But Who Will Be the Voicetrackers of Tomorrow?
Well, let's start this entry by recapping my Grammy picks, and to make it fun, I'll put my selections up against Philadelphia Inquirer music critic Dan DeLuca, who apparently decided to steal my "should win/will win" routine. However, he limited his picks to Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. I pick more than just the "top 4" awards, because obviously I think there are more categories that people care about... and because I have unlimited length for my entries. Anyhoo...
Best New Artist: I said Mumford & Sons should win, Drake would win. DeLuca said Florence & the Machine should win, Justin Bieber would win... which proves that DeLuca doesn't know the Grammy voters like I do. Anyone who thinks the aging Grammy voters would ever give a major award to a teen-idol-of-the-moment should not be paid to be a newspaper music critic. Anyway, we (and 99% of the world) were wrong... Esperanza Spaulding won. Yeah, the cellist. A genuine Grammy WTF Moment.
Record of the Year: I said Jay-Z and Alicia Keys should win, Eminem would win. DeLuca said Cee-Lo should and would win. Again, he doesn't know Grammy voters like I do, or else he would know (as I noted 2 weeks ago) that Grammy will not pick a song with a 4-letter bomb in the title. Again, we were both wrong, Lady Antebellum won.
Song of the Year: I said Cee-Lo should win, Eminem & Rihanna would win. DeLuca said Eminem & Rihanna should and would win. Hey, finally we agreed... but we were both wrong again. Lady Antebellum won. Again. Afterward, the Internet was abuzz with people slamming the band for being named after a term that translates to "the South before the slaves were freed", and also for stealing from Alan Parsons. Incidentally, has he sued yet? He really should. He could probably wind up with at least one of the 2 statues.
Album of the Year: I said Lady Gaga should and would win. DeLuca said she was only on the list for show, Arcade Fire should win, but Eminem would win. And this of course was the ultimate head-turner of the night, when Arcade Fire DID win, sending alt-rock fans like myself into a frenzy (if we hadn't previously gone into seizures from Arcade Fire's performance), and sending hardcore hipsters into frantic worrying over whether winning this major award meant that Arcade Fire had "sold out."
As for the other awards I picked, I was correct on the Black Keys for Best Group Rock Song, Them Crooked Vultures for Best Hard Rock Song, Lady Gaga for Best Female Pop Vocal and Best Pop Vocal Album, and there were a couple more "should wins" that I thought would not win, but did win. Grammy is more confusing to pick than ever. But all in all, neither of us got a single major selection right, and DeLuca was as clueless about how Grammy voters would vote as I was. If that's all it takes to get yourself a position as a music critic, I just want the Inquirer to know that I'm available... and I'll work cheaper than DeLuca. I'm just sayin'...
Anyway, the biggest non-award moment for me at the Grammy Awards happened when NARAS head honcho Neil Portnow attacked terrestrial radio over the failure to impose a performance royalty, and went so far as to imply that music fans should go elsewhere for their music. Now you know where I stand on the idea of a performance royalty; I'm all for it. I think it's ridiculous that we're the only major nation besides Iran who doesn't pay artists for playing their songs on the radio unless they wrote the songs themselves. However, I can't support the royalty in the form that it was most recently proposed. Maybe I'd be more inclined to support the royalty if I knew that the money was actually going TO THE ARTISTS. Unfortunately, the GAO found that most major artists would get a mere pittance for their songs getting on the radio... because 50 percent of the royalty would be going to the "copyright holder". Otherwise known as THE RECORD COMPANIES. This is why the NAB can get away with calling this a "bailout for foreign-owned record labels". I think a more fair and equitable proposal would be something like 75 percent for the featured performer, 10 percent to the background musicians, 10 percent to the background singers, and a "thanks for pushing the song" allowance of 5 percent to the label.
Yeah, it took me 2 weeks to reply to the whole Portnow thing, but I've been more concerned with my classes and my Orange (priorities, after all). And considering it took Jerry Del Colliano nearly this long to finally react, I guess I'm not so late on this one... of course, his solution is for the radio industry to hold the major labels over a barrel and threaten not to play their artists anymore. This, of course, would be suicidal for commercial music radio. But then again, this is the same guy who rails against the recording industry wanting money from terrestrial radio... while he charges his readers $100 to read what he has to say. Playing chicken because you think radio is so important for music promotion is not a smart strategy... especially when so many young people are turning off terrestrial radio because of the all the problems it has with content and how it is presented. They are getting their music in plenty of other ways. Take away the content that does keep them listening, and they're gone for good.
But this speaks to larger issues in the radio industry right now. Some ominous trends are happening in radio, and they're not very good ones. First of all, there is the sick irony that has come from our desire to be more civil in our political discourse. What has been good for America has been bad for radio... because people have been turning off right-wing talk radio, and because the conservative shows are the backbone of many talk stations, this means their ratings are sliding. And if their ratings slide, their revenues will slide, and the management will respond by... getting rid of the local talent. Yeah, that doesn't make much sense, but such is the business model of corporate radio these days. The ones who may be getting you your ratings may be the ones who cost too much to keep... like Reno's Cory Farley, who lost his job because he was simply a line on the balance sheet that cost more than the syndication fee for Hannity or Mark Levin. On a larger matter, if these now-former talk radio listeners only listened to radio for talk, then that's more listeners the medium is hemorrhaging.
And speaking of the bad radio business model causing talented local personalities to lose their jobs... there's the Citadel-Cumulus merger. These two companies are among the top 5 biggest radio station owners, but like everyone else, they're on shaky financial ground because they overleveraged when they grew fat on the merger-mania of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and were left holding an increasing bag of debt when the radio stock bubble burst. Citadel just emerged from bankruptcy, Cumulus is teetering on the verge... so why on earth would Cumulus perform what was first a hostile takeover attempt, then a too-good-to-refuse offer to acquire Citadel? Because they are operating on the belief that maybe, just maybe, this will pump life back into their flat-lining stock price and save them from Chapter 11. Never mind that they are merely repeating the same mistakes that got all the big companies INTO this mess.
And of course, the next step would be to slash local personalities en masse to further stave off the inevitable. This is not good news for people like the local hosts at Syracuse's The Score 1260, owned by Citadel, and providing one of the few local sports lineups remaining in radio, especially in a market their size. And many local DJs will likely find themselves replaced by out-of-market voicetrackers... because that has worked so well for holding listeners, hasn't it?
Meanwhile, if it wasn't bad enough that these few established local personalities may be losing their jobs, the feeder system that brings us the DJs of tomorrow continues to be dismantled. First, we had small-market stations having to cut their personalities loose in order to compete with their major-corporate competitors who had done the same. Now, college radio is becoming endangered. The University of San Francisco sent shockwaves across the media landscape when they sold their college station, KUSF, for $3.7 million. They did it because in these tough economic times, they needed the cash... thus proving they're no different than their corporate brethren. They also felt the station wasn't serving the university, which the students promptly showed was total BS by protesting the sale.
Is the demise of college radio at hand? Perry Simon of All Access stated that college radio isn't what it used to be, because a college kid who wants to get "on the air" will now just record a podcast and post it online. I disagree, and I can point you to the station at my current place of study, WHIP at Temple University. Despite being only an Internet radio station with no terrestrial signal, they pack the room when they hold staff meetings and have no trouble filling out a roster of air talent. College kids still want to have fun playing music and doing a radio show, and this is where we need to start to fix what is wrong with radio. We need to breed management types who understand that the content is what matters, and we need to do it now because the barbarians are at the gate and they are ready to completely destroy terrestrial radio.
For proof, look no further than Pandora. They have filed for an IPO, and their CEO, Tim Westergren in announcing the stock sale declared war on terrestrial radio, pointing out the problems that corporate music radio has today: fixed formats, no ability for listeners to directly impact what is played (particularly when there is no DJ in the studio to take requests), ridiculous levels of repetition. Critics note that Pandora is neither local nor free, but believe me, my friends who subscribe to Pandora DON'T CARE. That should tell you everything you need to know. The local content on terrestrial radio is so far from compelling that people will gladly plunk down money for Pandora. That's why we need to change. We need to remember that what is most important is the content. Next week, I'll point out examples of some of the few remaining outposts of people in the radio industry who get it, and why more stations should be like them... before it's too late.
Best New Artist: I said Mumford & Sons should win, Drake would win. DeLuca said Florence & the Machine should win, Justin Bieber would win... which proves that DeLuca doesn't know the Grammy voters like I do. Anyone who thinks the aging Grammy voters would ever give a major award to a teen-idol-of-the-moment should not be paid to be a newspaper music critic. Anyway, we (and 99% of the world) were wrong... Esperanza Spaulding won. Yeah, the cellist. A genuine Grammy WTF Moment.
Record of the Year: I said Jay-Z and Alicia Keys should win, Eminem would win. DeLuca said Cee-Lo should and would win. Again, he doesn't know Grammy voters like I do, or else he would know (as I noted 2 weeks ago) that Grammy will not pick a song with a 4-letter bomb in the title. Again, we were both wrong, Lady Antebellum won.
Song of the Year: I said Cee-Lo should win, Eminem & Rihanna would win. DeLuca said Eminem & Rihanna should and would win. Hey, finally we agreed... but we were both wrong again. Lady Antebellum won. Again. Afterward, the Internet was abuzz with people slamming the band for being named after a term that translates to "the South before the slaves were freed", and also for stealing from Alan Parsons. Incidentally, has he sued yet? He really should. He could probably wind up with at least one of the 2 statues.
Album of the Year: I said Lady Gaga should and would win. DeLuca said she was only on the list for show, Arcade Fire should win, but Eminem would win. And this of course was the ultimate head-turner of the night, when Arcade Fire DID win, sending alt-rock fans like myself into a frenzy (if we hadn't previously gone into seizures from Arcade Fire's performance), and sending hardcore hipsters into frantic worrying over whether winning this major award meant that Arcade Fire had "sold out."
As for the other awards I picked, I was correct on the Black Keys for Best Group Rock Song, Them Crooked Vultures for Best Hard Rock Song, Lady Gaga for Best Female Pop Vocal and Best Pop Vocal Album, and there were a couple more "should wins" that I thought would not win, but did win. Grammy is more confusing to pick than ever. But all in all, neither of us got a single major selection right, and DeLuca was as clueless about how Grammy voters would vote as I was. If that's all it takes to get yourself a position as a music critic, I just want the Inquirer to know that I'm available... and I'll work cheaper than DeLuca. I'm just sayin'...
Anyway, the biggest non-award moment for me at the Grammy Awards happened when NARAS head honcho Neil Portnow attacked terrestrial radio over the failure to impose a performance royalty, and went so far as to imply that music fans should go elsewhere for their music. Now you know where I stand on the idea of a performance royalty; I'm all for it. I think it's ridiculous that we're the only major nation besides Iran who doesn't pay artists for playing their songs on the radio unless they wrote the songs themselves. However, I can't support the royalty in the form that it was most recently proposed. Maybe I'd be more inclined to support the royalty if I knew that the money was actually going TO THE ARTISTS. Unfortunately, the GAO found that most major artists would get a mere pittance for their songs getting on the radio... because 50 percent of the royalty would be going to the "copyright holder". Otherwise known as THE RECORD COMPANIES. This is why the NAB can get away with calling this a "bailout for foreign-owned record labels". I think a more fair and equitable proposal would be something like 75 percent for the featured performer, 10 percent to the background musicians, 10 percent to the background singers, and a "thanks for pushing the song" allowance of 5 percent to the label.
Yeah, it took me 2 weeks to reply to the whole Portnow thing, but I've been more concerned with my classes and my Orange (priorities, after all). And considering it took Jerry Del Colliano nearly this long to finally react, I guess I'm not so late on this one... of course, his solution is for the radio industry to hold the major labels over a barrel and threaten not to play their artists anymore. This, of course, would be suicidal for commercial music radio. But then again, this is the same guy who rails against the recording industry wanting money from terrestrial radio... while he charges his readers $100 to read what he has to say. Playing chicken because you think radio is so important for music promotion is not a smart strategy... especially when so many young people are turning off terrestrial radio because of the all the problems it has with content and how it is presented. They are getting their music in plenty of other ways. Take away the content that does keep them listening, and they're gone for good.
But this speaks to larger issues in the radio industry right now. Some ominous trends are happening in radio, and they're not very good ones. First of all, there is the sick irony that has come from our desire to be more civil in our political discourse. What has been good for America has been bad for radio... because people have been turning off right-wing talk radio, and because the conservative shows are the backbone of many talk stations, this means their ratings are sliding. And if their ratings slide, their revenues will slide, and the management will respond by... getting rid of the local talent. Yeah, that doesn't make much sense, but such is the business model of corporate radio these days. The ones who may be getting you your ratings may be the ones who cost too much to keep... like Reno's Cory Farley, who lost his job because he was simply a line on the balance sheet that cost more than the syndication fee for Hannity or Mark Levin. On a larger matter, if these now-former talk radio listeners only listened to radio for talk, then that's more listeners the medium is hemorrhaging.
And speaking of the bad radio business model causing talented local personalities to lose their jobs... there's the Citadel-Cumulus merger. These two companies are among the top 5 biggest radio station owners, but like everyone else, they're on shaky financial ground because they overleveraged when they grew fat on the merger-mania of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and were left holding an increasing bag of debt when the radio stock bubble burst. Citadel just emerged from bankruptcy, Cumulus is teetering on the verge... so why on earth would Cumulus perform what was first a hostile takeover attempt, then a too-good-to-refuse offer to acquire Citadel? Because they are operating on the belief that maybe, just maybe, this will pump life back into their flat-lining stock price and save them from Chapter 11. Never mind that they are merely repeating the same mistakes that got all the big companies INTO this mess.
And of course, the next step would be to slash local personalities en masse to further stave off the inevitable. This is not good news for people like the local hosts at Syracuse's The Score 1260, owned by Citadel, and providing one of the few local sports lineups remaining in radio, especially in a market their size. And many local DJs will likely find themselves replaced by out-of-market voicetrackers... because that has worked so well for holding listeners, hasn't it?
Meanwhile, if it wasn't bad enough that these few established local personalities may be losing their jobs, the feeder system that brings us the DJs of tomorrow continues to be dismantled. First, we had small-market stations having to cut their personalities loose in order to compete with their major-corporate competitors who had done the same. Now, college radio is becoming endangered. The University of San Francisco sent shockwaves across the media landscape when they sold their college station, KUSF, for $3.7 million. They did it because in these tough economic times, they needed the cash... thus proving they're no different than their corporate brethren. They also felt the station wasn't serving the university, which the students promptly showed was total BS by protesting the sale.
Is the demise of college radio at hand? Perry Simon of All Access stated that college radio isn't what it used to be, because a college kid who wants to get "on the air" will now just record a podcast and post it online. I disagree, and I can point you to the station at my current place of study, WHIP at Temple University. Despite being only an Internet radio station with no terrestrial signal, they pack the room when they hold staff meetings and have no trouble filling out a roster of air talent. College kids still want to have fun playing music and doing a radio show, and this is where we need to start to fix what is wrong with radio. We need to breed management types who understand that the content is what matters, and we need to do it now because the barbarians are at the gate and they are ready to completely destroy terrestrial radio.
For proof, look no further than Pandora. They have filed for an IPO, and their CEO, Tim Westergren in announcing the stock sale declared war on terrestrial radio, pointing out the problems that corporate music radio has today: fixed formats, no ability for listeners to directly impact what is played (particularly when there is no DJ in the studio to take requests), ridiculous levels of repetition. Critics note that Pandora is neither local nor free, but believe me, my friends who subscribe to Pandora DON'T CARE. That should tell you everything you need to know. The local content on terrestrial radio is so far from compelling that people will gladly plunk down money for Pandora. That's why we need to change. We need to remember that what is most important is the content. Next week, I'll point out examples of some of the few remaining outposts of people in the radio industry who get it, and why more stations should be like them... before it's too late.
posted by Dave | 2:28 PM
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