Recently radio in Chicagoland has undergone some changes. One station out here has decided to play a format of ‘everything’, though it’s more like ‘most everything’. You can hear *Shanai Twain * then *Motley Crue * then Right Said Fred then *M.C. Hammer * then Bowling for Soup, but I don’t think any Slayer or *Two Live Crew * is going to come on. They heavily encourage requests.
There’s also an alternative station that was big on playing the same 40 songs with a few others thrown in, based on focus groups. No they’ve basically turned their channel into a giant I-pod, shuffling through their library most of the time, with a lot of requests.
People are raving about these changes. Could an end be coming to focus group chosen radio and more to what people actually want to listen to? Or am I just fooling myself?
Said ‘no format, play anything’ station apparently just won some major billboard awards, which is a really good sign. I listen to it all the time when I’m in my car. If it’s the future, I look forward to tommorow with a little more optimism!
Speaking of podcasts - a radio station (KCYC) in San Francisco is switching to broadcasting podcastsNext month, Infinity will convert a poorly performing station in San Francisco to a format that will play only "podcasts,’’ or amateur recordings distributed via the Internet to listeners’ iPods and other digital music players from yesterday’s Mercury News. Infinity will neither charge nor pay for the podcasts they receive. Ratings for KCYC were so low that it doesn’t even appear in the ratings book, so there seems to be little reason not to try something new.
The plain fact of the matter is that due to recent advances in technology, there’s barely any rational reason for anyone to listen to radio. Traditionally radio has only one advantage, namely that it’s free. That balanced out against a whole hoard of disadvantages: you don’t get to choose the music you want, there’s advertising, reception can be spotty, annoying DJs, and so forth. For generations radio kept going because the alternative was so expensive. An album cost fifteen dollars or so even if it had only a couple songs you really liked. Now that consumers can get any song for a dollar, why listen to radio?
The recent why we had so many sterotypically awful radio stations in recent years is that the corporate heads knew they were the only ones offering free music. Why bother to hire a talented person to devise the playlist when there were cheaper options available? Now competition is forcing them to actually devote some effort to their product.
Young’uns, back in the 1950s and 60s, radio stations did indeed play “most everything.” The growth of FM caused stations to splinter their formats into tinier and tinier slivers. Every few years since that, some station or group has tried to put the pieces together again. The “new” format gets tremendous attention as The Next Big Thing. After a few months the novelty wears off and the format gets tigheter and tighter until it’s back to sliver programming.
This is just an attempt by terrestrial radio companies to compete with satellite radio, IMO.
I don’t really think these “play anything” radio stations are going to be a long-term thing, since the estimates I’ve heard on their libraries are in the 2000-5000 song range, and the “limited commercial breaks” are going to get larger as time goes on.
Except, of course for the many many people who can’t or choose not to afford XM radio, iPods, or whathave you. How long has cable TV been around, yet we still have broadcast television.
No kidding. I’m surprised someone’s not done “All 1983, all the time!” or “All boy-band rock!” in this age of stations that only play “The best music of the <decade>'s!”
What station in Chicago’s doing this? It’s been a yonk or two since I’ve been to Chicago, but recall WXRT was a pretty darned eclectic rock station, but I can’t envision they’d do this.
