[BC] QUESTION FOR THE "MIND" MASSES

[Rich Wood]

------ At 08:50 AM 12/9/2005, Tom Taggart wrote: -------

>The grunge was beginning to get to me, and I was sthinking aboput backing
>off the Omnia. Then we started all Christmas music Thanksgiving day.  Lots
>of old standards--70's Carpenters. 60's. Even some stuff from the 50's and
>40's (White Christmas with Bing and Gene Autry's Rudolf, recorded before I
>was born.  Sounded great.

In the "olden days" artists and engineers felt that recording should 
come as close to the original as possible. The use of processing 
gadgetry was for "artistic" purposes. At WGBH we tried 4 channel 
sound with WCRB. We also had a show that ran original 2 track Dolby 
masters of commercial recordings with Dolby decoded at the input to 
the transmitter. Those were the days when stereo stores and 
conventions included FM as an audio source.

I have a friend who's current job is providing a human click track to 
artificially created boy bands. They sing to his track. It's a Milli 
Vanilli kinda thing.

I strongly believe that most losses radio has encountered are caused 
by lousy material, bad taste and grunge processing. When most of 
those recordings were made there weren't portable devices. I don't 
believe listening is an all or nothing proposition. We need "more 
data" on the use of these devices to see how long people listen to 
them at a sitting and compare it to radio. What I see are people 
jogging with MP3 players, then getting in their cars and turning on the radio.

Owners, Managers and Salepeople who haven't been exposed to listening 
data want it loud. Most of my career I've had access to all Arbitron 
data so I could follow my syndicated stations. I go back to the days 
of Jim Schulke when he bullied his affiliates about everything from 
processing to promotion. Those stations that processed as he demanded 
were, almost universally, dominant in their markets. It was the kind 
of processing unheard of today. Even AOR stations (who took Easy 
Listening formatics and low spot loads) processed cleanly. Listeners 
were passionate about recreating a concert or studio experience.

Tell your sales guy the last source of Dilythium crystals is on the 
other side of the wormhole. He doesn't want to go there.

Rich