's been missing from most radio stations
for a long time.

| Try to imagine "The Big 89" (WLS) without Lyle Dean.
|
| The better stations elected to do news well, since not doing it was
| not an option under the regulations then governing the industry. But
| most of them were pretty much rip 'n' read operations with no real
| staffing even then.

The rip 'n' read criticism is fair, for at least some of the
operations. But I do recall that the Storz stations had 24/7
coverage and fairly frequent use of obviously local phoners, even if
the on-scene coverage was sometimes lacking.


--
Mark Roberts |"The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the
Oakland, Cal.| Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the
NO HTML MAIL | ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run
for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face,
those are the same qualities that led the president to
lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath
and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when
the bill started to come due." -- Josh Marshall

On 30 Aug 2004 19:50:52 GMT, (Mark Roberts)
wrote:

Mark Howell had written:
| On 27 Aug 2004 01:44:50 GMT, (Mark Roberts)
| wrote:
|
| Music stations also didn't hate news in those days.
|
| Actually, they did, but by government edict, they had to do it.

Then why did (at least some of them) promote it so much?

It certain added to the feeling that if you didn't tune in, you
would miss something. That's been missing from most radio stations
for a long time.

Well, as I say, the better stations decided that if they must do news,
they might as well make the best of it. I worked in that kind of
operation, as well as a few where the 24/7 news coverage was nothing
more than running the network hourlies or jocks reading wire copy.
The latter operations were the majority. In the pre-deregulation
'70's a number of music stations figured out that they could game the
system by running huge amounts of mostly rip'n' read, pre-recorded
news in the overnight shift, thus clearing most of it out of the
daytime hours where it was considered by PD's to be a tune-out factor.
I worked in one of those, too. I remember one night in my wild youth,
taping a 30 minute newscast that ran at 3 AM while quite obviously
drunk. Nobody ever noticed.

Mark Howell

Mark Howell had written:

| In the pre-deregulation
| '70's a number of music stations figured out that they could game the
| system by running huge amounts of mostly rip'n' read, pre-recorded
| news in the overnight shift, thus clearing most of it out of the
| daytime hours where it was considered by PD's to be a tune-out factor.
| I worked in one of those, too. I remember one night in my wild youth,
| taping a 30 minute newscast that ran at 3 AM while quite obviously
| drunk. Nobody ever noticed.

When KWK came back on the air in St. Louis in 1978, it had one
newscaster, who did newscasts from about 2 am until 9 am.


--
Mark Roberts |"The same sort of moral cowardice that led him to support the
Oakland, Cal.| Vietnam war but decide it wasn't for him, run companies into the
NO HTML MAIL | ground and let others pay the bill, play gutter politics but run
for the hills when someone asks him to say it to their face,
those are the same qualities that led the president to
lie the country into war, fail to prepare for the aftermath
and then refuse to take responsibility for any of it when
the bill started to come due." -- Josh Marshall

I always liked WABC, NEW YORK AND NOW WITH THE NEWS HERE"S BOB HARDT!
OR KFRC SAN FRANCISCO!

Remember that the only "legal" requirement is the calls and city of
license. And, in
my (non-professional) opinion, a non-legal ID at the top of the hour, just
before
programming, is bogus.

Would you consider this a legal ID or a bogus ID? I say "bogus", but the tv
station obviously says "legal".

Only a visual ID (no audio ID) with the call letters, channel number, and the
city of the OTHER tv station that they are not in big easy to read letters
followed by the call letters, channel number, an city of the station that they
really are, in small hard to read tiny letters so small that you have to be
right up at the screen AND holding a magnifying glass to make it readable to
you.

Would you consider this a legal ID or a bogus ID? I say "bogus", but the tv
station obviously says "legal".

The pertinent FCC rule (47 CFR §73.1201) contains no requirement as to the font
size of a visual legal ID. It does say that TV stations may ID *either*
aurally or visually.

I never got tired of hearing "Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to
.....(insert jock's name) followed by the CKLW top of the hour ID!

I'd turn the radio up til the speakers almost blew to hear how the op would
layunder some great hit like Stevie Wonder - Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I'm
Yours.

Later, I was fortunate enough to be one of those ops in the studio of "The
Big 8" doing those layunders myself. I still turned the monitors up so loud
that I almost blew the speaker cones across the room. Never got tired of
the extreme thrill it gave me to have the top of the hour being "my set" and
place to shine.

CKLW was the best radio station on the face of the earth at the time .....
in my totally biased opinion!

Lee Smith