Radio Annoyance
Not to sound like an Old Lady, but: what's with radio stations *never* announcing the names of artists or the titles of their songs??
Tonight, I'm cruising down Rt. 5 thru the north end of Holyoke, and I'm hearing this great song on WRNX. But, probably because they do not have anyone in the station at night, and only run loops of music, I never find out who it is who is performing this wonderful song. I can't even figure out the title of the song from the hook (something about "crazy," but nowadays the hook is never guaranteed to be the title. if I do a search on that word, I'm liable to come up with Patsy Cline and not what I'm looking for.)
Wanting to avoid further frustration, I turn on the classic rock station out of Springfield. Over there, I don't need a dj's voice because I know everything they play. Only that happens to be one of the few stations that has a dj on at night.
So, how do radio stations expect to serve an audience that might actually want to know the title of a song, and the artist, if there's no dj on to do the announcements?
I guess we're all supposed to have our favorite radio station bookmarked in our Favorites just so we can look up the playlist when we hear something. Or we're supposed to go search out the song on iTunes, or some other MP3 download service. Or watch it on VH1 or MTV. Or just get the title and artist by osmosis.
I can see why young people are simply downloading the one song they like and creating little soundtracks. On radio, there are no more voices between the songs--no one letting you know who the artist is, or anything about the artist. That's all been done away with, as, more than likely, a money-saving measure. We all are used to soundtracks and by downloading we can take control of our own soundtracks.
No wonder so many folks are losing interest in commercial radio. There's so little to keep our interest anyway, and it's more fun to make our soundtracks the way we want them.
That is, if we can figure out who's making the music.
Or does it really matter any more?
Tonight, I'm cruising down Rt. 5 thru the north end of Holyoke, and I'm hearing this great song on WRNX. But, probably because they do not have anyone in the station at night, and only run loops of music, I never find out who it is who is performing this wonderful song. I can't even figure out the title of the song from the hook (something about "crazy," but nowadays the hook is never guaranteed to be the title. if I do a search on that word, I'm liable to come up with Patsy Cline and not what I'm looking for.)
Wanting to avoid further frustration, I turn on the classic rock station out of Springfield. Over there, I don't need a dj's voice because I know everything they play. Only that happens to be one of the few stations that has a dj on at night.
So, how do radio stations expect to serve an audience that might actually want to know the title of a song, and the artist, if there's no dj on to do the announcements?
I guess we're all supposed to have our favorite radio station bookmarked in our Favorites just so we can look up the playlist when we hear something. Or we're supposed to go search out the song on iTunes, or some other MP3 download service. Or watch it on VH1 or MTV. Or just get the title and artist by osmosis.
I can see why young people are simply downloading the one song they like and creating little soundtracks. On radio, there are no more voices between the songs--no one letting you know who the artist is, or anything about the artist. That's all been done away with, as, more than likely, a money-saving measure. We all are used to soundtracks and by downloading we can take control of our own soundtracks.
No wonder so many folks are losing interest in commercial radio. There's so little to keep our interest anyway, and it's more fun to make our soundtracks the way we want them.
That is, if we can figure out who's making the music.
Or does it really matter any more?
posted by Tish Grier at 9:44 PM
7 Comments:
Yes! This drive me absolutely nuts. If I'm lucky I have my son in the car and he knows. If not, I try to remember a little snatch of it and sing it to him, then watch him laugh at me while he tells me what it is.
So I end up having him burn me soundtracks of things he thinks I'd like. Which is fine as long as he writes down all the titles. If he forgets, I'm back in the same boat as with the radio.
Crazy, you say?
Gnarles Barkley is your answer, most likely.
I think RDS has a lot to do with it. Most car radios support it now, which means the DJ (if there even is one--many mainstream stations are completely automated) doesn't have to announce songs and artists, and instead can entertain us with more ad copy.
Long ago, radio stopped being about music. They don't care if you find out the name of the song. They don't care about you or the music they play.
They just care about advertising dollar.
I must admit, that's one of the things I love about my satellite radio (in my case, Sirius, but I"m sure XM does the same). The little receiver has an LED readout with the current song and artist. You never have to end up wondering who's singing. And they have actual DJs, with real personalities (just one reason I still listen to Boston's MIX98.5 because they continue to use human beings during their shows).
Plus, there are no commercials on the satellite music stations, but that's a different rant. :-)
There is a service called YES.com, which tracks the playlists of about 2500 radio stations. All you need to do is come home, fire up the browser, give YES.com the call letters (you can search by ZIP code if you have one of those stations that mentions their call only the legal minimum once an hour), and it will tell you what's been played today in one-hour chunks. Sometimes they even have direct iTunes links to buy the song.
Most commercial radio stations are either satellite-fed from a central location, or are run by computers containing a format-generating program and a library of select MP3's. Someone in the business rightly described modern radio as an Ipod containing 50 songs connected to a 50,000-watt transmitter.
Back in the old days, when you had to actually hire and pay human beings to do things, you had what was called "personality" radio, the epitome of which were major-market mammoths like WABC (pre-talk) and CKLW. DJ's like WABC's "Cousin Brucie" were the draw. They were what distinguished one station from another, along with the program director's careful choice of music, based upon local record sales. Now, it's all down to focus groups, smoke-and-mirrors research, and computers. There was a tornado in our area about 8 years ago. Only one commercial station and the 2 NPR stations of the 7 FM stations here broadcast emergency news. The others' computers kept on cranking out preprogrammed music and canned copy. Human intervention is a relic of a less efficient time. Commercial radio has mutated into an audio billboard.
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