A proposal!

I saw an interesting article on the internet last week. It was describing that music sales are increasing and how they are back to the level they were before the MP3 era before Napster, iTunes and Spotify. In another article there was a reference to the increase of live “radio” streams on the internet as well. All of this is adding to revenue from music.

Left: A typical home studio used in Internet Broadcasting. Add to that the fairly new phenomena of a smattering of terrestrial radio stations beginning to replace automated programming hours with streams from Internet broadcasters. This is happening on FM, Shortwave and Satellite in Europe, but not here in the US as far as I know. Yet! Watch this space!

Add to this thought, the recent history of most of the major radio broadcasting groups filing Chapter 11 bankrupt papers over the past 5 years and a number of smaller stations going dark in the same time period, there appears to be something in the wind on the facilities side of the equation.

On the personnel side: Over the years, the number of experienced live radio presenters has dwindled as more and more stations moved towards automated systems which were less expensive to operate. In many markets there are fewer live DJs in the entire market now than there used to be at one or two stations in the market back in the day. In case you are thinking, wait that can’t be right, you should be aware that many of the voices you hear on local radio are not live but are either “voice Tracked” or come in via satellite as syndicated programs. In the case of syndication, you might hear a local voice with weather and traffic reports but they don’t spin records, uh, excuse me, play songs; no one spins records these days. But that is a different story. Also back to the point I was making, that local weather and traffic voice may be on more than one station in the local corporate radio cluster at the same time.

By the way, don’t construe what I’m saying here as a criticism of today’s radio. We are where we are because of the history, and that is what I’m addressing in my proposal.

Voice tracking allows a single presenter to record a three or four hour show in less than an hour. But the usual voice tracking methods restrict interaction with the music or lyrics because the voice tracking DJ does not hear the end of the song before or the beginning of the one that follows. So there is no “beat matching” or personality synching to the tunes being played. If you listen carefully you can detect that. To me it is almost like dragging fingernails across a blackboard. The only thing worse is “Autotune!”

Where did the DJs all go? Some like me, moved over to other sides of broadcasting. In my case I went technical, to the engineering side of things in both Radio and Television. Armed with my “First Phone” FCC license and working on my Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering I was able to keep at least one foot in broadcasting all but 7 years of my working career. Being a “combo” guy helped keep me employed. I could step back in front of the microphone and / or camera whenever necessary. And it was quite often necessary. That suited me fine because quite frankly that, especially in radio is what floated my boat.

The other place the old school DJ went was to internet radio. (Can you see the circle closing yet?) Currently the compensation for these pioneers is not much at best or nonexistent at worst. But they have a fire in the belly for what they do as long as they can do it on their own terms. Add to that is the fact that they can perform their shows from the convenience of their home studios and stream live to the station’s servers and from there to the entire world. Heck, I even do one of my live shows from my home studios in my “jammies” but don’t tell the management that. He’ll bring in a dress code, that’s what manager do!

Just how pervasive is this? Well, look at my the guys that worked at WCOS with me; Woody, Hunter, me and until recently Leo all have their own internet stations. Woody and I do live shows several times per week on our respective stations and Hunter will sometimes take requests and insert them into the queue on his station. All of us are doing it for the love of the medium, the music and most importantly our audiences. My station has 10 live DJs on the air at least once every week. And all are either musicians or former live DJs.

So how would the marriage of a streaming station and a local broadcaster look. What’s in it for either? For the streaming station it is a stronger connection to the audience especially the mobile audience listening in a car. That is something that is not quite there for the internet broadcaster although it is coming as more and more manufacturers are placing internet radio apps in their electronic stacks in the newer cars. For the broadcaster, the advantage is that they get the edge of a live DJ without all the expense. Before you say the words “performance rights” today’s technology allows the broadcaster to capture the artist and title information for a song off the stream itself. That same technology records the name of the presenter doing the program as a time stamp entry for bookkeeping and payroll purposes if they become necessary.

I’m not saying this is a model for the future, but is a potential for interjecting the excitement and spontaneity of live DJs back into local radio. That would drive the station’s audiences which would drive sponsor interest. Sure, it would be an experiment, but if successful could kick start local radio out of the doldrums without the risk of cash outlay to hire DJs to see if this would work. The folks in Europe are already figuring this out.

Finally, the programming angle of all this: right now you could drive across this country listening to radio from one coast to the other. After a while you would notice a similarity, a “samelessness” if you will. It doesn’t matter if you are listening to CHR, Hot 100, Country or R&B, no matter what genre; you are listening to stations programmed by a handful of format executives in four or five corporate headquarters all playing from the same programming handbook that began rolling out with the Drake Chennault packages in the 60s and early 70s. If you are lucky enough to pick up a station that is either independently owned or a station operated by a college or university, you will hear the difference; genres that are not heard elsewhere, DJ presentation styles that are not cookie cutter copies of the others on the dial. The other place you can hear this is on Internet Radio. Can you just imagine if the two joined forces? Wouldn’t that be FUN! Oh MY!