If You Have To Explain Who You Are Then You Ain’t !

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At this moment I am at 35,000 ft flying from Ft. Lauderdale to San Francisco and thinking about a few things

CNN claims it has 3000 hours of news about 911 posted. You would think that radio would have much much more, but none of it is posted. Whats up with that.

I recently got an e mail from George Francis who had been at a party in Columbia S.C. over the weekend and heard a woman raving about a morning personality she used to listen to when she lived in Dallas. She claimed he had once even put out a fire using Perrier water while wearing a Tuxedo. George thought she must be talking about Ron Chapman. Ron confirmed the story and said he had done a little grocery shopping just before attending a black tie affair. On his drive home through Highland Park he noticed a front lawn on fire. He stopped his car jumpd out and looked around for a hose, nothing. He knocked on the door, nothing. Knocked on a window also nothing. Then remembering what he had in the trunk he got out the Perrier and successfully put out the fire. If you know anything at all about Highland Park you know putting out a fire with Perrier water while wearing a Tuxedo probably didn’t look that unusual.

I heard on the Joyce Kaufman show on 8-50 WFTL that the Jews are very upset with Obama over the economy and his handling of Israel. They are threatening to make him pay in the next election which means only 70 % of them are going to vote for him instead of the usual 78 %. That just falls a little short of the death penalty doesn’t it.

Is it still racist or prejudice if it’s true.

I believe that the generation my daughter Cami is growing up in is the least racist or prejudice generation so far. But she and her friends are very aware of who the ghetto kids are and are very wary of them.

According to Ted Bolton the recording artists from the 70’s are getting ready to start touring and promoting their old records again. By law after 35 years they finally get to control and own their own music. Here come the reunion tours and greatest hits packages from the 70’s bands.

A radio station is supposed to endorse and promote their air personalities. The personalities in turn endorse and promote the radio station. I hear or see very little of either.

In Canada if you have a college education you have a leg up. In America it’s only what college you went to that counts.

The only thing good about being my age is … If anyone ever harmed either one of my daughters my retaliation would be very swift and sweet. The consequence may be spending the rest of my life in prison if my peers on the Jury would even send me there. I just look at it as just a few years of free room and board. This makes guys like me very dangerous I would think.

I have heard huge acts like Elvis, The Beatles, The Stones, The Who and U2 to mention a few thank Chuck Berry and Little Richard for making music that inspired them to make their own music. I have never heard Chuck Berry or Little Richard thank anybody for anything.

If you have to explain who you are than you really aren’t anybody so give it up and sit down.

I am a very big Brett Farve fan but the way Aaron Rogers handled all that controversy back then now makes me a very big Aaron Rogers fan also. Watching him and Drew Brees go at it Thursday night was like watching two gunfighters.

Most radio programming is aimed at people who wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a PPM device.

Talking about what the people are talking about is real real hard to do. Getting them to talk about you just takes a little talent.

When Fairbanks Broadcasting owned WVBF- FM in Boston we were a top 40 station called F-105.  The big rocker at the time was WRKO and we did everything we could to knock them off but weren’t very successful so we decided to obsolete them. We threw them a giant goodbye party. We filled our airwaves with stories about how great they used to be, and how as kids we grew up listening to them. It’s not WRKO’s fault that music sounded so much better on FM. We complained about the fact that the city fathers hadn’t even recognized WRKO for all the great things they used to do. We at F-105 feel they should be treated with the same respect as Paul Revere still gets. If city hall wasn’t going to do anything F105 feels a responsibility to a fellow broadcaster to do something. So in this spirit F-105  has decided to throw them biggest going away party Boston has ever seen. It just killed them! Years later some of the staff who were there at the time said they knew they were done. How do you go on the air and try and tell everyone you’re not going anywhere. They were demoralized and looked to management to figure out what to do. Management had nothing so the very next book they did go away.

Its a hell of a lot easier to play the hits then pick ’em and ratings only come from the playing.

The ultimate radio station is the one who can sound both background and foreground at the same time and they usually have all the money too.

Is it just me or do low power FMs really sound better than the high power ones.

21 thoughts on “If You Have To Explain Who You Are Then You Ain’t !

  1. I asked Mike Addams about this on one of our bus rides from Framingham to Boston and he said they laughed about it. They thought it was a joke. Addams is still on the air working for greater media but WRKO is gone and is just another right wing talk station.

  2. Chuck Berry thanked the carpenter who drilled the peep-hole into the ladies restroom, and Little Richard thanked Coco Chanel.

  3. Re: CNN posting 9/11 and radio not:
    Sincerely beginning to think that posting content to the web is like asking the hangman for a nicer noose.
    You can support your broadcast on the web, you can hook ’em and crook ’em, but when you give it to them on demand, they have no reason to ever come to you where it counts.
    Let me put it in geo. speak: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

    love,
    kelley

  4. George: There is a corollary to your observation on having to explain who you are: If you have to explain a name, an idea or a concept over and over again because nobody gets it, the name/idea/concept will never stick. Example: Kleenex over facial tissues, with one of the worst nightmares being people buying Scott-brand Kleenexes ! When I worked for WFYI-TV / FM, the president of the organization insisted on calling it the WFYI TelePlex. Everytime we had new board members or new strategic partners, our Senior Vice President of Communications and Development would spend a minimum of 15-minutes explaining what the concept of the TelePlex was. We even had a bullet-point with a drop-down menu on the WFYI TelePlex website to answer the F.A.Q., What is a TelePlex ? What everybody outside of the senior level of officers
    called the radio and television station was WFYI Public Radio and WFYI Public Television. But within the corporate level, the organization spent sums trying to brand itself with a name nobody cared to use or understand.

    George, one of the greatest virtues you have as a programmer and promoter has been
    simple, common sense, grounded thinking, some of which, I think rubbed off on me. You have the ability to grasp that it is what the audience perceives that counts, even if it is an illusion.

  5. — “According to Ted Bolton the recording artists from the 70′s are getting ready to start touring and promoting their old records again.” – There aren’t enough walkers, corrective shoes, or oxygen to accommodate these codgers.

  6. FM was a disruptive technology, like DVD’s were to VCR’s. I love the stories how some FM top 40 “knocked out the AM Top 40”. Didn’t happen that way. FM was a superior media for music, end of story. Many times some of the worse excuses for Top 40 won basically because they played the hits in stereo. Yes, AM wimped out as the 70’s drew to a close. The stupid consultant driven concept of re-positioning AM Top 40’s as upper demo Top 40 or “the station you grew up with” likely killed Top 40 AM’s coast to coast. The research driven consultants had no vision, instead of embracing the new wave, punk, & emerging alternative rock sound, they opted to power “Ghost Busters” & Little River Band. AM had no balls, except for one station called KTNQ.

    • Thanks Wade, When my daughter Cami was around 10 and 11 years of age she used to listen exclusively to Disney on am and she could find it in most cities we would travel to. She didn’t care if it was AM or FM it was the only place she could get the product she loved.

  7. You’re right, a think a lot of low power FMs do sound better than their big brothers. I believe it might be the processing. I suspect the smaller FMs don’t have a lot of cash invested in processors. The beauty of FM has always been that it was clean & quiet with perfect frequency response, never needed all that cooking the the old AMs that most of us came from did to get above the noise & stand out.

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