Category: MCRFB (Billboard) News

From the MCRFB NEWS archive: 1964

The Bill Gavin Newsletter July 25, 1964 

From the Desk of Bill Gavin  Billboard Contributing Editor

A   S  T  A  T  I  O  N    M  A  N  A  G  E  R   recently said I don’t go along with  this modern radio. My station programs for adults. “Let the formula stations entertain the kids.” I did my best to explain that “modern” radio means a lot more than that, but it didn’t do much good.

I asked another radio man what he thought about modern radio. “I’m all for it,” he said. “Our station is really modern, Top 40 survey, jingle package, time and temperature, news highlights every half hour, contests and prizes, keep the deejays from yakking — we’ve got all the modern gimmicks.”

Interesting to note, neither of these gentlemen was speaking for a winning station. Manager No. I claimed that the audience measurement services were phony because he knew “lots of people” who listened to his station. Manager No. 2 is perpetually optimistic that the next rating will move him up out of the No. 4 spot to which his station currently clings.

M  O  D  E  R  N    R  A  D  I  O   is not teenage programming. Modern radio is not gimmicks, copied from some successful operation. There are so many different opinions about, and explanations of,  modern radio that I offer the comments that follow with some difference, realizing that others may have a different and possibly a better description.

Modern radio starts with people. It grows out of a genuine respect for people’s interests, problems, tastes and feelings. Modern radio programming aims first at understanding what people want to hear, and then at giving them that plus something more. A continuing contact with living trends in all the many things it has to offer forms the basis of modern radio. Its program rule is objectivity. This is why sterile imitations of formulas and gimmicks show themselves so often to be vulnerable to aggressive competition. Modern radio, is briefly, audience centered.

Modern radio needs and uses a high degree of technical skill. The average listener seldom notices the expert efficiency with which records and tape cartridges are cued and started. Actually, if the technique is apparent to the listener, something is wrong with it. Skill and planning provide the continuous flow of sound and the feeling of movement that are characteristic of today’s most successful radio.

T  O   B  E   P  R  O  F  I  T  A  B  L  E  ,   radio must operate economically. In contrast to present day radio, the standards of the old network days seem incredibly wasteful, with their writers, producers and sound effects men, with announcers killing time while they waited to give the station call letters in between the network programs. The margin of profit is much smaller today, and the average effort required from each employee is proportionately greater.

Modern radio is more than entertainment. It is also companionship. It is a friendly voice in a hospital room, in a car, or in a lonely farm house. To be a companion, radio stations have emerged from the electronic anonymity of relay transmitters of entertainment, and have assumed personality and character of their own. Radio, like a good friend, is dependably there and dependably the same.

Pleasing an audience does not consist entirely of providing what people want. Very often, people don’t know what they like in the way of entertainment until they’ve tried it. Pleasing the audience consists largely in planning something that the audience will like. Surprise, novelty and variety are all part of modern radio. It takes creative imagination. often the combined work of many dedicated people, to keep radio continually alive and interesting. Some people call it showmanship.

Modern radio is the disk jockey. He is the voice of the station. He does much more than play records and talk about them. He may he casual or rapid fire; he may be witty or sincere; whatever he is, he is the key to a station’s acceptance
by the public.

M  O  D  E  R  N    R  A  D  I  O   is a living part of its community. Whether it’s the support of the symphony or of a children’s hospital or of a high school record hop, radio is doing something with and about the community where it lives. The old promotion idea was, “Listen to us.” Today, radio listens to people. More and more stations are inviting listeners to phone, and the phone calls are being broadcast. Modern radio is successful in this joint participation project only as it demonstrates concern and awareness of its listeners as co-partners in the same community of interests.

News has always been an integral part of radio. Even television’s tremendous immediacy in the coverage of such major events as political conventions and the World Series has not reduced the listener appeal of radio’s consistently broader scale reporting.

The early 1950’s saw the beginning of the trend away from four to five quarter hour newscasts per day to the present prevailing practice of shorter summaries every hour or half hour. The news director in today’s radio is also a public relations director, guiding his station’s participation in community affairs.

Above all, modern radio is music. Practically all conceivable musical tastes can find satisfaction on radio’s AM and FM dials. The music comes, of course, from  records. Without the rich variety of music made available by the record business, modern radio as we know it could not survive. A station’s selection of recorded music for airplay largely determines the type and size of its audience. Whether in the field of country music, blues, jazz, rock, pop or concert. Modern radio accepts the principle that listener preference, as demonstrated by record sales and other measurable response, is the guide line to programming.

Modern radio is not the same as it was yesterday, nor will it be the same tomorrow. It is always responsive to new trends, open to new ideas. Within the structure of modern radio there have always been those leaders who are willing to pioneer new concepts and approaches. As long as courage and vision survive among broadcasters, there will always be modern radio. END

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(Information and news source: Billboard; July 25, 1964)

From the MCRFB.COM NEWS archive: 1964

M O R E   B A D   P R O G R A M M I N G  is done in the name of “good music” than in any other form of radio. This opinion is not only my own but is also held by many broadcasters. It does not, of course, rule out the excellent programming being done by a number of “good music” stations in the U. S. and Canada. But by and large the exponents of the so-called “better music” or “non-rock” policies display an abysmal indifference to the basic nature of commercial radio.

“You can’t please all of the people all of the time,” said a disk jockey recently to his program director, in defense of the music he was selecting for his show. The PD’s reply is worth noting: “No, probably not. But let’s try.”

Within its policy limits, whether r &b, country, or whatever, a radio station aims to please as many listeners as possible. At least, this is generally conceded to be radio’s prime objective. In view of such a fundamental guideline, it is amazing how many “good music” stations ignore it.

Ask a “good music” station manager about his music policy. Chances are he’ll say, “We don’t play rock and roll.” Or he might even say, “We don’t play any top 40 records.” He’s also apt to tell you that his station doesn’t program kids’ music. It’s “strictly for adults.” So far, the good music man has told you what kind of music his station doesn’t play. When you finally pin him down to what he does play, it usually turns out that this is left to the discretion of the individual disk jockeys. As long as they avoid the forbidden area of rock ‘n’ roll (whatever that is) they play just about anything they like.

A  C O M M E N T   O F T E N   H E A R D  in the realm of “good music radio” is that each disk jockey’s selection of music is an “expression of his personality.” This is probably true. And if we analyze the personalities thus musically expressed on the air, we are forced to classify a good many of them variously as smug, condescending, biased, snobbish, conceited, archaic, uninformed, careless. indifferent and/or incompetent.

A friend of mine once remarked of such a station in his city that “the DJ’s treat the station as if it were their own 50-kilowatt hi-fi set on which they play records strictly for their own personal entertainment.” This may sound like a pretty serious indictment with which to charge a considerable number of stations, yet it is highly probable that each of our readers knows at least one station in his community to which the indictment would apply.

It might be observed, parenthetically, that a tendency to program personal favorites can also be detected in fields of radio other than “good music.” There are not a few pop format stations where disk jockeys place personal preference ahead of an objective and informed awareness of community tastes in music.

In the area of “good music” programming, it is not quite fair to place all the blame on the disk jockeys for ignoring objectivity and programming their music to please themselves. Lacking any positive direction from the program department, it is probably better that they use their own taste rather than no taste at all. The common error made by so many “good music” operators is the assumption that by ruling out what they consider “bad” music they automatically achieve effective programming in the non-rock field.

It would be helpful to inquire just why it is that some good music stations enjoy high ratings and comfortable incomes, while others struggle on the brink of oblivion. The answer is to be found, I believe, in the fact that some few items of “good music” are greatly preferred by its followers. As in all kinds of music, there are always a comparatively few selections that stand out in their proved appeal to a large number of listeners, rising impressively above a surrounding environment of drab mediocrity.

S U C H   A   C O N C E P T   A P P E A L  obviously involves the classification of “popular” music, and perhaps a semanticist would find this term to be the obstacle that confuses so much of the prevailing thinking about “good music” programming. The idea of popular music implies mass appeal, and there are unfortunately too many programmers who feel that music with mass appeal cannot also have class.

The successful good music stations devote just as much attention to what is popular in their field as do the pop format stations to theirs. All disk jockeys are required to play a certain number of the strongest proven singles. The DJ’s are urged to concentrate on certain LP tracks that have been most effective in attracting listener comments. The music director makes a regular check of the retail stores and distributors to learn of any sales response to new singles and LP’s that are being programmed.

Regardless of his public disapproval of pop format competition, the successful “good music” operator acknowledges in private the practical value of much that his competitor does. Such techniques as short newscasts, tight cueing, bright pacing, frequent time -temp -weather, and minimum 1-1k are usually to be found in the most successful good music operations. The most important characteristic that the happier “good music stations” have in common with their pop format brethren is a rigorous objectivity in the selection of the music. Their DJ’s are encouraged to be good showmen and not permitted to be their own best audience.

Programming of music for radio has certain aspects of effective democracy. Successful music, like a successful candidate, depends on the people’s choice. END

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(Information and news source: Billboard; December 19, 1964)