Tuesday, July 2, 2013

ON MY WAY!

ON MY WAY!  Check out this new "Song Of The Day" podcast!

Friday, March 15, 2013

HOW AM RADIO HAS CHANGED!


VOICE: WILD Then…..
ANNOUNCER: Lock!  Lock!  Lock It In!  AM 10-9-0!  WILD, Boston! 
VOICE: …and WILD Now!
ANNOUNCER: This is the news from China Radio International!  The Headlines: Jaing Zemin gets kicked out of a biscuit factory in Pyongyang.  President Raul Castro dies of AIDS!  Impeachment proceedings begin against President Barack Obama.  And Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus booed out of Shanghai Soccer Stadium.  Now the details…

     VOICE: WRKO then….
     ANNOUNCER: Welcome back to the Big 68’s Million Dollar Weekend!
     VOICE: …and WRKO now!
     ANNOUNCER: It’s the Howie Carr Show!  This afternoon, the voice of the newscaster won’t be played by anyone…

     My, my!  How AM has changed in over 50 years.  Used to be that AM radio stations were full service entities serving the needs of their communities.  They’d play music during the day, have talk shows at night, do hourly and half hourly news and sports coverage, keep you informed of the weather and have religious programs on Sunday mornings.
     These days, the AM radio band is dying.  Oh, they tried to give it new life with AM Stereo and AM IBOC, but they haven’t worked out.  Most of the music has gone over to the FM band or is now available free on the internet.
     Most of the radio stations have gone off the air for good, or they’ve had to change their formats to serve niche communities.  Most of them have gone Latino or Brazilian, others have programmed satellite sports and news with only morning drive live and local, and some have just given up.

     Around here, we had 2 AM Top 40 stations-WRKO and WMEX, which tried to outdo each other during the 60s and 70s.  Yeah, they’d play tight playlists and single cuts, but along came WBCN and WKOX on the FM band with progressive rock and deep cuts you wouldn’t hear on AM.  They ended up killing that.
     Ironically, WBCN was forced to leave the air in August 2009 and WKOX(also known as WBVF, F-105) is now the home of Classic Hits WROR, which has a playlist covering the 60s, 70s and 80s.  104.1 is now occupied by WBMX-FM, which took over the old WROR-FM frequency of 98.5 in 1991.
     Sound familiar?  You might be right.