Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio?

Douglas forwarded a link to this story at CNN:

Columbus, Ohio (CNN) -- In this capital city and college town, there is a shrine to a disc jockey.

His name was Andy Davis, better known as "Andyman," and he manned the evening drive-time shift at WWCD-FM. He was a bear of a man, a hugger, a backslapper, a preacher's son who called everybody "brother." He could carry you along with his enthusiasm.

DJ Brian Phillips recalls Davis' annual 48-hour fundraising extravaganzas, known as "Andyman-a-Thons," exhorting callers to outbid one another. "Come on, brother, 10 dollars more!" Andyman would say.

"Our children's charities meant everything to him," Phillips says. "By the end of each Andyman-a-Thon, he was drained and everyone was in tears. He had given his all, and yet you'd have to drag him out of that studio."

He gave everybody a shot. Lesley James was a guest DJ -- an enthusiastic listener who once got to do an hour of her favorite songs on-air. When she was done, she nervously handed Davis her resume.

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Why There Are Radio Formats

For years, audiences have expectd radio stations to have a distinct and consistent musical personality. When they turn on Station X knowing that it plays classic rock, hoping to hear their favourite AC/DC song, the last thing they want to hear is a track by Ke$ha.  If you promise to play a certain format of music, well, then, you'd better always deliver.

Or at least that's been the conventional widom.  Take a look at this article by Sean Ross in Billboard:

The recent ROR [Ross on Radio] column on the possibility of “A World Beyond Formats”prompted an email from AC WIKY Evansville, Ind., PD Mark Elliott. He wrote, “I believe the format trap was built and encouraged by the record industry.” He then added, “Weren’t stations reporting, or not reporting, because their playlist met some sort of criteria set by the record folks? At one time there were 12 charts on the R&R back page . . . Listeners don’t know ‘new country’ from ‘fresh country,’ but we in the radio biz make a great big deal about it . . . the challenge is to serve them, not some random format definition.”

There’s some truth there, especially in Elliott’s last statement. There’s also a lot of complexity in the creation and defining of format charts. Having been a part of the chart process for many years, I’ve often found myself having contentious discussions with both labels and radio stations. Those arguments were often punctuated by the other person calming down just long enough to say, “I don’t envy you having to make these decisions,” before heating up again.

New charts, like new formats, are driven by the emergence of music that doesn’t fully fit in another format. Even rhythmic top 40, the format at the center of the most chart controversy through the years, began with dance music that was acknowledged—but never fully embraced—by R&B radio, then exploded when it had its own stations. By the time rhythmic stations went more R&B, or even recently more pop, there were separate label departments and careers built around it, and staffers who didn’t want stations to move, even though it has led to a less rigid set of musical criteria for reporters.

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What You Could Expect When You Turned on a Radio in 1939

Rupinder forwarded this program schedule of WJSV, a Washington DC, radio station.  If you had turned on the radio on September 21, 1939, this is what you could expect to hear:

12:30 Road of Life (soap)
12:45 This Day Is Ours (soap)
1:00 Sunshine Report (news)
1:15 The Life & Love of Dr. Susan (soap)
1:30 Your Family and Mine (soap)
1:45 News
2:00 President Roosevelt's Address to Congress (speech)
2:40 Premier Edouard Daladier
3:00 Address Commentary (news)
3:15 The Career of Alice Blair (soap)
3:30 News (news)
3:42 Rhythm & Romance
3:45 Scattergood Baines
4:00 Baseball: Cleveland Indians at Washington Senators (sports)
5:15 The World Dances (music)
5:30 News (news)
5:45 Sports News (news)
6:00 Amos and Andy (comedy)

Wanna actually hear this?  Go to Archive.org and download away!

Amazon Music Service: Soon Available in New Fords

The battle for the dashboard keeps ramping up.  We're quickly going from a basic AM/FM/CD player to a stack of technology that can do wonderous things.  In the process, not only are more vehicles are being sold but other areas of industry and society are changing.

Billboard sums things up in their coverage of the Connected Car Keynote which took place this week at the Music Biz conference run by the National Association of Recording Merchandiers (NARM):

Among the challenges facing companies trying to build businesses in the connected car ecosystem:

• Product development cycles take anywhere from 3 to 7 years from design stage to dealer lots. This compares to cell phones, which are replaced every year or two.
• Replacement cycles are even longer, with consumers hanging on to their vehicles for 7 to 11 years before buying a new car, further delaying broad adoption of any new technology.
• Safety concerns limit how much interaction drivers should have with new technologies being built within car dashboards. The National Traffic Highway Safety Administration recently weighed in on the topic, issuing recommended guidelines that could easily become regulations if car manufacturers and app developers go too far.
• Fragmented platforms, resulting from each auto manufacturer creating their own proprietary technologies, can crank up development costs.
• Consumer reluctance to try new technologies will also slow down adoption. 

Meanwhile, Amazon is going ahead with a partnership with Ford to introduce their Cloud Player through iOS devices.  The app on the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad will allow users to play music through their Ford Sync AppLink-equipped vehicles.  Android users will get their shot in February.  More at Mashable.

Why am I so hopped up on the connected car?  Because I'm wondering where radio--a medium in which I've been involved for more than three decades--needs to adapt to these new technological realities. This is just my way of keeping these issues top-of-mind.

New Survey Says That Consumers Want More In-Car Connectivity

Chances are that if you're reading this, you're among the 62% of the population who owns some kind of smart phone.  Chances are if you have a car, you'd like to connect your phone to it and probably already have.  And chances are that if you were born between 1977 and 1995, you can't do without it.

Telematics News reports on a JD Power survey about emerging automotive technologies:

Emerging automotive technologies–especially those that improve communications capabilities or save fuel–interest vehicle owners. According to the recently released J.D. Power U.S. Automotive Emerging Technologies Study among vehicle owners who say they “definitely would” or “probably would” purchase specific technologies on their next vehicle, the highest percentage select device application link, fuel economy indicator, and active shutter grille vents.

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