It's (Finally) Good to Be Orange

So before I was so rudely interrupted by that earthquake... and the hurricane which is currently bearing down on us here in Philly... I was about to write up my annual preview of Syracuse football. I have to say that I am truly excited about this team for the first time in many years. For about the last 10 or so years since Donovan McNabb left, the typical Orange fan entered the season with certain expectations about the season, but very wary that the team would fall well short of them. With the exception of the 10-3 2001 season, we were right... and even in 2001, we looked back at that season and thought how much greater it would have been had we had a decent offense in the first 2 games.

First we became the school that lost to Rutgers when Rutgers hadn't won jack for years... then we became the school that lost to Temple when the Big East was about to toss Temple out of the league... then we became the school that lost to Temple TWICE when the Big East was about to toss Temple out of the league. Then there was Greg Robinson... *shudder*... don't need to say anything more about that. Doug Marrone came in here 2 years ago, a product of the SU system under Coach Mac, ready to install a system of strict discipline and attention to detail. While Internet Troll Nation was too busy damning Greg Paulus for having the audacity to, well, be Greg Paulus, Marrone cleaned out a lot of the wreckage of GRob and put the team on the path to winning football. While the trolls were decrying the number of players Marrone "ran off", the ones who bought in were becoming solid leaders.

The results came last season, when he told anyone who would listen that the Orange was going to a bowl game, and then, damned if they didn't do it, and then some. SU raced to a 6-2 start, beat the likes of West Virginia, South Florida, and Cincinnati on the road, and came tantalizingly close to entering the Top 25. After sputtering down the stretch due to a lack of depth, the Orange rested, recovered, then beat Kansas State in the Pinstripe Bowl in one of the most exciting bowl games in recent memory. An 8-5 season, exceeding expectations for once. Marrone become only the 3rd coach in the last 25 years to end a BCS conference school's streak of 5 or more losing seasons in just his 2nd year on the job. Now, what to do for an encore?

Well, the team to a man and their coach both say the goal for this season is to contend for the Big East championship. When you consider the fact that had SU beaten Louisville last year, they would have had a share of the title (and had they beaten UConn, they would have stolen the BCS berth), that seems to be an appropriate goal. When you consider how much they lose from their defense due to graduation, it's definitely a worthy goal to which they aspire. Defensively this year, we get to see if defensive coordinator Scott Shafer's system is one that only requires reloading from year to year rather than rebuilding. The front line is strong with seniors Chandler Jones and Mikhail Marinovich leading the way, but sophomore Marcus Spruill is the only returning linebacker. He must become a leader pretty quickly to stabilize that position. The secondary has a veteran presence, but safety Philip Thomas may miss the opener against Wake Forest on Thursday as he recovers from a fractured jaw.

The onus is on the offense to step up this year. We saw signs of that in the Pinstripe Bowl, as QB Ryan Nassib came alive after a season of up-and-down play that left some wondering if he was right to be the starting signal-caller in future seasons. With leading rusher Delone Carter now in Indianapolis, Antwon Bailey steps into the starting role. He has certainly made sizable contributions during his Orange career, all the way back to the upset win at Notre Dame when he was a freshman. But any successful running attack at Syracuse has always required more than one solid back, and this year, sophomore Prince-Tyson Gulley and freshman Adonis Ameen-Moore will look to fill that role. Gulley earned raves for his offseason work, and Ameen-Moore is highly-praised as well. They will run behind a veteran O-line that improved greatly last season, as Nassib had to run for his life far fewer times in the bowl game.

The receiver spot, on paper, looks to have been weakened by Marcus Sales' week-before-camp shenanigans (more on that later). Yes, Sales was the star of the Pinstripe Bowl with 3 touchdown catches, and he caught the winning TD at South Florida, but he also was not even on the depth chart at times last season. The leading returners are actually Van Chew and Alec Lemon. Chew is a solid receiver who, when healthy, can definitely extend the field. Lemon's hands were an issue last season, as he dropped two key passes that may have gone for TDs in the Louisville game. Tight end Nick Provo is a solid contributor. The position of punter is open at the moment with the departure of Rob Long, but kicker Ross Krautmann was automatic as a freshman, lending stability to a position that arguably had not been that way since the days of Olindo Mare.

So how far can this team go? Well, they are blessed with fortunate scheduling in the early going. Wake Forest will be no easy game, and the Orange have to get the monkey off their back of not winning at home; they did not beat a single FBS school at the Dome last season, which makes their 8-5 record all the more impressive, but can be a mental block to further success if they let it be. After Wake, SU plays FCS school Rhode Island at home, then travels to USC, a team that is not what it used to be under Pete Carroll, but still very talented even under NCAA sanctions. Next up are home games with Toledo and Rutgers before a road trip to Tulane.

A 5-1 start is not out of the question for this Orange team, but I think we'll know a lot about where this team is headed by how they handle the Demon Deacons on Thursday night. If they get the job done, then a 5-1 start is certainly achievable heading into the meat of BE play, and that should put them in good position to at least go bowling again. Many experts have chosen not to believe in Marrone's turnaround job yet, placing us at the bottom of the Big East (Bodog) or stating that we will not go to a bowl game (ESPNU). Then again, these people were laughing when we started 6-2 last year, so clearly it will take a string of strong seasons to convince some people that Orange football is truly back. Me? I'm convinced, and Thursday night cannot get here fast enough.

I close on the topic of off-the-field problems... the optimism and excitement surrounding the team was tempered a bit the week before preseason camp started. Marrone sent his players home for 10 days... 10 days... and you would think that they would be capable of behaving themselves for 10 days, but alas, Sales was arrested with his brother when police found drugs in their car with evidence suggesting there was intent to deal. It didn't help that Sales had an open container of alcohol on him. Meanwhile in Colorado, Jonny Miller, a QB pretty far down on the depth chart, was arrested on robbery charges, and back in the 'Cuse, Prince-Tyson Gulley was stabbed during a fight at a party. Gulley's case was clearly one of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he healed from his wounds pretty quickly to jump back into the competition for backup RB. Sales' days as an Orange are over, and likely Miller's are as well.

You hate to see things like this with college athletes who receive full rides to play a sport, but it's small potatoes compared to what was uncovered in Miami. Allegations of cash payments, bounties, prostitutes, jewelry, all kinds of improprieties that stretch out over years, and as we know, this is not Miami's first time at the improper benefits rodeo. Also, it's not like the Hurricanes have ever been model citizens ON the field. In 2006, I recommended that Miami football be investigated and strongly punished by the NCAA for a series of ugly on-field brawls that culminated in the infamous bench-clearing, helmet-swinging melee against Florida International. Now, it's quite clear what the NCAA must do. If they find even a fraction of these allegations to be true, two words: DEATH PENALTY. I don't quite agree with "Friday Night Lights" author Buzz Bissinger that the program should be ended entirely, but 2 years without football ought to send the right message to the university and everyone in college athletics that this will not be tolerated.

You have to feel for new Hurricanes coach Al Golden. He re-established Temple football the last couple years, won the respect of many in college football for his work and his approach, and he goes to Miami to do the same, only to have this dropped on him. Many of the leading figures in this scandal got out of Dodge before everything got out, and Golden certainly wasn't told this was going on when he took the job. Now, he's the person forced to do damage control, and after this season he likely will not have a program to oversee for a year or two. Quite frankly, it's awful watching bad things happen to good people.

It's Always Quaky in Philadelphia

Yes, I get it. We're wimps here on the East Coast for freaking out about a 5.9-magnitude earthquake that ultimately did little damage. All those people on the West Coast laughing their asses off at our reactions will tell us that things like this are just a way of life where they are from. Well, all I have to say is great for you, but there's plenty of reasons why I have chosen to spend my life in the Northeast, and at the top of the list is "NO EARTHQUAKES!"

And so it was that at 1:51pm, I was sitting in the rental office of my apartment complex, waiting as a prospective new roommate was filling out paperwork, and suddenly, I felt a very wrong sensation under my chair. A rumbling sensation. Right about the moment that the three of us in the room looked at each other and started to say, "Do you feel the ground shaking?" the building started rattling. I should note that this particular building was clearly built for visual effect and not for its ability to withstand an earthquake, so when everything started shaking, we hauled ass to the door. It only lasted about 30 seconds, but that was long enough in my opinion. I really could have gone the rest of my life without that happening.

I commend myself for not really panicking so much as just knowing that when the ground starts shaking, you best be out of doors, or in a doorway (which I've never understood, because as numerous comedians note, you never see earthquake rubble surrounding still-intact doorways). Crisis over, we looked around to see if anything was grossly out-of-whack with the building and went inside. The prospective roomie went back to his paperwork (although he did note that maybe this was a sign from above not to take the apartment); I headed to my Blackberry.

I have come to realize that there is a 3-stage process to the social media dealing with major events (e.g. today, the death of Bin Laden, the End Times that never was last May). Stage One is excitement: people tweet and post on FB in a surprised and excited manner... "OMG we're having an earthquake!!!" Stage Two is when all the one-liners come out. In this case, the next hour or so was devoted to social media jesters trying to outzing each other with quake jokes. Some of the best ones I saw included:

"Tomorrow's LA Times headline: 'BWAHAHAHAHA'"
(from a hipster) "At first, I enjoyed the earthquake, but the wrong people started liking it, so now I think it's lame."
"We're gonna have to invade another country over this, aren't we?"
"'Hey, Seattle. Talk to me next time you get 1/2-inch of snow.' ~The East Coast"
"Sorry, Libya, the East Coast just had a 5.8 earthquake, so we're gonna focus on that now. Continue storming the Gaddhafi compound, though."
"This is what you get for televising a Kardashian wedding..."

And it goes on... so much so that the obligatory couple of "too cool for school" types have to whine, "Ugh, now I have to read a bunch of (event) posts..." Stage Three is the posting of appropriate songs via YouTube: In this case, numerous versions of "I Feel the Earth Move" by Carole King, in addition to numerous other earthquake songs. It is also during this stage that the joke photos start circulating. In this case, I think I've had to see the picture of the one lawn chair tipped over about 185 times since this afternoon. Processing over, we return to our daily lives.

I realize that a seismic event like this isn't really cause for comedy, particularly when there are many in Japan or Haiti who would have much rather seen their earthquakes as reasons to make jokes about wrestlers named "The Earthquake". We, quite frankly, are fortunate to have had a 5.9-magnitude earthquake strike Virginia, about 80 miles from our nation's capital and emerge with arguably the worst result being cracks in the top of the Washington Monument (insert phallic joke here). However, we Americans are a sarcastic bunch of wiseasses. When disaster occurs, we first check to make sure everyone's okay... and then we all become stand-up comedians. It's what we do. We are the country that invented "Too soon?" However, not ALL of America needs to deal with earthquakes. We kinda had a nice deal going... the West is for those who don't mind quakes, the Midwest is for those who don't mind tornadoes, the Southeast is for those who don't mind hurricanes, and the Northeast is for those who don't mind snowstorms. We're kinda starting to overlap a little too much. See if you can do something about that, Mother Nature. Thank you.

I Was a Kickball Umpire

Kickball is a fascinating sport, and has become ever more so within my generation's lifetime. It has gone from the sport you feared in gym class if you were a scrawny, unathletic kid... because you had no chance of being any good at it... to a sport that adults play for fun in twilight leagues, and also a good reason to raise money for good causes.

My first adult exposure to kickball came 3 years ago, when the radio station for which I worked at the time helped out with the annual Bill Leaf Kickball Tournament at Onondaga Lake Park, outside of Syracuse. I knew Bill as an intern during a previous tenure at this radio station, and a few years later, he was a sports reporter on radio and television, when he was killed by a drunk driver going the wrong way on I-81. One of Bill's signature pieces was about the adult kickball league at Onondaga Lake Park, and his sister thought it appropriate to put together an annual charity kickball tournament in his memory. I helped the organizers set up, then joined the radio station's team in the actual competition. I don't think my kickball ability had improved much from age 7 to age 29.

Charity kickball and I once again crossed paths recently, when I became involved with Philly Kick for the Cure. I wanted to field a team of my fellow grad schoolers for this tournament, but I learned that trying to get grad students together for anything in the summer is much like trying to herd cats. At least during the school year, you're all in the same place, just too busy to spare the time. During the summer, you're very likely to pick the weekend that many of them are out of town. Lacking the players for a team, I asked if there was anything else I could do to help the cause, and I was told they needed umpires. I have never umpired or refereed anything in my life, unless you count games of baseball I played with friends when I was a kid, and you worked on the honor system in those days. Even then, I made calls that were quite unpopular. However, this was for a good cause, so I jumped at the opportunity.

First, I was sent a list of rules that rivaled the phonebook. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but there are a lot of little kickball-only rules you have to keep track of in order to ensure fair play. The players have to stay behind home plate when kicking the ball, the ball cannot bounce more than a foot off the ground on its way to the plate, batters (or should I say, kickers) get one foul ball with two strikes and they strike out if they kick the next pitch foul. And so on and so forth. Luckily, I'm already trying to get myself back on academic footing with the new semester approaching, so I was able to go into study mode pretty easily.

I started out working as part of a two-man crew with a "veteran" ref who had worked last year's tournament. I covered home plate, he made the calls out in the field, then we switched for the next game. Unsure of how I would interpret and enforce the rules, I decided in the first few games to CALL EVERYTHING. That probably didn't go over too well, and I quickly started to give some benefit of the doubt and wiggle room. After all, this was for fun.

After three games, I was off to work on my own... and in my first inning, I promptly lost track of how many outs there were. It's tough being the only umpire in a game because there's so much you have to remember! With every pitch, I have to remember the count, how many outs, did the kicker cross the plate to kick it, did the ball bounce too high, what's happening in the field, no leading or stealing, how many runs have scored this inning... I eventually had to keep track by counting the number of runs with my left hand and the number of outs with my right hand, hoping I didn't slip and flex or relax my hands, thus forgetting how many of each there were. I still managed to forget the number of outs a couple more times.

Despite the fact that this was a tournament for charity, it was competition, and competition tends to bring out... well, the overcompetitive. I was warned that people would be competitive and maybe take things too seriously, and indeed there were some times where I made a call and immediately was besieged by angry kickballers who could not understand why I would make the call that I did. Occasional incidences of that aside, it was a pretty smooth tournament. The final, fittingly, was played in a steady drizzle... after all, that heightens the drama. The winning team played a far different kind of kickball than everyone else... as in they were a real competitive kickball team, one that apparently enters tournaments like this all the time, and you could tell, because they knew every angle to play when kicking the ball, and in the field they hurled that thing like Peyton Manning trying to hit Reggie Wayne on a 25-yard post pattern. It was quite impressive.

At the afterparty, all was forgiven with the players who had taken umbrage at my enforcement of the rules. It is definitely true when I refer to alcohol as the great equalizer. Sure, it may get you more riled up than you ought to be, but eventually you reach a point where you love everybody... even the guy whose call got you riled up in the first place. Which returns us to the original point of kickball, whether you're a kid or a beer leaguer or a bunch of friends playing together for charity, it's all about having a good time. However, I have determined that even with my total lack of athleticism, I would likely have even more of a good time next year playing the game rather than reffing it. After all, by next year, I'm pretty sure that rulebook's going to get even bigger...

They're Not Getting the Message

I opened up the new issue of Rolling Stone to find a story about the recent flips of New York's WRXP and Chicago's Q101 from rock to FM talk. At first, I found it nice of the magazine to get around to something I blogged about a few weeks back, but upon reading the article, I found lots of unsettling details. Chief among them is the fact that the audience for a #1 rock hit is now roughly one-tenth of the audience for the #1 song on a pop station. Little wonder then that you see so few rock songs cross over to the pop format anymore; they start out having smaller audiences, so why try to expose them to the larger audience when the PPM numbers might drop if you play them?

The results are evident in my everyday life. Earlier today, I was at the gym on campus working out, and happened to overhear a conversation between an older gentleman and an undergrad about music. The older guy was telling the college kid about the roots of rock music and how it all goes back to R&B and blues, and the kid basically had knowledge of "Stairway to Heaven", "Kashmir", and little else. He had never heard of Eric Clapton... let that sink in for a moment. So the older guy mentioned Jimi Hendrix, and how he died at age 27, and started bringing up the other members of the 27 Club, which now includes Amy Winehouse, in addition to Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain...

And then the college kid had a blank stare again. HE DIDN'T KNOW WHO KURT COBAIN WAS. 22 years old and he HAD NEVER HEARD OF NIRVANA.

First off, I immediately felt much older than my 32 years on this planet should make me feel. Secondly, I took note of what the kid DID like... hip-hop and rap. Nothing wrong with that at all, except that even the artists themselves pay attention to and borrow from other genres, so one would think fans like this kid might as well. Then again, when you're set in your ways of listening to your genre of music on either a Pandora channel that you set up to only play that type of music, a satellite radio channel that only plays that type of music, or a terrestrial Urban or Rhythmic station that only plays that type of music, why would we expect you to hear anything else? For that matter, when you listen to a pop station that doesn't play any rock, why would we expect you to know anything about rock?

Bringing me back to my original concerns stemming from this Rolling Stone piece. Speaking of PPMs, the RS piece references the fickle nature of PPM numbers that sink whenever a new or unfamiliar song comes on, leading Rock stations to lean on their catalog more and take fewer chances. I might add it also leads them to stick to the same sound (aggro, male-centric, minor chords) and continue to play the same soundalike bands for fear that anything with a different sound will drive listeners away. Of course, that same sound is precisely WHAT is driving a lot of listeners away, because they are just plain SICK of it. Thus it becomes a vicious cycle. Rock stations try so hard to hang onto their precious P1s (the core audience of their station) that they don't care if everyone else stops listening. End result: smaller audience and fewer opportunities for new and different bands to break through. Again, it's the damn computers and consultants.

Worse though are the two quotes that close the article. The first comes from a spokesperson at CBS Radio, who stated that the changes in NYC and Chicago "shouldn't spell the demise of the entire format. Clearly we have several stations thriving in the format." Apparently, CBS didn't think that WKRK in Cleveland (#12 in the overall ratings there with a pretty respectable 3 share) was one of them, because they just blew that Alternative station up and flipped it to Sports Talk. This leaves the people of Cleveland with two rock stations, a classic rock station and heritage rocker WMMS, which being billed as Active Rock leaves me thinking that you likely won't hear any Mumford & Sons or Death Cab for Cutie or Blink-182 on Rock radio in Cleveland any time soon... or any WOMEN, for that matter. The second quote comes from the owner of Glassnote Records, home of Mumford & Sons and Phoenix, who says that if he were CBS Radio, he would launch a hip rock station in New York in a heartbeat. Except CBS HAD an Alt-Rock station in NYC... it was called K-Rock... and they blew it up 2 1/2 years ago.

So what makes a Rock station worth keeping anymore? I'd say great personalities and a real connection with the audience, but K-Rock had Opie & Anthony and WRXP had Matt Pinfield, and that didn't mean a damn thing. For that matter, all the years of great radio from great DJs and goodwill built up with fans couldn't save the mighty KMET in Los Angeles from becoming a corporate casualty all the way back in 1987. So no matter how much the people lament the loss of such stations, it seems that once again, the people in charge care only about the bottom line and the consultant's numbers, rather than their audience.

Not only are the listeners noticing this, so are the people running the new rival services threatening to take away terrestrial radio's audience. The Senior VP of Marketing at Slacker Radio (another web-based radio service, like Pandora) stated that radio has gotten away from what it does best (expert programming and tailoring to an audience) and become "generic hit machines." In confronting terrestrial radio, he pretty much tells the industry that it has two options: go back to caring about your audience, or we'll do it for you and you can kiss your listeners goodbye. One has to wonder if owners of Rock stations are truly getting the message.

Calling All Humans

Monday was the 30th anniversary of the launch of MTV. We've come so far in our media landscape that we really can't remember a time when something like MTV was so revolutionary and also so unavailable to much of the country. Oh sure, you see the occasional story now about a Time Warner Cable working to get on board with NFL Network or ESPN3, but long gone are the days when it was a patchwork of cable providers across the country, and you had to work to get picked up by one of them. People born in the last 25 years have no idea how important the "I Want My MTV" campaign was, because this important pop culture phenomenon could have died in its infancy if not for that campaign, the rock stars who took part, and the legion of fans who answered the call.

As for the anniversary tributes, the fact that MTV itself largely ignored its own birthday has been covered very well by a lot of other bloggers and for that reason, I'll set that aside. I watched a lot of the MTV30 programming on VH-1 Classic, and I have to say I really liked how they went about doing it. I thought it was great how it was just a random video collage of clips. They threw in MTV's first hour from August 1, 1981 (complete with the countdown) a few times throughout the day, but for the most part, it was jumping from a VMAs performance to part of an episode of "House of Style" or "Daria" to another live performance, and so on. Very much in the spirit of the original MTV (throw everything against the wall and see if it sticks), even if it was devoid of MTV's original raison d'etre (videos). At least it was heavy on the Music part of Music Television.

Seeing that first hour of MTV a couple of times, I feel kinda bad for PH.D. and Robin Lane & the Chartbusters. They had, respectively, the 5th and 10th videos to air on MTV, but unlike the other bands featured in that first hour, they became historical afterthoughts. The Buggles, of course, were no-names as well when "Video Killed the Radio Star" first aired, but they got a huge bump from being the answer to a trivia question, and that continues to this day. The other artists shown in the first hour (Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart, The Who, Cliff Richard, The Pretenders, Todd Rundgren, and Styx) were already established by 8/1/81, and got boosts to their already-established careers by being on MTV. Not so for PH.D. and Robin Lane & the Chartbusters. They were obscure when they got their videos on MTV, and they are still obscure now.

Meanwhile, there were other tributes in other places. I wound up listening to Pierre Robert on WMMR in Philadelphia, who did a 3-hour tribute to MTV by playing songs with memorable videos. He played songs with videos that were shot in Philadelphia at the old Spectrum, he played Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", Metallica's "Enter Sandman", Devo's "Whip It", Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing", and so on. He also interviewed original MTV VJ Mark Goodman, who actually held down the evening shift on WMMR before he went on to MTV and his own status as the answer to a trivia question. Toward the end of the show, Pierre cautioned that he was going to take a few "left turns", and that he did... he started to describe one of the landmark videos, and before long, it didn't take a genius to realize he was talking about "Beat It" by Michael Jackson. This is a song that would never be played on a Rock radio station, but it worked. Immediately afterward, a listener called in to say that no video tribute was complete without "Weird Al" Yankovic. Pierre agreed, and followed "Beat It" with Weird Al's "Eat It", before ending the show with 'MMR favorites The Grateful Dead and "Touch of Grey." God bless the Grateful Dead, indeed.

It was awesome, it worked, and you could tell the audience was tracking with it, and it got me thinking: Why don't we see this happen more often on radio? Why don't we see daring and creativity and "out-of-the-box" thinking on our music radio stations?

Oh, that's right, because most radio stations are run by computers and consultants.

I've already mentioned here my dislike for consultants and the "numbers rule" mentality: Using statistics to dictate how things work is good for academics like myself, but not so good in real life. In the world of radio, it becomes almost iron-clad. Do what the numbers and the consultants tell you to do, on pain of death... or at the very least, unemployment. It happens at stations both big and small; I recently heard of a friend who did a weekend Beatles show on a smaller-time radio station and was fired because management insisted he only stick to the well-known Beatles songs and not play the rarities and deep cuts. Well, what is the friggin' POINT of doing a Beatles show then? If you're listening to this show, you're probably enough of a Beatles fan that you WANT to hear the rarities and the deep cuts! WMGK, the classic rock station in Philadelphia, stops regular programming for a block of Beatles songs not once, but TWICE a day, and they hit the deeper stuff. It shouldn't have to be a large market station for this to happen. Again, a disconnect between the artificial world of consultants and numbers and the real world of actual listeners.

As for the computers, it's so easy to trust the computers' logarithms that many radio program directors and music directors do just that. The result is a station you can set your watch by. At 7:15 every morning, they'll play "Born This Way" or whatever. When I was a PD/MD, I actually (*gasp*) took the time to look through my logs to see what made sense, making sure songs didn't play at the same time everyday, making sure the songs that were in a rotation but never seemed to come up got their spin, things like that. I get that many PDs these days have to handle multiple stations, so setting up the music for the next day is something that has to be done quickly, but show me a PD who dismisses taking the time to tweak a playlist, and I'll show you a PD who has become jaded and doesn't really care anymore.

Even Dwight Douglas from RCS, the company that makes the Selector software, says that humans have to work with the software and not just let it dictate what gets played when. Program directors always claim to use gut instinct to program, but it often doesn't show when the computer is in charge. Douglas wishes that people would take the time to learn the software so that they can use it better, and really that's what it comes down to. Control the computer; don't let the computer control you. Actually put a touch of humanity into your work, and the audience will notice. After all, last time I checked, they're all humans...

Turning back to that first hour of MTV, I know from the research for my Masters thesis that MTV was originally conceptualized as a "Rock format". Hence, the attitude and the mindset in the promos, the hiring of VJs J.J. Jackson and Mark Goodman, who had backgrounds on FM Rock radio, and of course, the selection of songs and artists. But it should be noted that 3 of the first 10 videos played on this Rock-formatted video music channel had WOMEN SINGERS. These, of course, were the days when Chrissie Hynde and Pat Benatar were just two of several prominent women in rock music. Now, of course, there appears to be no place for women on Rock stations.

Again, blame the consultants and their numbers. We have segmented everything so narrowly that we cannot be concerned with anyone outside of the "target demographic" who would listen to the radio station, nor can we even consider that men would like the occasional female singer on a station tailored for them. Unfortunately, the consultants and their numbers tell us that the way to program a station for men is to practically overdose on testosterone, with "Babes of the Day" on station websites, as many songs about drinking, smoking pot, and sex (especially kinky sex) as possible, and all male-fronted bands. If a "token" female-fronted band like Halestorm makes the cut, well it's because Lzzy Hale sings about getting off, so it fits the permissible subject matter.

Seriously, it makes my head hurt. As a human, that tells me something is wrong. As fellow humans, you should feel the same.