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Date Posted: Tue 03/04/03 - 3:34:25 PM
Author: henry
Subject: Re: Dialing Mc Radio
In reply to: Tom 's message, "Dialing Mc Radio" on Mon 03/03/03 - 8:28:54 PM

A but long, but just for the history, here's the stories:
(I usually don't like the Trib, but I like these stories)

>>>>


'Voicetracking' Attracts Big Share of Criticism

Producer Casey, left, Chunga and Mister, seen in the studio at modern-rock station 107.5 "The End," are real live people whose patter attracts a large audience in the Salt Lake City market. But on many stations, computer-rigged DJ voices may come from other cities, and be broadcast long after the speaker has left the studio.
(Al Hartmann/The Salt Lake Tribune)
BY BRANDON GRIGGS
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Every weekday, disc jockey Scott Tyler chats between songs on KZHT (94.9 FM), a youth-oriented Salt Lake City station that plays Britney Spears and Avril Lavigne. He recites the station's call letters and sometimes plugs upcoming Utah concerts. KZHT's Web site lists a Salt Lake City request line and says Tyler is "waiting for your call."
But what Tyler's listeners probably don't realize is that he is not doing his show from KZHT's Salt Lake City studio. In fact, he's not even in Utah. Tyler's show is imported daily from Chicago, where he is a DJ on a station called KISS-FM.
Thanks in part to digital editing that allows KZHT to wrap Tyler's prerecorded voice around songs and commercials, this practice, known as "voicetracking," or sometimes "time-shifting," is becoming more and more common. Shannon Leder, a San Diego DJ, is heard weekday mornings on Utah rock station KCPX (105.7 FM), and the new KISS (97.1 FM) imports two out-of-town weekday radio hosts. Unlike syndicated radio "personalities" such as Rick Dees and Howard Stern, these voicetracked DJs often sound local by commenting on Utah weather, news or local promotions.
Defenders of this practice say it brings the nation's top DJs to cities that otherwise would not hear them.
"You can have really high-quality announcers from around the country speaking about local topics -- and it's cost-effective," says Stu Stanek, who runs Clear Channel's Salt Lake City stations. "I don't think [DJs not being local] is important as long as they cover local topics, like a big concert coming here. We school them on local issues, so I don't really see that as a negative."
But other industry veterans see this type of voicetracking as deceptive. Some DJs say it is being used to put them out of work. Others say that radio stations that rely too much on out-of-town DJs risk alienating their audiences.
"Over a period of time, the listener catches on and they don't like it," says John Webb, owner of Salt Lake City smooth jazz station The Breeze (97.9 FM). "If you have someone who's good locally versus someone who's good nationally, the local person will win every time."
The biggest importer of voicetracked talent on Utah airwaves is Clear Channel, the corporate giant that has become a lightning rod for everything critics say is wrong with radio. The company owns stations in almost every major U.S. radio market and reaches more than 100 million listeners daily; it also owns SFX Entertainment, the nation's largest concert promoter. Critics have accused Clear Channel of everything from overprogrammed playlists to ruthless business practices.
"Nobody roots for the leader," shrugs Clear Channel's Stanek, who maintains the company's broad reach is good for radio. Because of its size, Clear Channel has run nationwide contests with much bigger prizes -- up to $1 million -- than individual stations can afford to offer, he says. The company also owns a network of 48 KISS-FMs around the nation; this means that KISS's pop music fans, when traveling to another city, are assured of finding a familiar-sounding station -- much in the way that some travelers rely on McDonald's.


>>>>


Utah Radio Waves Dominated by a Few




(Photo Illustration by Francisco Kjolseth/The Salt Lake Tribune)
BY BRANDON GRIGGS
© 2003, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

For Andy Fletcher, they were among the fondest memories of his youth: He and his brother, growing up in Salt Lake City in the 1970s, would lie in their beds at night and listen to the radio.
Back then, stations played a bit of everything -- Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin. To Fletcher, under his covers in the darkness, the variety of the songs suggested a larger world beyond.
"I could listen for hours," he says. "Back then, it was album-oriented rock. You wouldn't just hear 'Stairway to Heaven.' You'd hear deep cuts off an album, like 'Misty Mountain Hop.' "
These days, Fletcher discovers dozens of new records weekly as owner of Orion's Music in Salt Lake City. But he doesn't hear them on commercial radio. Fletcher hardly listens to the radio anymore, because he can't stand hearing the same songs over and over.
"The record labels and the radio stations are killing themselves by focusing on the Top 40 or the top 200 titles and pretty much ignoring everything else," says the 37-year-old. "There's great music out there. But the radio stations just aren't playing it."
Fletcher's eclectic tastes may not reflect mainstream music listeners -- especially adolescent ones, who are less discriminating about radio programming. But he is not alone in his disenchantment with commercial music radio. Nationwide, radio listening has declined about 10 percent over the past six years, according to surveys by Arbitron, the nationwide radio ratings company. Arbitron found that in fall 2002, a Salt Lake City listener spent an average of 16 hours and 15 minutes a week tuned to the radio -- down 45 minutes from the year before.
Why this slippage? Some observers cite competition from the Internet. A recent study found that about 25 million Americans listen to Internet-only radio through their PCs, while millions more download free music from Napsterlike Web sites. Others blame digital cable radio, which is available through your TV, or satellite radio, available to subscribers who buy a special receiver and pay a monthly fee. But these technologies, still in their infancy, draw only tiny audiences.
A larger factor, longtime listeners say, is the evolving nature of commercial radio itself. In an era of corporate consolidation, more and more stations today are owned by large media conglomerates whose profit-driven mentality demands high ratings -- and correspondingly high ad rates. That, for the most part, means safe, accessible programming: strict formats, tight playlists, hummable songs and familiar hits by familiar artists.
Increasingly, it also means on-air personalities who are not live -- and often not even local. To cut costs, many stations require their disc jockeys to pre-record snippets of chat that, with the help of computers, are then inserted between songs. This relatively new technique, known as "voicetracking," allows the DJ to sound live long after he or she is off the clock. Some big radio companies take this a step further and surreptitiously air their most popular DJs in multiple cities.
Music stations also have lost ground to talk radio, which has exploded in popularity over the past two decades. Witness the most popular radio station in the Salt Lake City market, KSL (1160 AM), which has a news-talk format.
Then there are the commercials. Compared with 10 years ago, most stations have added a few extra ads each hour -- an increase that has driven away some listeners.
"Radio has changed in the last five to 10 years, and it's probably been for the worse," says longtime Utah DJ Jon Carter, now at "The Arrow" (103.5 FM), a Salt Lake City classic rock station. "It all sounds the same."

Still Popular: A century after its birth, radio remains an enormously popular mass medium. In an average week, radio reaches 223 million people, or 94 percent of all Americans aged 12 or older.
Thanks to Utah's population boom, Salt Lake City is now the 32nd-largest radio market in America, up from 36th only two years ago. It also is one of the most competitive. The Wasatch Front boasts almost 60 stations -- the most, per capita, of any city in the nation. The crowded airwaves are partly the product of geography: Station owners can erect a radio tower atop a mountain, usually the Oquirrhs' Farnsworth Peak, and transmit a clear signal across a broad area.
Anybody looking to launch a major new FM station in the Salt Lake City market -- which stretches from Ogden to Provo -- must take over an existing signal because no new ones are available. Jostling for space on the FM band alone are four pop stations, three country stations, five classic rock stations and three modern or alternative rock stations.
"From a listener perspective, it's a mixed bag," says Bruce Reese, CEO of Bonneville International, an LDS Church subsidiary that owns 34 stations around the country, including Utah market leader KSL (1160 AM). On the one hand, Reese says, listeners have more choices than ever. On the other, "there are really more radio stations than there are viable formats for them."
While the number of Salt Lake City radio stations has mushroomed over the past decade, the number of station owners has shrunk. Before the 1990s, federal regulations prohibited companies from owning more than one AM and one FM station in each market -- and no more than 28 nationwide. Then came the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which eliminated many media ownership restrictions. Large companies immediately began gobbling up stations from coast to coast.
"It was the Oklahoma land rush," says Tom Taylor, editor of InsideRadio.com, a Web site devoted to industry news. "There's been faster consolidation in the radio industry than in any other sector of the media . . . much faster than anyone could have foreseen."
Four corporations own 17 of Salt Lake City's 25 highest-rated stations. Industry heavyweight Clear Channel, based in San Antonio, owns 1,200 stations in the country, including seven in Salt Lake City. Las Vegas-based Citadel Communications counts seven Salt Lake City stations among more than 200 it owns. The two biggest local players are Bonneville and Simmons Media, which between them control about a third of the market. In November, Bonneville bought three stations from Simmons; the sale still must be approved by the Federal Communications Commission.
These companies might control an even bigger slice of the Utah radio pie, but the FCC still limits anyone from owning more than a handful of radio stations in each market. In Salt Lake City, that cap is eight. Clear Channel also sells ads on three Salt Lake City stations owned by its affiliate, Mercury Broadcasting. Although a Clear Channel executive calls this arrangement "completely legal," rivals gripe that it allows the company to skirt FCC rules.
Smaller stations complain that consolidation within the radio industry gives an unfair advantage to big companies such as Clear Channel that use their clout to squeeze advertisers, bully concert promoters and even extract payments from record labels in exchange for playing songs by their artists. Radio executives deny any unscrupulous business practices. Record companies make legal payments to radio stations for help in promoting artists' local concerts -- not for airplay, executives say.
"It's about what the audience wants to hear, not what the labels are pushing," says Stu Stanek, who runs seven Salt Lake City stations owned by Clear Channel. Stanek believes consolidation has benefited radio owners and listeners alike. "When deregulation first happened, a majority of stations in America were losing money. Now a majority of stations are making money. Bigger companies have more wherewithal, and more wherewithal means better pro- gramming."
In recent months, this debate has reached Congress. U.S. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., has introduced legislation that would prevent the FCC from loosening media ownership restrictions. Feingold says his bill would help consumers and independent radio owners by cracking down on "anti-competitive practices," and his efforts are being closely watched by locally owned Salt Lake City stations.
The big corporations "control what you hear," says John Webb, owner of smooth jazz station "The Breeze" (97.9 FM). "Do I think that's good for our business? No, I don't. Radio is a local medium. It's important that the programming be driven by local tastes rather than national tastes."

>>>>>


I'll tell you this much, it sounds like the Breeze against the world. Go Breeze! (I set my former 97.1 preset to 97.9)

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