A mini history of FM ROCK from 2002….and not much has changed
(while the virus has significantly impacted our lives and most of us are hunkering down, we’re still allowed to think, so here’s something to help us escape the state of things and, well,…. think)
EXCERPTS FROM LEE ABRAMS’ KEYNOTE AT THE 17TH ANNUAL SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY BUSINESS BANQUET
“I started back about 1965… I was in grade school managing rock bands in the Chicago area (laughter). And all these bands played the same songs every Saturday night. We thought maybe if these bands played some other songs we could do better business on the bar mitzvah / VFW / sock hop circuit (laughter). So we decided to do some research. Coming out of the VFW Hall one Saturday night, we passed out questionnaires asking people what they would like the band to play next Saturday night. And this amazing thing happened. For the first time in contemporary music history, this big Top 40 audience was starting to fragment. We noticed clearly there was a group of people, mainly guys between 16 and 20, verbally and clearly saying “Don’t play any of that Top 40 crap. We want to hear the Stones and the Animals and the Yardbirds.” They were vocal about not hearing these lightweight Bobby Vinton songs. And that never really happened before. In 1963, when there was a big Top 40 hit, everybody liked it. Mom liked it, dad tolerated it, sis and junior all liked it. But now something was happening. These bands started playing Birds and Animals and Beatles and became really popular. There was something happening around then. In 1966, if you were really in the know, you heard about this guy called Eric Clapton and this band called Cream… In 1967, if you really knew what was going on you heard of Jimi Hendrix. And then in 1969 all hell broke loose and we had a musical revolution: the birth of giant amplification of musical instruments, the birth of synthesizers, the birth of stereo, and the birth of the component system. It was a time of change, of new bands emerging every day, like Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Cream… It was an amazing time in music. And it really evolved out of a post-Liverpool movement.
“But what was missing in 1969 was radio for this new movement. You had a whole generation of vulnerable Top 40 listeners who loved it when Hendrix came on, but then ‘Oh my God, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, then the Carpenters and Neil Diamond, then the Stones!’ 1 out of every 4 songs was ok, and that was good enough back then. So we developed a format that was aimed at the vulnerable Top 40 listener. It was based on the idea of changing the familiarity factor of the music to artist, instead of song. The basic rule of Top 40 radio has always been, ‘you know every song.’ We decided to change it to where you know every artist. Therefore you could play hundreds of songs by these artists, as long as you knew who the artist was. So you’d hear the Moody Blues but not Tuesday Afternoon… again. You could have this tremendous depth without sacrificing familiarity. We launched this AOR format and it was very successful because it reached this huge number of people. Throughout the 70’s we could waltz in to any market in America and clean up because we were in between the Donnie Osmond station and the underground station, many of them cool but many: ‘Hi my name is Scorpio and we’re gonna play a little Hendrix backwards for you’ (laughter). And we were just cranking out Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.
“Then it got weird. 1979 was the first feeling that something was happening which was not good. The census leaked out indicating that there would be no teenagers left on earth by 1984 (laughter). This was the beginning of radio’s intense paranoia about getting 24-34 year olds or 25-44 year olds. We had a guy at the #1 station in San Diego who saw the research and took his successful rock format and plugged in a 25-34 favorite every 4th song… so you’d hear Frampton and Hendrix and Jethro Tull and then… Barry Gibb and Barbra Streisand! Expecting to reach that older crowd. Three bomb threats later he realized that didn’t work (laughter).
“But several things also happened. It was the beginning of the end for a great, amazingly imaginative and creative era of radio that existed in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Research started taking over. At first it went from a valuable tool, to morphine. “I’ve really got to use the washroom… but better test it first (laughter).” Also consolidation. And I believe there’s an FCC law invented in 1980 that says you can only do creative radio 6-10 a.m., then at 10:01 you gotta go into autopilot. If you listen to the great stations of the 50’s and 60’s, it was always on. In fact mornings is when it was mellow.
“And now in 2002, I think radio is wonderful. As a medium it’s phenomenal, it’s so great. But right now, generally speaking, there are some great stations, but the big picture, radio kinda sucks (applause). Rolling Stone magazine used to do ‘Vote Now to Pick America’s Great Stations.’ Now they’ve changed that to ‘Vote Now for the 10 Stations in America that Suck the Least’ (laughter). It’s in a creative nightmare scenario right now and it’s going to get worse unless we change it.
“So what I want to talk about tonight is how XM’s going to change it. And it’s not ‘Hey, we’re great, look what we’re doing,’ but we have to change it to survive. We’ve got to create amazing, new, fresh compelling radio, otherwise nobody’s going to subscribe to our service and we’ll be out of business. And it’s a mandate from the stockholders and the chairman on down to fix it and to change it. So what I’m going to do is share a lot of our thinking with you but the idea is, take anything you want from this. This is open. I’ll give you more and send you memos because it’s going to take more than XM to really bring radio back to its fullest potential.
“And there IS so much potential… it’s so great. At our staff meetings I play tapes of WQAM Miami 1966, WABC New York ’64, ‘CFL Chicago ’68… These were amazing stations. They didn’t have listeners, they had fans. When I play them for our air talent and they say ‘Wow, can we do that?’ Of course… we just do it in 2002 terms.
“Ok. Radio sucks, we’re agreed on that (laughter). What are some of the key things we need to do. One person who thinks like a fan who has a little basic radio knowledge and is basically an intelligent person will kill four of those suit and tie rocket scientists programming experts anyday. I’d take anybody in this room, do a little Radio 101, and say ‘Go for it,’ put you up against one of these guys who says, ‘Boy I can pick up on Arbitron in 32 seconds flat, 25-34 women, 16.9 share… etc.’ I’d rather have somebody that says ‘Hey man, everybody’s into this sound, that song’s bogus…’ People who think like fans and look at listeners like fans. At XM, our marketing department looks at listeners as customers. Our sales department looks at listeners as numbers. In programming, we look at our listeners as fans, and we’ve got to convert our listeners to fans. It used to happen naturally; now it’s tough. I’ve got a 17 year old daughter and she thinks radio is just goofy. She’s a big MTV fan. ‘Dad, how can anybody be a fan of radio… it’s so geeky.’ So I said, (sarcastically) ‘Thank you’ (laughter). We can do it, but it’s not easy.
“Swagger. It’s an attitude that radio has lost. A self confidence, a cockiness, a can-do attitude that’s so important…
“24 hour morning show. Life does not end at 9:59 a.m. Radio needs to be ‘on’ all the time. Not necessarily funny bits and morning zoos but a sense of something beyond just autopilot because it’s not morning.
“Creative batting average. Inspire your staff and yourself to come up with 100 ideas and if 30 of them work, you’re batting .300. Nobody will remember the 70 that didn’t…
“Point of view is very important. Talk radio has point of view… We have a country station on XM called America. It’s the first Republican radio station ever created. It’s a station where the listeners think Fort Worth is the center of the universe (laughter), it’s Hank Hill’s favorite station, the typical listener is pysched they’re tearing down the park and putting up a Wal-Mart – God Bless America (laughter). Our morning guy’s name is Ray, we call him N-R-RAY (laughter) and these people really like it. There are people, including myself, who think anybody who listens to the station is a moron, but for everyone who thinks that, there’s another person who says ‘Thank God for America. Finally a radio station talking the truth.’ What it does is, it has a point of view. Half of the stations on XM are geared to appall people. Those listeners of America will turn on one of our other channels called Liquid Metal and think ‘My God, what is happening to our country? It’s just sniffing glue (laughter)…’
“Another thing is telling the truth. Nobody lies more than radio. [EFX] ‘The deepest library…’ Bullshit (laughter). Or ‘On the Cutting Edge of Rock ‘n Roll’ and then they go to ZZ Top – a 30-year old song.
“Authenticity. We’re in a generic age. At XM, we insist on authenticity, even if the person has no experience. We have a teen talk channel, and we hire all teenagers off the street to run it; (continued) (continued from page 1) otherwise it wouldn’t be authentic and teens wouldn’t buy it. Our traditional country channel is called Hank’s Place – one generation older than the America format. And if you sniff the speakers, you’ll smell stale beer and chewing tobacco (laughter). The guy who runs it is an ex-rodeo guy who produced Jerry Lee Lewis records, his belt buckle’s this big, and when I rode on a plane with him we almost missed the plane getting his boots through security (laughter). We have a reggae channel and it’s not a bunch of white reggae kids in L.A. who just bought their first Marley record; these guys are all from Jamaica… It’s like that for every format…
“Reclaiming artists. Radio used to own artists. Nowadays MTV is killing us in owning artists; they own all the new artists… When you find out about songs by checking out Amazon.com or hanging out at Barnes & Noble, that’s sick.
“Eccentricity. Doctors, lawyers, airline pilots, should not be eccentric. Radio people, go for it! (Applause.) This is the entertainment business. It is, to a salesperson, to a bottom line, I respect it totally, you have to, and being ad driven is very important, but the people on the programming or creative side are not ad driven. Their goal should be to create fans out of listeners. And that’s what we encourage at XM.
“We have a cliché buzzer at XM where, when you come up with a cliché, 3 buzzes and you’re fired. Here are some of my favorites:
‘The Best Music.’ ‘Home of 13 in a Row.’ The music quantity sell doesn’t work – people laugh at that. They don’t believe it. ‘Good Time Music’ No it’s not. I’m having a very bad day. Quit puking and let’s get real. ‘Chance To Win’ – No, if you’re going to do a contest, somebody’s going to win. ’10th Caller Wins’ – this is a real favorite of mine. In 1970, at the birth of the touch tone telephone era, some program directors came up with contests based on speed dialing. Now 31 years later we’re still doing it. There’s got to be a different way to give away prizes.
“The forced voice is stupid. A good voice is bad. The real radio stars who are making a difference – Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern, these guys have crummy voices, if anything.
“My favorite: Star Wars sound effects on every production (laughter). I believe the FCC has mandated that in order to maintain your license, you have to have lots of effects… The empire lost 30 years ago (laughter). It’s over, but every station is still doing that…
“[At XM] we teach people to think of radio as theatre, to create pictures, to take people somewhere. Our production people are sometimes called travel agents because they create sound that takes you to another place. Instruments, bagpipes. On our metal station, we have promos that use bagpipes, harps, an orchestra of sounds. It doesn’t have to be standard radio sounds that come from one of those goofy production houses. If somebody shows up at XM with one of those production libraries, they get shot, and then they get fired (laughter). It’s like ‘How to sound like a Clear Channel station in Des Moines’ (laughter)… with all due respect for Clear Channel (laughter).
“Another problem is the dumbing down to these stupid focus group slogans, like ‘Well I want a station that plays more variety without the heavy metal or rap.’ So the station produces a drop that says (adding in sound effects) ‘And Now [fx] The Station With More Variety, Less Heavy Metal and Rap (laughter).’
Another slogan we have at XM: A-F-D-I. Which stands for ‘Actually Fucking Doing It.’ When I was a consultant, we’d go in to a market, the station’s in the toilet, pulling a 2 share, billing’s off, so we’d get a hotel room and reinvent it. We’d get everyone – the PD, the GM, the promotions guy – in the room, order room service, take out yellow note pads and go to work. At 3 in the morning we’d leave the room, everybody would be feeling really good about the new blueprint to kick some ass. So I’d leave the market, come back a month later, and ask how things were going with a particular idea. ‘Well, we need to throw more research at that one,’ and then another, ‘We had a committee meeting and voted it down,’ and then another, ‘Ooh, the VP’s wife would hate this (laughter)’ or ‘It’ll never work here’ or ‘Well that was the booze talking.’ At XM we have the same sessions, but if you come up with an idea, it gets done. We A-F-D-I it.
“[XM] is national; I’d encourage local stations to be local. I haven’t heard good local radio in 30 years with the exception of about 10 stations. WGN in Chicago – great local station. I drove from Dallas to Washington when I moved here and it was one station, the same guy doing all the liners, the promos, the playlists were the same… and I remember when I was a kid, driving with my parents from Chicago to Miami, and we’d drive through Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Orlando, West Palm Beach, and every market sounded different. Local radio’s got to keep its eye on the community.
“Surprise Attacking. You want to really screw up a competitor? Just drive ’em nuts? Run the Top 500 the week before Memorial Day (laughter) sinceEVERY station WILL run it ON Memorial Day
“The Chuck Morgan Factor. Why do people change their names (laughter)? It’s unbelievable. We have a guy at XM named Chuck Morgan. I asked him what his real name is and he said ‘Bill Schmalfeldt.’ So now he’s Bill Schmalfeldt, he loves it, the audience loves it. The WWF really taught me a lesson. Who’s going to win: The Masked Destroyer From Mars or Kenny Richards (laughter)? Kenny Richards is getting the shit kicked out of him (laughter) and it’s the same thing in radio. Either use your real name or something so outrageous. The two first names kill me; ‘Bobby Scott, Scott Roberts, Robert Scott, Scotty John (laughter).’ I met ‘Scott Van Scott’ at the Country Radio Show and asked him his real name. ‘Ed Bernstein,’ he replied. Wow a Country Jew (laughter). Don’t change your name. We need more Schmalfeldts.
“Average Sucks. Average is really bad. A lot of radio stations say ‘We’re average, we’ve tested the library and all of our music is perfectly average, our DJ’s are very very average, our ad campaign is average, and we’re very happy.’ Hello.??? Average is the enemy…
“We challenge everything. Someone asked why DJ shifts have to be 6-10, 10-2, 2-7, 7-midnight, and I thought about it and realized it’s because in 1961, Pulse, a ratings service, decided that’s when they should be. And here we are, still following Pulse. So at XM on some of our channels we have All Request from 6-8 a.m., 8-9 is a live concert, 9-10 is a DJ show, 10-1 is a rebroadcast of a special, so it’s more like television.
“The other thing I heard some people saying here is – and you’d get shot at XM if you used this word – is ‘shift’. Steel workers have shifts, radio people have shows (applause). The janitors downstairs have ‘shifts’, they don’t do shows… but maybe they will if you keep doing a shift (laughter).
“The two most important things I can leave you with are Dreaming and A-F-D-I. I urge you to dream and to listen…and to AFDI in this era of media corporatization. Thank you (standing applause).