Super Oldies Insider Column

December 2003

Tired of the "same old" oldies?


That’s the SuperOldies.com motto, and it’s what I’m hearing more & more of from listeners of oldies radio.

TV shows had me disillusioned that radio DJ’s could spin their own choice of tunes and thrill listeners with obscure songs, so in 1988 I went to college for a Broadcasting & Journalism degree in hopes I too would one day soon have my own rockin’ radio show.

What an eye-opener. A broadcasting school graduate can look forward to minimum wage & sitting bored silly for hours by a computer that runs the whole show, mixing songs, automates station breaks and commercials. Once an hour you get to announce the weather. All this in some remote, small town station with a listening radius of 30-45 miles. And those were the good old days. The station I was at was unionized, until the company was bought out and all union workers let go, regardless of how long they’d been there. The young man who mowed the front lawn was now an announcer. But hey, I went to school for this, so the station manager deemed me worthy of .50 cents an hour more than he made. An automated playlist, what I had to say was on a sheet in front of me, a computer screen with play, pause, and stop buttons. My $3000 for the course and continuing student loan payments were now enabling me to do what a trained monkey could. I quit.

I began traveling nationwide as a musician listening to oldies stations along the way, which are far & few between in Canada might I add. The small stations all turned their midnight shift over to satellite feed and as one station would fade out, I could find another. The problem was I was hearing the same songs every 2 hours.

Most small stations have been bought up by major marketing and broadcast companies working hand in hand to basically be a radio infomercial. Revenue for a radio station relies totally on advertising dollars. The marketing company handles the commercials, and in order for the listeners to “hear them effectively” an ear-catching song must accompany it.

The first name that pops up as a root to the problem is Clear Channel. They own over 1200 radio stations and 37 television stations, with investments in 240 radio stations globally, and Clear Channel Entertainment owns and operates over 200 venues nationwide. They are in 248 of the top 250 radio markets, controlling 60% of all rock programming. They outright own the tours of musicians like Janet Jackson, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Madonna and N‘Sync. They own the network which airs Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Casey Kasem, and the Fox Sports Radio Network. With 103,000,000 listeners in the U.S. and 1,000,000,000 globally (1/6 of the world population), this powerful company has grown unchecked, using their monopoly to control the entire music industry.

How does this effect you? Their consultants have decided what songs have the most advertising and ear-appeal. Unfortunately they’ve summed it down to approx. 300 songs for most oldies stations. At an average of 14 songs an hour, you will be hearing the same artists & songs every 21 hours. As I write this, I’m hearing the same artists within a 2 hour rotation.

Here is the average artist lineup, compare this with what is being played on YOUR local oldies station right now, each song will probably be one of the following:

Beatles / Beach Boys / Rolling Stones / Supremes / Mamas & Papas / Motown artist / Four Seasons / British Invasion artist / Spector girl group / generic 50s song (if any) / 60s party rock song (Wooly Bully, Wild Thing, etc.) / Dave Clark Five / Elvis / CCR / 70s track / 60s pop solo artist (Gary Lewis, Bobby Vee, Hyland & Roe) / Neil Diamond / Top 60s US teen idol group (Monkees, Revere or Turtles) / Simon & Garfunkel.

And that’s ALL we’re supposed to remember. The major hit-makers, and only select top charting titles from each at that. Artists like Johnny Tillotson or Connie Francis who had over 30 chart singles have somehow been forgotten (besides Poetry In Motion). Jack Scott had 4 million sellers, but when is the last time you heard him on the radio? And so many others…

I asked our local oldies station’s Ex-Music Director what the lowdown is on the horrid format we are now subjected to US wide. The reason for the term “ex” is for his own well-being. He had so many complaints about the format that he decided to throw in the occasional oddity. Heaven forbid something that wasn’t in the Top #10. All radio stations have an eternally rolling “air-check tape” so when once a year, when called upon, they have to submit this random tape to the high powers that monitor their format to make sure all is well.

The company that owned this local station heard something out of the ordinary - an “oldie” that wasn’t the “same old”. You see, this Music Director had access via satellite to approx. 3000 songs the main company had on their system, and he threw in a few different songs. Marketing representatives came out from California to little ol’ Duluth, MN to meet with the Music Director. They sat down with his computer and slimmed down the potential song list to approx. 300 titles. These were deemed the songs most likely to catch attention, and thus listeners would hear the upcoming ad. If it wasn’t a song they recognized and perhaps could sing along with, they might flip to another station. And so the format became subject to what could pull in the dollar the most effectively.

The station’s director freaked, he was someone who actually knew his oldies (check with your local station, very few music directors are out of their 20s & 30s). He wanted the old song list back. At this point, he was told NO. He said he had a lot of complaints about the format…change it back. It was at this point that he was physically threatened that it he wanted his job, wanted to not have “problems” that he would shut up and deal with the 300 tracks left. He quit and moved into sales. Sounds like mafia wouldn’t you say!?

Rewind to the late ‘50s. Radio was in a state of turmoil too.

"Payola" is a contraction of the words "pay" and"Victrola" (LP record player), and entered the English language via the record business first coined in 1938. The first court case involving payola was in 1960. On May 9, Alan Freed was indicted for accepting $2,500 which he claimed was a token of gratitude and did not affect airplay. He paid a small fine and was released. His career faltered and in 1965 he basically drank himself to death.

Before Alan Freed's indictment, payola was not illegal, however, but commercial bribery was. After the trial, the anti-payola statute was passed under which payola became a misdemeanor, penalty by up to $10,000 in fines and one year in prison.

The two major US songwriting societies are BMI and ASCAP. By the mid- fifties the independent record

Companies had broken the majors stranglehold on airplay and BMI licensed songs dominated the charts.

In the wake of the quiz show scandals ASCAP urged House Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Oren Harris to look into the recording industry's practice of payola.

The committee decided to look into deejays who took gifts from record companies in return for playing their records on their shows. Fearing the worse the record companies began stepping forward and announcing that they had given money to specific deejays. Soon twenty five deejays and program directors were caught in the scandal. Among the more popular ones were Joe Niagara (WIBG, Philadelphia), Tom Clay (WJBK, Detroit), Murray "The K" Kaufman (WINS, New York) and Stan Richards (WILD, Boston) The probe quickly focused in on the two top deejays in the country, Dick Clark and Alan Freed. Freed's broadcast alliances quickly deserted him. Clark, with more to lose, quickly gave up all his musical interests when ordered to do so by ABC-TV. When asked to sign a statement denying involvement Freed refuse and was promptly fired from his job with WINS.

Clark's court testimony began with telling the committee he had given up all outside interests connected with the recording industry. He also said the only reason he had gotten involved with those businesses were for the tax advantages. Clark admitted a $125 investment in Jamie Records returned a profit of $11,900 and of the 163 songs he had rights to143 were given to him. When questioned about Jamie records it was discovered that Jamie paid out $15,000 in payola, but Clark denied ever accepting any. The committee clearly didn't believe Clark, but he received just a slap on the wrist. In fact, committee chairman Oren Hatch called Clark "a fine young man." As you know, Dick Clark is now one of the most powerful men in the broadcasting & entertainment field.

Back to 2003. The RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America) has gone after thousands of stations broadcasting over the internet. Whether it be 50s, 60, 70s or 80s aimed shows, they have claimed astronomical royalty rates due in order to keep operating. As a result, most of these stations are broadcast out of countries other than the USA. This is where good old rock & roll began, grew, blossomed and now has pretty much died.

The advertising researchers have found that ‘50s lovers are not in the prime buying category anymore and thus to appeal to the younger, buying audience, our beloved fifties music has been replaced with Elton John, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Seger and other ‘70s commercial hits . But the newer music has turned off some longtime listeners. Indeed, a new study found oldies fans abandoning stations in direct proportion to the amount of '70s music on the air.

"The only reason that our oldies stations have moved into the late '60s and '70s is the advertisers are telling us we have to do it in order for them to place business on our radio stations," said Marty Thompson, operations manager at KQOL in Las Vegas and director of oldies programming for Clear Channel.

Is it feasible to think that we won’t be hearing ‘50s hits on our radios anymore?

I have to put in a cheap plug of course for a station that I have helped fire up on the internet. “Where no oldie goes forgotten”…SuperOldies.com is a Canadian company broadcasting 24/7, free, and all of those songs you’ll never hear elsewhere. Every charted song in the Top #100 according to Cashbox between 1955 and 1969. What I consider to be the true “oldies” years. All genres during this time frame (minimal late ‘60s psych, folk-rock I should add), including regional favorites, B-sides, Canadian, UK and even Australian chart hits. Vintage commercials & artist interviews round out the package. I think it’s a relief for our oldies-loving ears, and with an ever-growing internet access growth, I can only hope more and more frustrated music lovers tune in. Some really good memories guaranteed.

There are many more eye-openers when trying to see why radio stinks as bad as it does. It’s an industry that has been kept alive, and soured for the listeners by the almighty dollar. Playlists were tainted in the ‘50s, and certainly are now.

In fact the dictionary has a good description of why we’re hearing the same music on our current stations:

“payment for a commercial favor / taking money for unfairly scheduled airplay of music”

…I think that sounds right.

The word …. “PAYOLA”.

Thanks for reading, until next month, here’s wishing you all a safe & very happy Christmas Season.

Shawn Nagy
SuperOldies.com

November 2003 - The Great Pretenders