FM Radio: Ups and Downs in the Ozone
Why is it, Allen Shaw, that after the several millions of dollars you’re said to have lost on ABC’s FM stations–through the automated, taped Brother John “Love” format, the half-live, half-taped, big-name format, the all-out revolutionary loose non-format, and, now, the reactionary Top 40-tight format…why do you still have your job?
Allen B. Shaw, Jr., 29-year-old head of ABC-FM, punches the “hold” button again. In half a minute, he is ready: “It’s a tribute,” he says from his suite in the 40-story ABC building in Manhattan, “to the kind of company this is. ABC is one of the most sensibly-operated, willing-to-take-a-chance, to-innovate companies. From Hal Neal, my boss, up to the Chairman, they’re realistic, sensible, nice people.”
The American Broadcasting Company’s chain of FM stations links seven transmitters, from KSFX and KLOS in San Francisco and Los Angeles, through KAUM in Houston. WDAI in Chicago and WRIF in Detroit, to WDVE and WPLJ in Pittsburgh and New York. All seven stations follow the lead of Shaw, who sold himself–with Love–to ABC’s Special Projects Division three years ago.
And whatever Shaw feeds the guinea pig he has closest at hand (WPLJ) is what the rest of the ABC pack get.
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In April, 1969, Love Radio began, and all seven ABC-owned and -operated stations, plus any other stations that bought the package, got 25 repeatable hours of taped programming each week, airmailed from New York: Reverend John Rydgren as the poetry-spouting Brother, plus the wisdom of Howard Smith, who was also tied up with the Village Voice, Eye Magazine, and Youth Concepts, Inc.
In April, 1970, “the slickly-produced Love thing,” as Shaw calls it now, gave way to partially-live programming. Again, it began in New York, with Dave Herman hired away from Philadelphia. Shaw then got Tony Pigg from San Francisco and Jimmy Rabbitt from Los Angeles. Each ABC station received tapes of Herman, Pigg and Rabbitt, each man also did live shows at their local stations, and the stations hired anchormen to fill in the hours between tapes.
In April, 1971, Shaw decided to dump tapes and go all-live, free-form. Previously, the announcers had to fill out music lists before each show and carefully time hourly segments for tape-production purposes. Now, the staffs could do as they pleased, limited only by the required union engineer, abridged record libraries, and news from the ABC network.
In October, WPLJ introduced a tight playlist and clamped down on talk. The other stations followed. Hal Neal, at age 48, a 30-year veteran at ABC and head of the radio division, denies a one-city control of all seven stations–”We pool our thinking…we have a type of a family thing,” he said.
Yet he can’t deny that in Los Angeles, John and his brothers were doing well when their plug was pulled; that half-live was working when call letters and format were suddenly changed again; that the L.A. station, doing free-form, survived the shock and kept solid ratings when New York sprang its latest surprise.
“I might characterize the format changes another way,” Neal says. “We have not really changed the concept of the music we play; we’ve been through refinements, or an evolutionary process of developing.” And Allen Shaw adds: “If they all sound the same, it’s because the best sound is the same. Then that’s fine.”
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“The best sound” is a top-of-the-pops album–cut Top 40 format. A playlist breaks down pre-selected songs into categories–hit singles, cuts from hit albums, oldie singles, old LP cuts, new cuts.
Another AM tool, the pie-chart, dictates exactly when in the course of each hour a jock may play any category of music, when he may cue the engineer to run the news, when he may break in to talk. To talk. “It’s even tighter than AM,” says an announcer at KSFX. “At least on Top 40 you can say what you want, be funny if you like, whatever you feel like being. Here, now, there’s a :52 break coming. I have to start with a back-announce of the songs, and I’m told how: the artist, then the name of the song, last song first, and I can only ad lib about one or two of the songs. Then I have to say the time, then the weather.”
The announcer calls out a number, signifying a song, to his engineer. “And we’re specified to say, ‘Hi, this is–.’ And they tell you how to say it, and they’ll play airchecks of you at these meetings and tell you what you did wrong.”
Allen Shaw: “It’s just good radio principles: little DJ talk, careful spot placement, call-letter frequency, weather…The jingles are not a limitation.”
But…directing an announcer how to say “Hi?”
“It’s like an actor or artist being directed how to do a line. When you have a DJ who’s down, he can bring the entire audience down with him. So we say, ‘There’s a way to greet an audience.’ But you can get away with the more sophisticated aside. Tony Pigg, I would say, is capable of saying things periodically that only someone in San Francisco can appreciate.”
Bob Simmons who, like Pigg, was hired away from KSAN, the strong Metromedia station in San Francisco, recalls the time Pigg fucked up. “He said the weather, then the time. And right after his show, he got a call from a Program Director. ‘Now, Pigg, you’re not supposed to do that.’ I mean, such a waste. They spent so much money to get one of the wittiest guys on radio, and then they cut his balls.”
The KSFX announcer punches his mike on, does the ID, sounding more laid-low than laid-back. “I don’t pay any attention to what I’m doing,” he says. Why does he stay there? “We’re all getting good bread. Plus it’s no hassle if you do what they say. The hardest thing is to go to these meetings and listen to guys who don’t know as much about radio as you do.”
When Shaw and national program director Bob Hannaberry show up in town, the DJ said, “It’s like Hitler and the troops. George Yahraes [general manager at KSFX, demoted from promotion and sales director of the FM chain] strikes me like a patrician who never had to do any work. He regards us totally as his underlings. He’s very into Bill Drake.”
He remembers one particular meeting. The airchecks were being played, and Pigg was heard talking about Fleetwood Mac. “Too long,” said a manager. “Well, I got excited about this song,” Pigg tried to explain, “and I wanted to mention the changes in the band.”
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