This is Lee Abrams. This is Lee Abrams' blog. He has very interesting things to say about terrestrial radio versus satellite radio. Most of them I agree with. Here's the point. Lee used to be connected with a group out of Atlanta called Burkhart/Abrams. They were radio consultants that had their heyday in the late 70's through the early 80's. These were the guys that went to your favorite FM rocker and told us to cut the playlists by more than half. They told us to play the same songs every four hours and they are the same guys who basically ruined many FM stations. B/A turned most of those stations into the same, boring mush that now constitutes "classic rock" radio. My big question to him was .."how can you tell me what's popular in Kansas City or Denver or St. Louis from your office in Atlanta?" "We have the research" they said. I never saw much of it, but as a music director and a program director back in the day, I had this strange vibe that I was contributing to the "dumbing down" of the audience. I didn't ever know why. Only because he said so and the GM paid big money for Lee to say so. Now, Lee has the gall and gumption to stand on his mighty XM throne and throw darts at something HE CREATED! He talks on his blog about being "out there in San Diego" with people just leaving a concert or being the voice when emergencies arise. Lee, how can you do that when your "Deep Tracks" satellite channel has live jocks on it only 8 hours out of the day? The rest is voice tracked. 16 out of the 24 available hours are voice tracked. On a satellite channel. I am not sure how you will pull that off, Lee, but I a have faith in you that you will find a way. Or you won't and say you did. That's more like you. So, when you listen to your favorite classic rock station and they play "Let's Go" by The Cars one more time instead of "Moving In Stereo", thanks go to Lee and his cronies who spent years telling us how to do it his way, to now finally say his way was wrong. Hypocrite.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Lee Abrams
This is Lee Abrams. This is Lee Abrams' blog. He has very interesting things to say about terrestrial radio versus satellite radio. Most of them I agree with. Here's the point. Lee used to be connected with a group out of Atlanta called Burkhart/Abrams. They were radio consultants that had their heyday in the late 70's through the early 80's. These were the guys that went to your favorite FM rocker and told us to cut the playlists by more than half. They told us to play the same songs every four hours and they are the same guys who basically ruined many FM stations. B/A turned most of those stations into the same, boring mush that now constitutes "classic rock" radio. My big question to him was .."how can you tell me what's popular in Kansas City or Denver or St. Louis from your office in Atlanta?" "We have the research" they said. I never saw much of it, but as a music director and a program director back in the day, I had this strange vibe that I was contributing to the "dumbing down" of the audience. I didn't ever know why. Only because he said so and the GM paid big money for Lee to say so. Now, Lee has the gall and gumption to stand on his mighty XM throne and throw darts at something HE CREATED! He talks on his blog about being "out there in San Diego" with people just leaving a concert or being the voice when emergencies arise. Lee, how can you do that when your "Deep Tracks" satellite channel has live jocks on it only 8 hours out of the day? The rest is voice tracked. 16 out of the 24 available hours are voice tracked. On a satellite channel. I am not sure how you will pull that off, Lee, but I a have faith in you that you will find a way. Or you won't and say you did. That's more like you. So, when you listen to your favorite classic rock station and they play "Let's Go" by The Cars one more time instead of "Moving In Stereo", thanks go to Lee and his cronies who spent years telling us how to do it his way, to now finally say his way was wrong. Hypocrite.
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2 comments:
I do believe in research, and at the time, smaller playlists and less talk were likely the best idea for many stations. Those philosophies helped move many of them into enviable positions in their markets.
The trouble is, the landscape has changed. At a time when there are literally THOUSANDS of competing entertainment sources, radio is still doing it like they've always done it - short playlists, 12-in-a-row, less talk, little local content, blah blah. It's BS.
I was recently disappointed to learn that a Sedalia station may be going satellite when the new owner takes over. Where is this guy's head? He needs to understand that radio's last bastion of success, its trump card amid all the new competition, will be its exclusive ability to be LOCAL! It certainly doesn't take a rocket scientist to know this - shit, I know it... that should tell you something. Owners and GMs bemoan a lack of passion among listeners. Whose fault is that? And who will fix it?
Like you, I don't disagree with what Abrams is saying today - but as for me, I didn't completely disagree with what he was saying back "in the day." I just think the entertainment world is changing, and radio is now the tightwad old (and I might add, DEEP IN DEBT) curmgudgeon that resents it.
Hi. I worked at several B/A Superstar stations in the seventies. I also worked with two of the original "first station" people who were part of that greater "creation" that became so big. I broke ratings records that still stand today in 2007 in Phoenix and Columbus Ohio; and with Sonny Fox mornings and I in prime time we tied in scoring a 4.3 each with only sixty days on the air in Miami in 1980. Music director there and in Ohio. In Arizona, #1 rock and roll, #1 overall in state with a 13.8, and more listeners for my show than Johnny Carson had in the same time and geographic area from his show start till midnight when I went off-air in Arizona. Qualifies my comments.
Research in B/A WAS big. Talk was that three milion a year was research alone. I still did ten to twenty hours a week extra research validating libraries and the "trends". Slow replacing albums but the right music was there. Check the ratings.
No one WANTED to see the research when it was four thousand pages that began to blur at page two hundred. And that would be replaced by another in a couple of months time. The stations needed to know "what the research boiled down to". And that worked.
A lot of the managers wanted a winner idea, pure and simple that did not chunk up profits. I did run into them again and again. They'd hire one "name" and everyone else was pretty much dispensable. The "system" was researched to support a strong low cost operation with consistent operation. Despite incredible ARB's I never did break ten an hour. "Names" did, just like the high profile bad boys today. Some names earned it.
The ArB statistics I quoted do discuss that it was possible to "do the format" and yet do much more. I do hope that no one told you you could not do more. But you had to understand what the format was so that "the more" was the format and not a wild variant into the tinier slice of the pie. A lot of managers cut that potential for PD's and MD's to do more, too. The result you do quote in your own posting. It's not unfamiliar. A lot of things like that didn't have to be that way.
Look at the bright side. In 1977 I met Lee for the second time in Ohio. Before crashing out late we saw 2001 A Space Odyssey after working on setting up part of the library. I'd never seen it before. Working too much. Years and years of what I've talked about later I finally said no one was going to make my career stable and I studied in medicine stuff. ONLY THEN I saw Star Wars, which everyone else had started epiphanies with in 1977! I bet you saw it first run in the theater. The bright side.
Frank Baum
frank baum
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