Bath Water
At one point along the circuitous route commercial radio has taken on the way to a slow lingering death, the definition of radio was boiled down to mean a source for ‘non-stop’ music (except for the commercial interruptions, of course). This insightful programming initiative just happened to mesh seamlessly with technological advances that created more ways than you can count to do the same thing without the commercials and songs I don’t like.
What technology can’t do is present the music in a way that makes it meaningful or potentially more interesting. Radio used to do that really well until it was decided that playing more songs in a row without interruption was a way to keep people listening. Along with the bathwater (commercials every tow or three songs) they threw out the baby (the person that kept me interested in what was happening and what was going to happen next). That was the only reason I would sit through a song I didn’t like. I didn’t want to miss the one coming up that the DJ was so excited about. Now if I turn on the radio, more often than not, no one is there to tell me what’s going to happen next so I punch around ‘til I find what I like that is happening now. The only thing you can count on is for some disembodied voice barfing out some slogan with no relevance to me or the ever popular clip from the Simpson’s with some zaps and swooshes that also mean nothing.
When a Disk jockey is talking it’s usually has nothing to do with the music. DJ’s… announcers?… I don’t know. I long for the day when in good conscience we can again refer to them as ‘personalities’. They certainly aren’t ‘presenters’ as they are referred to in Europe… I digress. Anyway, DJ’s don’t present music in a fashion that peaks my interest or encourages me to listen to something unfamiliar. I just want to load my pod with my favorite artists and songs and go my merry way. Maybe a friend will turn me on to something new. What happened to that ‘friend’ on the radio that I could trust to do the same?
Man, it used to be fun. You never new what was going to happen next, other than the song that was coming up, but that was only part of the magic. To hear someone on the radio ‘break the rules’ was the best. Radio was ‘live’; anything could happen!
When was the last time you immediately played a new song that you loved, over again on your pod or computer? When was the last time you heard the guy on the radio do that because it was so good? Crazy audience anticipation and excitement was built around a new release by a major artist and he just new it was what the audience would love. Have you ever heard that happen?! I bet nobody born in the last 30 years has ever heard that kind of radio.
There is an inherent magic that radio, and only radio, has the ability to conjure, no matter what the format is and how it is consumed. Uninspired radio streamed on the internet is still uninspired radio. The method of delivery doesn’t make it any more palatable.
This is not some yearning, nostalgic romanticism. It’s not a matter of getting back to what radio was. It’s a matter of knowing what made radio what it was.
Yes, there was a method behind the madness… “Oh, you mean there was a baby in that bath water?!”
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