for 8 December 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.
|
|
Tuning Out You forgot about college radio, which is usually a viable alternative to commercial radio, where it exists. If it sucks, at least you know they're not getting paid. Theoretically, one could even volunteer at the station. Although that sounds like a frightful lot of effort, what with MP3s and all. Turn off your radio and throw it away. Andrew <enewetok@gci.net> Ah, I well recall the sounds and smells of my college radio days: persistent 3 a.m. requests for King Missile's "Jesus Was Way Cool"; enticing, equipment-damaging smoke curling out of the engineer's room next door; moments of chaos followed by pure beauty, followed by dead air. But since our focus was on commercial radio's decline, these images seemed a bit out of place. Thanks for taking me back, though. (Now I feel really old.) Best, Anne  I live in Calgary, Canada, where we are fortunate enough to be home to the best radio station I have ever listened to (that isn't saying much, of course) — CJSW (www.cjsw.com). We're also home to the very influential Power 107 (www.power107.com), which has clones all over the country, I am told; some rock station called CJ 92; and a couple country and soft rock stations. I'm writing to tell you that a breath of radio fresh air does exist somewhere in North America (and on the Web in RealAudio — why not listen for 20 minutes?). Where else could one hear a DJ stop a track because the general opinion of the studio (oftentimes, more than two or three) sucks? And that going back to the commercial-packed drone of "30 minutes of nonstop music" (don't quote me on the 30) has become increasingly harder and horrifying for me in the last few months. It's great to be able to listen to more democratic radio. In the five minutes or so it takes to restart your computer, the style and genre of fuzzy, tinny, streamed music will probably have changed completely. Michael Daines <mdaines@home.com> Hi Michael, Oh, you Canadians and your innovations! First, good radio — what next, free penicillin for everyone? We'll try CJSW, although if we wanted to hear songs continually stopped in the middle due to a consensus of suckage, we could just rewatch all those classic Gong Show episodes we scored off eBay. Anne Holy Roll Some of the things you said about faith in the Suck article ring true. Since I have not seen Dogma, I cannot comment on it. Christianity is one tough nut to crack. The Roman Empire tried to destroy it. The Roman Empire is gone. So did the former Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is no more. Therefore I'm not worried about Dogma, liberals, TV, radio, Congress, or the New World Order eliminating Christianity. God is perfectly capable of defending himself or herself (New Testament words for God are all gender neutral), so I'm not worried. Steve Lutes <utahraptor@hypercon.com> You're right about that tough nut thing, buddy boy. After all, my born-again Christian friends tell me that the Roman Catholic Church — they refer to it as the Whore in the Book of Revelation — has been trying unsuccessfully to crush Christianity ever since Peter set himself up as archbishop of Rome and started ringing up sales of holy relics. Mr. M (who cracked some tough nuts over Thanksgiving) Tuning Out Anne, I just printed out a copy of your Suck article from Monday. I am going to a tattoo parlor in Connecticut to have the proprietor tattoo it across my back. Your loyal Suck reader, Max <JacobMrley@ aol.com> But what are you going to do when people tickle the hyperlinks? Your loyal Suck writer, Anne I read your piece today and enjoyed it. I don't know if you're aware of the following situation, but it might interest you. I live about an hour north of Denver, where Jacor is king of radio. Last year, the big issue in Denver was whether or not the public should finance the construction of a new football stadium to replace Mile High. Mind you, this is the same city that won't finance a public rail system, that is rarely willing to fund repairs and additions to its increasingly inadequate infrastructure, and that remains the only city in the world to have won a bid for the Olympics and then refused the games to avoid the cost to taxpayers. Naturally, the response to the new stadium initiative was negative: "That billionaire bastard Pat Bowlen can build the damn thing himself!" "What's wrong with Mile High, anyway?" Then the Jacor company began a nonstop, hopelessly one-sided blitz of radio programming. For months, DJs on Jacor's multiple Denver stations threatened listeners with the prospect of losing the Broncos to another city. They talked over and berated any callers who had the gumption to call and take an opposing stance, and through sheer repetition and selective reasoning they transformed the entire issue into a straw man. Eventually, if you were against the new stadium, you were against the Broncos (heresy!). Everyone was to do their part to keep the beloved Broncos in town, cost be damned. As a coup de grâce, Bowlen carted out local deity John Elway to actually state the Jacor subtext in no uncertain terms, and the muted opponents of the stadium proposal were wiped out. Now hundreds of millions of dollars of public funds are going into a new stadium that will be owned not by the public, but by Pat Bowlen, the billionaire. If the tax-paying public wants to see their new stadium, they'll have to buy a luxury box or get in line for season tickets. Most fans will simply rely on Jacor game broadcasts, of course. I just wanted to follow up on some of the points you raised. Nowhere has the devastating effect of the Telecommunications Act been felt more than in radio. But the implications for the public go a lot deeper than homogenized playlists. Regards, Richard Sweetman <rsweetman@news400.com> Wow. Our condolences to Denverites and their wallets. I guess if there's anything worse than a scheming billionaire, it's a scheming billionaire with puppet DJs all over the radio dial. On the bright side, though, will you at least be able to use the abandoned Mile High stadium for some kick-ass picnics? Best, Anne My name is Marv Cross, and I host the morning show on KCTY-FM in Omaha, Nebraska. You will be heartened to hear that we are a commercial station that has dedicated our entire collective mojo to playing music that was, until now, unheard not only on the radio in town, but everywhere. We are a single station in a town filled by AMFM and the Journal Broadcast Group. (Although our owner is Norm Waitt, cofounder of Gateway computers, he is very cool for a billionaire.) We were hired to put a radio station on the air that we thought people would like. And, believe this or not, we were instructed to bring our CDs from home and play them during our shifts. Now our music flows the way MTV used to show videos before it became crap. Even if you don't like the song that's on right now you'll probably stick around because you literally don't know what's going to come up next. I just wanted to write you and say I loved your article. I agree completely, and it was this fact that made me think I would probably only do talk radio for the rest of my life because I was so burned on the format-driven pooh that I had previously been paid to spoon-feed to listeners. Rock On! Marv Cross <marvy1@home.com> Thanks for writing — we're glad you no longer have to spoon-feed your audience pooh! (We'll leave that to the producers of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.) If your collective mojo feels like making another dedication, could you send Brother Joe May's "Sell Out to the Master Right Now" to Anne out there in Internet radioland? Rock on with your bad self. Anne |
|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||||||||
   |
||||||||||||||||||||
 |  |
|||||||||||||||||||
 |   | |||||||||||||||||||
![[Tim Cavanaugh]](/fish/staff/images/tim.gif)
![[Copy Edit]](/fish/staff/images/copyeditors.gif){kind=small}
![[Phillip Bailey]](/fish/staff/images/phil.gif){kind=small}
![[yes, it's
a plunger. i'll l
eave the rest up to your imagination ... ]](/fish/staff/images/erin.gif){kind=small}
![[Brian
Forsyth, " we're just spanning time "]](/fish/staff/images/brian.gif)
![[the fixin'
pixie... ]](/fish/staff/images/emily.gif)
![[Ian
Connelly]](/fish/staff/images/ian.gif){kind=small}