On Apr 26, 2005, at 10:27 AM, Maarten Baute wrote:
That particular show was a solo ride by dave siska so I dunno even
know
the track... but I've CC'd him.
I've probably lied today by telling on a forum that Sonic Sunset is
the best
radioshow in the world at the moment ;-)
I was complaining about the quality of the belgian house/techno
related show
SWITCH on the Studio Brussel station. They are playing way too much
Electro-House for my taste. They assured me it is not possible to
deliver
quality and still have a large audience. Then I talked about SS. I
don't
know hom many listeners you have... but there are 6 million Dutch
speaking
belgians, and 10 million people in chicago?
Ha!! well thanks for your support Maarten.... the difference may be
they are commercially funded by radio advertisers? We are fortunately
not advertiser supported, which means we are sort of living in a fools'
paradise. ;) So I don't have to worry if what we spin fits a certain
advertiser's marketing demographic target (which is usually the way a
commercial station gets to the uncomfortable reality of QUANTITY of
listeners over the QUALITY of the music they play). This setup is a
luxury that the community radio ssytem in the US affords us. And we
just happen to have a big listening reach because of the huge
population density of chicago, especially by the lakeshore where we
broadcast from. But we have to do annoying pledge drives to raise
money for the station expenses periodically. Still, i'd rather do that
than have to have commercials interrupting the mixes, and then be under
the thumb of demanding advertisers who begin to dictate what you must
play so that your music appeals to their advertising target.
Gramaphone Records used to sponsor/underwrite the show in part, but due
to their own economic realities they had to stop... but that was about
as good as an underwriter as we could have ever asked for!
I think many major US cities have good alternative college/community
radio programming... and even small and medium size cities if they have
universities, etc. I can think of many other good ones. They're just
hidden down on the left end of the dial and usually lower powered
transmitters than the giant ClearClannel monopoly commercial stations
have. Most people don't know this but music selected at most
ClearChannel stations in the US is not even picked by a human. A
database figures out the right mix of major label music to suit
marketing demographics dictated by advertising spend. All the "DJs" do
is announce and transition from programming into commercials and local
announcements such as weather and traffic. It's pathetic, really, some
are even recorded days in advance and stitched together by a technican,
the shows aren't even "live" in any sense of the word. Of course
there are some exceptions for specialty programming shows where the Dj
is positioned as genre expert (blues, jazz, etc.,.. usually on sunday
nights in local markets) but usually a database is still the "selector"
for most prime time programming on "hit radio" kind of stations.
peace,
--
MM
http://sonicsunset.com
