Observations From the Road Vol. 2

Just returned from a trip to Philly to go apartment-hunting. Even though I've lived in Pennsylvania on 3 different occasions, I was still reminded of just how different a place PA is from New York. Not just the archaic liquor laws, of course.

For one thing, Pennsylvania doesn't know how to handle a late state budget. We here in New York could tell them a thing or two about that practice, considering we didn't pass a budget on time for a good 20 years in a row. PA has decided to hoard money in order to get through this crisis, and among other things, it means that state employees are not getting paid right now. They've had to open up food banks for these now-destitute workers, and they're protesting loudly for their paychecks in Harrisburg this week. This of course would never happen in New York, because Danny Donahue and CSEA would break every legislator's legs before they would go without a paycheck. On the other hand, I'm sure the New York state Senate is wishing they could have had the PR opportunity to show them having to open up a food bank for themselves once Governor Patterson cut off their paychecks during the standoff they just went through.

So PA is in a shambles right now, but I can tell you that they're still getting money coming in, because the Pennsylvania Turnpike is nothing more than an exercise in literal highway robbery. It costs you $6.60 in tolls to go 100 miles on the turnpike. By comparison, going from the I-481 exit in Syracuse to Albany on the Thruway (which I will be doing next week en route to Boston) is 130 miles and sets you back $5.80, and that's with the two toll hikes the Thruway Authority has shoved through in the past few years. The sad thing is this gives the Thruway Authority the excuse to say 1) they still charge less than other toll highways, and 2) they can raise the tolls yet again when/if they feel like it.

On the other hand, for all the troubles PA and NY have with their governments, at least they're not New Jersey. 44 people got rounded up in a massive corruption crackdown last week in the great Garden State, including THREE MAYORS and a state legislator. This just goes to show you that any time you think your state is inept at handling its own affairs, you can just look at New Jersey and feel a lot better... that is, unless you actually live in New Jersey. Let's not forget that the governor of New Jersey also recently floated the idea of naming a reality TV show winner as his lieutenant governor. Ahhh, New Jersey, where it's free to come into the state but you have to pay to leave.

I also have to take issue with the quality of the traffic reports in Philadelphia. Yeah, the big news radio station in town is good at getting the info about accidents out there, but apparently when you're crawling along at 30 mph on the Schuylkill Expressway, that's considered "no problems". I don't consider that to be "no problems"... it is very much a problem, and then when we get shoved into one lane in a construction zone due to a traffic incident, thus causing us to pretty much come to a dead stop for several minutes, it is DEFINITELY not considered "no problems on the Schuylkill". You have traffic cameras everywhere (at least you seem to mention them a lot), how about you USE them?

Over the course of the past couple days, I have also had to hear and see more examples of the total ineptitude of the Republican Party. First we were treated to ads by the Republican National Committee attacking New York state senator Darrel Aubertine because he was the odds-on favorite to run for the congressional seat being vacated by John McHugh when he becomes Secretary of the Army. Only Aubertine chose not to run... and the RNC continued running the attack ads AFTER Aubertine announced he wasn't running. Then they started running ads attacking Democratic congressmen over the upcoming health care vote in the House. First of all, are any of these people going to take any organized effort by the other party seriously? Secondly, when the RNC ran an ad in the Scranton area attacking local congressman Paul Kanjorski... it called him "Pete Kanjorski". Oops. I got to hear this ad and the local Scranton talk show host laughing herself silly over the mess-up on my way down to Philly. Is it any wonder that national Republicans are becoming an endangered species?

Meanwhile, the latest "non-issue" to become a rallying cry for Democrats in their attempts to make national Republicans extinct is actually an old non-issue... President Obama's citizenship. This was floated around by right-wingers during the campaign, never amounted to much of anything, and was quickly laughed off as it should have been. Now, a good 7 months after this story was put to bed, it has come roaring back. Why? Because the "leader of the Republican Party", Mr. Limbaugh brought it up on his show. And now, despite the fact that this remains a very dead, very non-issue, it's been brought back by left-wingers eager to attach this to all Republicans. First, I got a call during one of the shows I produce from a frequent left-wing P-S letter-writer claiming that these so-called "birthers" are out of control, then a Philadelphia Daily News columnist goes after the supposed large numbers of GOP congressmen and mouthpieces who believe this ridiculous argument. Apparently, if the RNC does not make a statement saying, "THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE, WE DON'T BELIEVE THIS," in the eyes of liberals, the GOP gives tacit consent to wackjobs.

And so it is that we have the latest salvo in the attempt to ram through health care, cap-and-trade, and all the other Democratic legislation by painting the entire Republican Party with the broad brush of being just a bunch of extremist, Rush Limbaugh-repeating ne'er-do-wells who simply want the president to fail. However, it's like I've said before, why do we Republicans keep helping them out by giving them all these things to attack us with? It's seriously like we're in a race against the Democrats to see who can destroy us first.

At Least I'll Get to See Playoff Baseball

That's what I'm telling people now about my impending move to Philadelphia. I have conceded the fact that my Mets have dropped out of contention in the National League East, and will not get back into the race anytime soon. We are 6 games under .500, 10 games out, and on our way to a 4th-place finish. This will not change. I am hoping that showing some amount of humility will spare me a massive beat-down by gleeful Phillies fans upon my arrival in the City of Brotherly Love and the Worst Sports Fans in the Nation (when you don't count Syracuse fans).

The Phillies have things wrapped up. They are well on their way to a typical Phillies 2nd half, with their recent 10-game winning streak they have opened up a 6 game lead over 2nd-place Atlanta. I would peg their finish at roughly 94 wins and breezing to the division title by at least 10 games. And now they have Pedro.

That's kinda rough, not to mention very weird. Watching Pedro on "SportsCenter" pitching a simulated game in the blue and red warmups of the Phightin' Phils makes a Mets fan's stomach do a nice dip and roll to the right. We brought him into the fold in 2005, fresh off winning a ring with the Red Sox, with the hopes that he would win us a ring too. Now the cruel irony is that he did not win us a ring, sat on the DL in 2006 while we blew our sure chance at a ring thanks to Aaron Heilman, Cliff Floyd, and Carlos Beltran, and now is going to win a ring with our chief rivals.

But the real killer will come less than a week from now, when the Phillies get Roy Halladay from Toronto. Most experts say it's inevitable; the Phillies have the best deal to offer and are more than motivated to get another ace to complement Cole Hamels and provide the last piece to a repeat championship puzzle. SNY reported earlier this week that Mets GM Omar Minaya was offered Halladay by the Blue Jays... and TURNED THEM DOWN. It's that kind of forward-thinking that will propel the blue and orange... to 4th place.

The irony of all this is that the baseball talking heads quickly ruled the Mets out of the Halladay sweepstakes because they all said we have no prospects to offer. Apparently, we did, but Omar said no to trading them. Then, Omar went on the SNY Mets broadcast the other night, and said that all the remarks about the farm system were ill-founded. So, we have prospects but we won't trade them. That puts Omar in a no-win situation because the New York media and Joe from Long Island calling in to the Fan want Omar to make a deal. Having not made a deal, that intensifies the calls for Omar to get whacked for what he has done to this team that was supposed to be a championship contender this year.

Luckily for Omar, a perfect fall guy presented himself yesterday, when the news broke that Assistant GM Tony "Berserker" Bernazard went apeshit on a clubhouse full of stunned minor-leaguers in Binghamton. He apparently ripped his shirt off and challenged the B-Mets to a rumble. He's had other confrontations in the past, most notably with closer Frankie Rodriguez, and also had a big hand in the debacle that was the firing of Willie Randolph as manager last season. I think it's clear that Bernazard needs to be fired immediately. As for limiting the ultimate fallout over the Mets' underachieving, that's unlikely. Heads will roll once the season ends.

The most likely head to roll will be manager Jerry Manuel. After all, despite the fact that the team picture this season should be an X-ray (ba dum bum) with all the regulars on the DL, you still have to push the right buttons with the players you have. Manuel has not. He caused a lot of the team's problems in spring training when he came up with the brilliant idea of changing the approach of our best hitters. We're moving into a bigger ballpark, he figured, so we should turn our power hitters into opposite-field hitting singles hitters. The end result: the Mets have the 2nd-best batting average in the National League... but WE DON'T SCORE ANY RUNS! We're great at getting guys on base and into scoring position, but then we can't knock them in. When it requires three singles instead of a bloop and a blast to score, you're not as likely to pull it off. David Wright, once a dependable 30-homer, 100 RBI guy, has FIVE home runs this season. The excuse of the ballpark not being conducive to homers went out the window when the Phillies and Yankees knocked the ball out of Citi Field with regularity, to the point where people now derisively call the right field corner "Utley's Corner" because the Phillies star has hit more homers at Citi as a VISITING PLAYER than just about any Met has this year.

And then there's the bullpen. Yeah, a lot of our bullpen woes in '07 and '08 came from the fact that we had awful relievers, but part of it was also Willie (and now Jerry's) custom of overusing the good relievers we have. Now, it's gone completely overboard. Sean Green, Pedro Feliciano, and Bobby Parnell seem to pitch EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. How effective can you expect them to be when you're going to send them into a game over 100 times before the season is through?

Omar and Jerry recently got the dreaded "vote of confidence" from Mets management, and anyone who follows these things knows what that means... one or both of them is (in the words of Gary Cohen) "outta here" when the season ends. While all the finger-pointing continues, I think I'll start picking out my spot on Broad Street for the championship parade that will end October in Philadelphia. Not that I'm bailing on my beloved Amazins, mind you, but I've never been to a championship celebration before, and I don't see one happening down Manhattan's famed "canyon of heroes" anytime soon...

Blogger's note: The website that holds my original blog's entries from 2000-2002 is about to follow GeoCities into the dustbin of online history. So I will soon be transferring all those old entries to this site. This will make it much easier for you to look them up anyway. See how helpful I am?

Can't Find Nothin' on the Radio

Recent comments from this 15-year old Morgan Stanley intern in the UK have scared the crap out of media kingpins everywhere. He said that teenagers don't read newspapers, don't use Twitter (adding fuel to the argument that tweeting is a fad), get most of their music illegally, and most notably for my line of work, don't listen to terrestrial radio. The warning bells have been going off for a while that young people are eschewing traditional "old media", but somehow this kid has finally gotten the message through to people. The message is: it's not just the economy that is driving old media into bankruptcy... people aren't using it anymore.

Now we see this in the newspaper business on an everyday basis lately: papers ceasing publication, massive layoffs, uncertainty about the future of journalism in this country. It's just as bad if not worse in radio, as overleveraged corporate giants drown in debt and make programming decisions based on what they can afford (which is not much) instead of what will get them listeners. The model has been turned on its head. And based on the rumors of looming bankrputcy at Clear Channel, it's clearly not working.

The idea has always been that you put compelling content on the air, more people listen, ratings increase, station makes more money by being able to sell higher ratings. That mentality left the business in the last couple decades, replaced by the business school model that claims that a station only exists to make money, and content is secondary to having a good sales staff. That's why the only openings you ever see or hear about in the radio industry are for sales people. They'll hire more sales people in a heartbeat if they think it will make them more money, but if it doesn't work, it's the talent that gets the heave-ho.

So you have stations that are all or mostly automated, voice-tracked from out of town, your friendly local DJs replaced by the likes of Ryan Seacrest, John Tesh, Alice Cooper, and Keith Sweat. Personality radio, the very thing that made people tune in to their favorite stations for years, is deader than a doornail. Anyone who can actually do more than read liner cards and still has a job now does mornings. Those who thought that becoming "shock jocks" and working for FM talk stations would be a safe refuge have found that even that format is now unjustifiable on a corporate balance sheet. One of the latest casualties is Mike O'Meara. I previously wrote here about the large influence that "The Don & Mike Show" played on my radio career, and I'm happy to say that Don is back on the air in Delaware at a talk station that still believes in having local talent on the air, a rare thing indeed. Mike's solo show is getting the ax from syndicator Westwood One and flagship WJFK in Washington, just as ratings were looking up. But ratings be damned, right? So WJFK is ditching its personality talk format of 18 years for all-sports. Great. 6 months and it will be all-satellite, except maybe for AM drive. The same is happening at WBCN in Boston, once a heritage rock station, later the home of Opie & Anthony, two more victims of the purge on personality.

The other problem that comes from valuing the bottom line over content? The presence of WAY TOO MANY COMMERCIALS. I try listening to local radio here, but I cannot stand how every station inevitably goes to a commercial break at :20, :35m and :50 after the hour. And the breaks are getting longer, and commercials are playing where commercials should not be playing. I'll give you an example... I was out and about last night, flipping around the dial but focusing mostly on TK99, the local classic rock station. From approximately 7:20-7:52 last night, TK99 played a total of FOUR songs. 32 minutes, 4 songs. It went long commercial break, two songs, long commercial break, two songs, long commercial break. An average song being 4 minutes long, that meant there was roughly 16 minutes of music... and 16 minutes of commercials. During the NIGHT SHIFT. Every music station I've ever worked for had a pretty clear and sensible policy as far as commercials during the night shift: you play FAR FEWER commercials than during drive time and FAR MORE music. Two breaks an hour at night, not three. And no music station should EVER play fewer than three songs between stopsets. And we wonder why people are switching off terrestrial radio for satellite and Internet. Night time is when younger listeners, the people you are losing, are most likely to listen, so why on earth would you choose then to seemingly play MORE commercials?!?

So we hear about people switching to satellite radio and how that is supposedly the main competition for terrestrial radio. Radio has tried to counter that with ad campaign after ad campaign reminding you that you don't have to pay for terrestrial radio... unless you want to shell out $300 for a HD radio receiver but I won't go there. It's debatable whether or not this approach has worked; I would say that the financial problems at Sirius/XM mirror that of terrestrial radio: too much debt, victim of the bad economy. They certainly haven't lost subscribers. Truly, I don't fear Sirius/XM as much as I fear Pandora. Since most radio listeners still listen for music, this is where the most damage is still yet to be done to the radio industry. In case you're not familiar with Pandora, it's an online streaming music service that allows you to put in your favorite artists, and Pandora will then play those artists AND similar artists that the listener might like. Thus, Pandora is doing the job that is terrestrial music radio stations' raison d'etre: play the music you like and sell you on new or unfamiliar music. And without commercials. And it's FREE. There's your main competition. That is what radio needs to counter.

Two pieces of legislation also have a lot to do with the future of radio. Recording artists are pushing for extra royalties from radio stations for playing their songs, which I think is just absurd. They don't make much money as it is from radio airplay or record sales, their money comes from songwriting (which stations already pay royalties for) and touring. Thankfully, a countermeasure in the House of Representatives has enough co-sponsors to defeat any attempt to slap a so-called "performance tax" on stations. Another countermeasure in Congress has the support of all Republicans but no Democrats, and that one is calling for a permanent ban on reinstating the Fairness Doctrine. I'm all for being against a new Fairness Doctrine, but there's another rallying cry coming up from right-wing talk show hosts that I cannot agree with, and that is the argument that a FCC push for more localism on radio would have the same effect as a Fairness Doctrine.

Localism is NOT a "stealth Fairness Doctrine" and I am for localism, especially if it means we have actual local human beings staffing radio stations 24-7. I have yet to hear an automation system that sounds better than a human being who runs a tight control board. And if localism means Sean Hannity loses an affiliate in favor of a local talk show host, I don't think he need worry because the station, knowing what will make it money, will just put a local right-winger in his place. What we need in radio is better content. Unfortunately, as long as radio has a business model that clearly doesn't care about quality of content, it will continue to decline.

We Don't Want Our MTV

Okay, I know I'm officially the last person on the Internet to blog about Michael Jackson, but I really don't have much to say about the man himself. He was a tremendous talent, a mind-blowing dancer, and created some of the best pop music ever. Pretty much from "Off the Wall" through "Bad", there was nobody better. Yeah, he may have done some bad things, though nothing he was ever convicted for, and it bugs me that he took Paul McCartney's advice on investing in song publishing and outbid McCartney for HIS OWN Beatles songs.

But the thing about Michael that I really want to talk about is his status as the first big-time music video star. Michael had perfect timing; his arrival as a massive pop star coincided with the arrival of MTV. He was able to take videos from simple promotional device to art, and while it's true that bands had been making artistic visual pieces with their music since the 1960s (Pink Floyd, anyone?), Michael Jackson made art you could dance to. He made "pop art" not quite in the sense that Andy Warhol did, but with much more commercial response. So in the past couple weeks since Michael passed, we've heard and seen a lot about his music video mastery and how that was really part of what made him the King of Pop.

So it's kinda sad that it takes Michael Jackson dying to get people talking about music videos again. The fact is videos aren't on TV anymore. MTV, "Music Television" doesn't have much to do with music anymore. "TRL" is gone, done in last November in what may as well have been dubbed the funeral for the televised music video. Videos are not in themselves dead; bands and singers continue to pump them out, but your viewing options are limited. MTV and VH-1 might air videos for a few hours late at night or early in the morning every other day. MTV2 might throw in a one-hour block of rap videos amidst all of its reruns of old MTV shows. Fuse is the best for videos, but for most, this is on digital cable, which costs more money than basic.

Most people now go online to see music videos, which is better for them because of the aspect of control. Let's face it... we're the "Now" generation. We want everything now, and that's because for the most part, we can get it now, thanks to the Internet. When a thought pops into my head and I want to find more about a person or event or something like that, I go right to the old laptop and look it up. Instant gratification. The same is true with music videos. You like an artist and want to watch his/her video? Go right to YouTube. The only downside I see of that is the fact that you're going to YouTube for one of two reasons: 1) you already like the artist or band, or 2) it's a viral video you heard about. If it's a viral video, you might enjoy it once or twice, but then you never watch it again, and what are the odds you will then buy the song? This is just one more change brought on by the Internet.

I spent the last year doing my Masters thesis on music videos. I found that in most cases, people watching music videos aren't as likely to be interested in a previously unknown artist as people who just hear songs. Why? Because videos have become cliched. The boundaries have been pushed, the innovations have been made, and aside from the occasional video done with Legos or visual tricks of some kind, most videos fall into a template. If it's pop-punk, you feature the cute male lead singer and show an adoring crowd watching them play. If it's rap/R&B, you show scantily-clad women, diamonds, money, etc. This "Now" generation has one other aspect to it: they don't like fakes. They prefer solid live acts over studio creations; that's why "American Idol" is so popular. They don't like to be fooled and they like to know their favorites are genuine. Putting your favorite band into a cliched music video pretty much takes off "realness" points.

Back to MTV and VH-1 for a moment: it's one thing to dump music videos for shows about your favorite artists like "Cribs". But it's quite another to have all the shows be excuses for people who only seek attention for themselves to be able to get just that. I guess that appeals to certain people, but definitely not me. Yeah, I'm probably outside of the target demo for MTV now, but very few of the college-age subjects in my study approved either. Perhaps it's a rejection of MTV as a dispenser of fakeness. If that happens, oh well... it's not like MTV is a sacred TV cow that can't itself be rebelled against. While reality shows continue to exist, we need to have some sort of real competitive aspect going these days for them to have any kind of mass-appeal shelf life. I guess that's better than "Celebrity Rehab" being on CBS 5 nights a week. Then again, it is summer so our options are limited.

So the music video has certainly been de-emphasized, and maybe that just puts it back to what some prefer it would be: art. Let's face it, true art is never gonna be massively popular, and if the music video is fated to become just one of many methods to make a band popular, maybe the content of the videos themselves will go back to being artistic since the bands have nothing to lose. They know that those who like them because they are "sensitive artist" types will like that sort of thing. As for the commercial and promotional avenues now available to the music industry, well that's the rest of my thesis and you'll just have to wait until the book comes out...