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I've pretty much come to the conclusion that nobody cares. At least, nobody in charge cares. Okay, that's a gross generalization, but when I hear some of the stuff I've been hearing lately, it makes me feel like nobody cares. That isn't new, of course. For the last few years, I've heard and seen things going on in radio, some of which I've chronicled here, that made me feel that nobody was paying attention. This week, though, that feeling is just intensifying with each new head-scratchingly puzzling thing I hear. (And this is going to devolve into a rant about HD Radio, among other things, so if you're sick of that, you can skip ahead to the Talk Topics plug) Some of it is just sloppiness. The jock on a country station who stepped all over about 20 seconds of the vocals of some Taylor Swift song, well, either the guy had no idea how long he had, or something happened with the voice tracking... but since the song had a short intro, even a voice track should have hit the post. And, yes, I heard my share of dead air, weak and underdeveloped talk topics, unprepared personalities, and stop sets filled with PSAs and those painful "Radio Heard Here" things (I know, business is bad, but... wow, that sounds dire) that made me wonder if the PD or GM or Regional VP or anyone with a title was tuning in. But the worst of it came from my experience playing with one of those Best Buy portable HD Radios. Yeah, yeah, I know. But it's the cheapest and easiest way to get HD in my car, and since I can't get L.A. FMs at my house, that's the only way I can hear what they're doing on those HD subchannel things. And, despite the limited appeal of an FM-only radio in an age when even your keychain can play MP3s, store photos, and cook dinner, it's not a bad little device. In fact, I kinda like it. So when the local Best Buy finally started to sell them, I fought through the mobs of excited HD Radio purchasers and.... Okay, there were no mobs. In fact, that's "Nobody Cares," Chapter 1: If you don't go searching for them, you will never find an HD Radio in the store. These were hanging on a forlorn pegboard all the way in the back of the store, next to the cassette and CD portables, which, sadly, is appropriate company. There were no signs. There were no other models. There was no attempt to educate consumers about the technology. They were just hanging there in the Ghosts of Technology Past department, without even a price sticker on the peg. I don't think the staff even knew they were there. All that stuff from the NAB and the Grand Exalted HD Radio Alliance about major marketing to get people to adopt, embrace, LOVE HD Radio? That's happening in another universe. I think they bought ads on the sides of unicorns. The first portable is out there, in the wild, and there's no marketing for it at all. Nobody cares. I hooked the thing up to my car radio, and I tried it out. That leads me to "Nobody Cares," Chapter 2: You can't hold an HD signal very long, and that leads to two critical problems. One, you know how the primary HD channel is supposed to cut back to analog when you lose the HD, and cut back to HD when it's available? On several stations in L.A. and San Diego, the analog and digital are not in sync. You're listening to a show and it... stutters. The switch from analog (underwater, bassy) to digital (bright, trebly) is hard enough on the ears; if the two streams are a couple of seconds off, it's impossible. You would think that the people at these stations would notice the problem, but there it was. Nobody cares. A bigger "Nobody Cares" problem, and one especially acute for talk radio, involves those "multicast" channels. Here's what the HD Radio marketing doesn't tell you: Those channels cut out all the time. You can't listen for very long. And it happens under all conditions. Try this: Clear day, driving along the freeway with line-of-sight to the Los Angeles antenna farm. We had one of the HD-2 channels on, and it would drop out not only while driving under bridges, but every few minutes without any apparent reason. It turns out that HD-2 and HD-3 channels disappear behind any obstruction -- hills, buildings, trees, other cars, Andrew Bynum -- and become unlistenable. They also disappear when there's no obstruction. And the next time I get a press release trumpeting how an AM station is now available on an FM HD-2 channel, I'll know the truth -- you're not adding a thing. The "multicast" channels are unlistenable. Nobody cares. While we're at it, a couple more multicast complaints -- I heard at least one talk station on an HD3 channel with volume levels that fluctuated so widely that it was impossible to listen for very long (the very lowest, hardest to hear levels were during the actual talk programming; the commercials were louder). Nobody at the station seems to notice. And another HD-2 music channel played the same song every time I checked in, a couple of hours apart; I was unaware of the existence of the All-Ting TIngs channel, and even a fan of "That's Not My Name" could tell you that you probably should throw in another song or two. Just sayin'. Someone should be spending some time making sure that the rotations work, but, after all, nobody's making any money on those channels, because nobody's listening, which is because nobody's being given a compelling reason to buy into the medium, which doesn't always work anyway. This could be fixed, but, well, nobody cares. Oh, and here's another "Nobody Cares": Proponents always promote the ability of stations to show title and artist information on the receiver's screen, a selling point against satellite radio. But when there's a syndicated show on, I've seen the screen display something like "NWN_2009_07_26_SEG1" for 20 minutes. I've seen one station stuck on "NEW_LEGAL_ID_OCT2008" with the name of the voice guy. Isn't someone at the station supposed to be checking that? I guess nobody is. Nobody cares. Look, maybe HD Radio isn't fixable, maybe radio has its problems, maybe you're not being paid what you want or you're in fear for your job, but that shouldn't mean the people who run and work in radio shouldn't take some pride in what they're producing. I think a lot of you do take pride, and there's still a lot of excellent information and entertainment being produced and distributed by radio people every moment of every day. But when I hear stations out of sync, dropping signal, changing volume levels, playing the same song over and over, screwing up the song display... clearly, somebody in charge is not listening to their own station. Someone should, because someone else cares: the listeners. Listeners care. I listen, and I care. And if you don't give me what I want, you're telling me to find another station, or another medium. Please... care. ===================== For those of you who DO care about your shows, there's a lot of material for your perusal at All Access News-Talk-Sports' Talk Topics show prep column. This week so far, you'll find items about dissolving bikinis, special toys for dogs (yes, THOSE kinds of dogs), weaponized toilet cleaners, how to sell your stuff, a very, very long golf course, how perfume cleared out an office building, why some folks would like you to paint your roof white, a guy's inappropriate (and repeated) relationship with a horse, how shopaholism killed a woman, why banks aren't rushing to help people avoid foreclosure, the Great Beer Summit, a bad attemot at viral marketing, what not to wear to work, a sportswriter's unusual side business, the latest UCLA slang dictionary, why one guy might end up in prison for going to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert, and much more, plus the rest of All Access with news, columns, ratings, job listings, the Industry Directory, and all the resources you need, all free. Next week's column, by the way, will be in HD! That doesn't stand for high definition, by the way. It means Highly Dubious. Or Hateful and Derisive. Whichever fits.
Perry Michael Simon If you would like to be removed, please click here and you will be removed immediately! All Access Music Group - 28955 Pacific Coast Hwy - Ste 210-5 - Malibu, CA 90265  Delivered by PromoSuite Interactive's ListenerEmail |