"At the same time, we face a particularly difficult economy that makes it extremely challenging for some local stations to invest in developing the highest-quality programming and talent.

Translation: "Clear Channel has sucked the last dregs of creativity and individuality out of the dry husk of syndicated radio, and now we're looking for a new lifeform to host our unholy brood of chest bursting aliens. Any takers?"

A little insight on CC & "Premiere Choice"...

CC (and some other radio companies) currently use "voice tracking" to allow one jock (usually in a big market) to pre-record breaks for an entire shift in another (usually smaller) market.

"Voice tracking" allows one jock to do an entire 6-hour "show" in another market in about 30-45 minutes. They pay a big-city jock about $6,000 a year to completely voice track a shift in a smaller market. Thus, till now, one jock could feasibly voice-track up to 6-8 other shifts every day. (Think about the savings.. 8 shifts at $6 grand apiece, /vs/ 8 shifts at $40 grand apiece.) Sure looks good on paper for the CC stockholders.

New: "Premium Choice" by CC apparently allows the same jock to voice-track many, many more stations than just the 7 or 8 he/she tracks. Thus, even fewer voice-trackers saves even more $$.

Why this is bad, in my opinion: Voice-tracking gives the semblance of a truly live person in-studio around the clock. In cities where most/all of the stations become voice-tracked.. Just who, exactly, is going to report on the tornado bearing down on populated areas? Who is going to report on the overturned chlorine rail car?

The current "voice-tracking" system and the new CC system intentionally gives the public perception that it's "live and local" around the clock..That there is actually someone at their station in Beatnik, Texas at 11PM. So, therefore.. Local listeners get a text message about some strange smell outside.. tey tune into the "local" radio, and everything sounds hunky-dorry.. and they walk outside into a cloud of chlorine gas.

Yea, I'm just talking about the worst-case scenario. I'm not going to get into how CC's "Premiere Choice" might be just bad for radio overall, since I work in the industry. But as a public-safety issue, it worries me.

They've already had it for years.
It's called XM.

And, "tey" = "they".. gotta start spell-checking.

dahmers love zombie: They've already had it for years.
It's called XM.

Not exactly.. XM doesn't pretend to be local.

In fact, XM arguably arose because of the loss of locality by radio.

vicejay: dahmers love zombie: They've already had it for years.
It's called XM.

Not exactly.. XM doesn't pretend to be local.

In fact, XM arguably arose because of the loss of locality by radio.

Which is why terrestrial radio should have fought back by going more local. Local talk, a real request line that goes to a real DJ who plays those songs, and doesn't end up in a bullshiat voice mail box that never gets listened to, local news. Instead, they keep pulling shiat like that give it the nationwide feeling of satellite or internet radio, but with censorship and a shiatload of commercials.

CC will go down as one of the stupidest corporations ever.

vicejay: dahmers love zombie: They've already had it for years.
It's called XM.

Not exactly.. XM doesn't pretend to be local.

In fact, XM arguably arose because of the loss of locality by radio.

I should have been far clearer. For ME, Clear Channel's "Premium Choice" has been my staying the fark away from terrestrial radio and listening almost exclusively to XM.

I tell you, the idea of lifting the limits placed upon the number of stations any one company can own was just brilliant. I laugh when I think of all those hippies who claimed that it would suck the individuality from the airwaves.

/remembers being a kid and thinking of local DJs as gods.
//If the internet never went mainstream, this nation would have no meaningful free press or exposure to the arts beyond the tripe fed to us via CC, MTV, et al.

FTA: SAN ANTONIO -- April 15, 2009

That's some mighty timely submitting there, Lou.

Hired and fired by clear channel six times in my life...currently surfing on severance for the next three months...

I hate 'em for slowly killing radio, but hey, they gave us a reach around when they laid us off at least.

Also, Mark Mays, and company are directly responsible for the right wing talk icons you hear so much about today. Clear Channel also owns Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates many of your favorite nutbags on their biggest stations while giving the liberal radio stations CC owns smaller signals.

It's a messed up company right now with a lot of wrong priorities. I'm happy I'm out of radio now, butI think it was a good experience while I had it. They have definitely become the Wal-Mart of radio now and thankfully I don't plan on going back anytime soon.

/Seacrest Out

vicejay: Local listeners get a text message about some strange smell outside.. tey tune into the "local" radio, and everything sounds hunky-dorry.. and they walk outside into a cloud of chlorine gas.

"This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast system. The broadcasters in your area, in voluntary cooperation with Federal, State and Local authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the attention signal you just heard would be followed by official information, news or instructions. This concludes this test of the emergency broadcast system."

/From memory.
//I know it is different now.
///Lots of afternoon cartoons when they usually did these tests.

FM radio is still operating? i'm shocked

Clear Channel Radio is has announced the rollout of "Premium Choice," which it calls a "multi-point plan to raise the bar for radio programming across all dayparts and platforms."

CC has lowered the bar so far, you have to dig for it. If you really wanted to raise the bar, you'd announce the end of CC and let local stations be local again.

haemaker: /From memory.
//I know it is different now.

You forgot the "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep" :)

vicejay: Just who, exactly, is going to report on the tornado bearing down on populated areas? Who is going to report on the overturned chlorine rail car?

the Emergency Alert System will (or at least supposed to) kick in override the normal broadcast with the emergency info.

I experience it in action several times a year during tornado season here in Oklahoma. It also works now on all cable TV channels-- even if you are watching a recorded show on your DVR.

I turned off radio about 15 years ago, and only recently have had opportunity to give it some attention.

Is it my imagination, or are all stations playing the same mix of songs? I was flipping through and found four stations all playing "best mix of 80's, 90's and today". And the sets were nearly identical, song for song.

I'm assuming that massive subscription radio has gathered huge amts of demographic data and now everyone is trying to play the "perfect" selection of songs statistically proven to increase revenue. Or am I just being paranoid?

Disaproves

/link hot, but not as hot as Bailey.

Clear Channel = Radio suckage.

That's all.

I can't listen to local radio any more because there is none, there is only Clear Channel and Radio Rwanda.

Githerax: Is it my imagination, or are all stations playing the same mix of songs? I was flipping through and found four stations all playing "best mix of 80's, 90's and today". And the sets were nearly identical, song for song.

It is not your imagination.

Not only does this happen, but many stations play the same set of songs day after day, just in a slightly different order.

haemaker: vicejay: Local listeners get a text message about some strange smell outside.. tey tune into the "local" radio, and everything sounds hunky-dorry.. and they walk outside into a cloud of chlorine gas.

"This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast system. The broadcasters in your area, in voluntary cooperation with Federal, State and Local authorities, have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an emergency. If this had been an actual emergency, the attention signal you just heard would be followed by official information, news or instructions. This concludes this test of the emergency broadcast system."

/From memory.
//I know it is different now.
///Lots of afternoon cartoons when they usually did these tests.

Wow, it's been years since I heard that. Didn't even know it was different these days.

We had a recent major storm in my area that killed the power in something like seven counties. The only radio station that I could get was a local (as I understand it) non-Clear Channel station who stayed on air, running on generators and giving information to the public and taking phone calls.

They dedicated their air time for something like five or six days to this, they barely even had commercial breaks. Live, unscripted radio. The only guy who really had a handle on it was an old guy who used to do radio in Saint Louis in the 60s/70s; everybody else was a lot of paper shuffling, conferring with offmic engineers and ums and ers. The difference was pretty obvious.

I hate Clear Channel!!! That's why when I was only listening to KGB (a classic rock station here in San Diego) and found out it was owned by Clear Channel, I immediately switched my radio listening to KIOZ-FM (a rock station). Then I found out that it too was owned by CC. So then I was peeved about that and I switched to Star 94.1 (adult contemporary)...it's owned by those asshats too! I'm TIRED of this - so I'll just switch to country music to get rid of CC and listen to "New Country"95.7!

But then gal dammit!!!! Is there any station in San Diego not owned by those A$$holes!!!!!

vicejay: dahmers love zombie: They've already had it for years.
It's called XM.

Not exactly.. XM doesn't pretend to be local.

In fact, XM arguably arose because of the loss of locality by radio.

That I disagree with. XM arose because ALL radio stations are playing the same 12 songs by the same 10 artists (for whatever format) over and over. I remember when KLSX in LA used to play classic rock. After listening for 3 days me and 2 co-workers were able to guess either the song or artist of 7 of every 10 songs they played. When your listeners can predict 70% of your playlist, you got problems. From what I can tell, they're not going to change that at all.

The only thing good about ClearChannel's station here is that Greg Kihn is actually an entertaining DJ and their station is the only one I get without an antenna at home. I don't listen to much radio here anyway.

Aside from the Kihn show, I expect to hear the same damn songs over and over and over if I ever switch to them while driving so they're pretty much a last resort - and they actually stop playing music to cover the local college's sporting events. I've never heard of an FM radio station doing that. It's weird - and not in a good way.

As a subscriber to XM from day one, it has been starting to suck as much as anything else these days only commercial free (more or less)

Do people still actually listen to the radio?

I have an iPod. It doesn't play crap. The radio does.

I don't even have a radio antenna connected to my home theater receiver. I don't see the point.

It's funny because this is the reason why everybody who wants to hear something different or interesting will listen to the college station in my town. There are certainly some dj's on there who don't know what they are doing, but for the most part, it is filled with awesome music and real people.

We still have college radio, right?

Also worked for a station that was bought out by CC. It was much worse than people think. No one I know still works there, and they fired, or removed any of us who made money or did creative works.

May they die in a fire.

Plus, their playlist is the suck.

Wow - a fancy way to describe internally developed syndication.

Sounds like ass.

haemaker:

"This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast system.

I remember being teamed up with another jock for an afternoon drive experiment (didn't work, but it was fun) we did a bit where we said:

"This is a test of our emergency system."

Then we both yelled and screamed for about 10 seconds.

Then said "This was a test of our emergency system. Had this of been an actual emergency you would've heard a hell of a lot more screaming".

Got calls about that bit for years afterwards. (I know, it was lame, but some people thought it was hysterical.)

Except for the occasional college program there isn't a station in my city that plays rock from anytime in the past 25 years.

Hell, the only station that doesn't have programing designed by a corporation is a bluegrass station I get from 300 miles away in the mountains.

Kaymon: We still have college radio, right?

Yeah, except the local college station here has gone entirely scripted hip-hop and rap. The DJ's better not even think about going off the playlist. It's worse than CC.

puffy999: Githerax: Is it my imagination, or are all stations playing the same mix of songs? I was flipping through and found four stations all playing "best mix of 80's, 90's and today". And the sets were nearly identical, song for song.

It is not your imagination.

Not only does this happen, but many stations play the same set of songs day after day, just in a slightly different order.

You can set your watch by the time that 'Give me 3 steps' and 'Saturday Night Special' play on a CC station.

I listen to the KATT in OKC and as far as I know, Citadel owns them. Local jocks all day long. My peeve is that when you call in, nobody answers the phone which makes me wonder if the shows aren't all pre-recorded.

/of course knowing Rick and Brad and Zoobeck, I can see them actually recording their shows and phoning it in.

puffy999: Not only does this happen, but many stations play the same set of songs day after day, just in a slightly different order.

They also buy up the same frequencies and get them renamed so they can have Z100's and K93's all over the country. They all play the same playlists too. Hell, they even produce songs that are nothing more advertisements for those stations.

CC can eat a bag of dicks.

Riche: vicejay: Just who, exactly, is going to report on the tornado bearing down on populated areas? Who is going to report on the overturned chlorine rail car?

the Emergency Alert System will (or at least supposed to) kick in override the normal broadcast with the emergency info.

I experience it in action several times a year during tornado season here in Oklahoma. It also works now on all cable TV channels-- even if you are watching a recorded show on your DVR.

Which kind of proves my point.. The EAS works pretty consistenly for weather-related issues..because there is a human at the weather office manning the "fire watch."

But for other types of disasters, local EOC types are used to working with live people...Not sure that I trust them to be able to sound an EAS for a rail-car wreck, terrorist attack, etc. Notwithstanding your example, people are just not used to getting emergency info from the EAS..and CC has gone out of their way to make their stations sound like there is a live person at the mic around the clock, when the truth is much different. That perception could lead to problems.

And, the fact that you're hearing EAS, rather than a local forecaster, during a tornado warning in an area known for tornadoes is troubling in & of itself.

I just homogenized and took all that was good out of American radio so I'm really getting a kick out of these comments.

To The Escape Zeppelin!: Except for the occasional college program there isn't a station in my city that plays rock from anytime in the past 25 years.

Hell, the only station that doesn't have programing designed by a corporation is a bluegrass station I get from 300 miles away in the mountains.

Our local stations are a) older rock (at least one is mostly newer than 1950s bubblegum crap), b) country, and c) new-age pop sh*t. The only "newer" rock station that can be picked up in the area requires a better antenna, as it's not a local signal.

There's even a local high-school radio station, but it plays mostly dance/pop/hip hop garbage.

WTF is a radio?

vicejay:
Yea, I'm just talking about the worst-case scenario. I'm not going to get into how CC's "Premiere Choice" might be just bad for radio overall, since I work in the industry. But as a public-safety issue, it worries me.

Small market AM stations usually have 2 local shows, the morning show and afternoon drive. The local newscasts usually end at 6 p.m. From 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. it's all syndication and "network news at the top of the hour". You won't hear any "Local" voices during those hours. Tune in when the freeway shuts down or the hills are on fire and you're more likely to hear Jim Bohannon or whoever, than a local update on conditions.

@ githerax. no, this definitely is NOT your imagination. i once had the very misconstrued notion that the radio stations sold advertising time to raise money to pay for the rights to play a variety of music... i had this notion until i dated a girl that worked at radio (and this was even a non clear-channel owned one). she informed me that the way it actually worked was quite the opposite.

the radio stations are paid big bucks to put on the music labels give them to use. so you're almost right in it feeling like it's the same songs; only it's not from some demographic study, it's whatever hot new songs the label's PR group is pushing.

so, essentially, the stations get about 3 cds and that fills up 85% of their play time, with each dj getting only very minimal slots to put in what they wanted. at least, that's how it worked in her small-town station.

what i find even more amusing is that you constantly hear radios saying "oh, this song is blowing up the charts with 1500 plays in the last month!" when it's their own distro disks and their own scheduling demands that are setting those numbers. it's really astounding that they can make their advertising so self-feeding.

Unimpressed.

/Don't praise the machine

AuCinaoaMie: You can set your watch by the time that 'Give me 3 steps' and 'Saturday Night Special' play on a CC station.

Heck, the station that's usually playing at work has a daily Zeppelin song and a daily AC/DC song... but at least they usually change those from day to day.

However, "Southern Man" and "Wonderful Tonight" have been playing a lot lately, and I haven't noticed any other CSNY/Clapton.

"Classic Rock 103.5 - Classic rock that REALLY rocks!"

Really? Does it?

ijason: what i find even more amusing is that you constantly hear radios saying "oh, this song is blowing up the charts with 1500 plays in the last month!" when it's their own distro disks and their own scheduling demands that are setting those numbers. it's really astounding that they can make their advertising so self-feeding.

It's how things like "Enzyte" and "Extenz" "Focus Factor" work... they give out product (or sell it for nothing), then later make advertisements that say "OVER ONE MILLION SOLD" or "MILLIONS OF PEOPLE HAVE LOVED OUR PRODUCT!"

Ah, capitalism... you've reached the peak, and now comes the ever-increasing decline.

/unavailable for comment too busy doing the voice tracks

I had a Douglas Fir I grew from a seed, and it is now over 20 years old... leaving it in a bucket, we stunted it's growth... but it's a good little tree.

Bah, I can't keep a thread straight. ;(

Radio stations should remain almost entirely local with the exception of the weekend shows and maybe 1 or two shows a week.

It inhibits job growth and crumples the uniqueness that each community has.

Armed And Disgruntled: haemaker:

"This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast system.

I remember being teamed up with another jock for an afternoon drive experiment (didn't work, but it was fun) we did a bit where we said:

"This is a test of our emergency system."

Then we both yelled and screamed for about 10 seconds.

Then said "This was a test of our emergency system. Had this of been an actual emergency you would've heard a hell of a lot more screaming".

Got calls about that bit for years afterwards. (I know, it was lame, but some people thought it was hysterical.)

Actually, I like it. I would have found it hilarious.