Re: Lowry Mays speaks

[Peter Murray <pete@partnercomm.com>]

On Mon, 24 Feb 2003, SteveOrdinetz wrote:

>   rogerkirk wrote:
> 
> >Now it's all down to a commodity level.
> >
> >He just missed one thing:  The Soul
> 
> 
> I can't say as I always admire the way CC does things, but you've gotta 
> admit they took radio out of the horse & buggy era and into the 21st century.
> 
> As far as "soul" missing, I hate to say it, but I heard a similar argument 
> in the 70s when I was working for a company that made phototypesetting 
> equipment.  As linotypes were being replaced with this new equipment I'd 
> hear all these old-line newspaper composing room employees complain about 
> how it's taken all the "pride" out of the job.  In the end the end user 
> doesn't know or care how the paper was put out, just that it was.

Replacing locally-originated/oriented programming, personalities, news, 
etc with technology-inspired format-in-a-can took away a certain "je ne 
sais quoi" from much of modern-day radio. Switching from linotype to 
current technology I'd consider analogus to the change from using carts to 
CD's. It's the delivery of the content, not the content itself.

Don't get me wrong - I do think that automation techniques available today
make many stations viable when otherwise they wouldn't be. I am certainly
no Luddite. It's just that they can be taken that one step too far, into
bland programming-with-a-shotgun-spread.

Just you wait until many of the top-20 markets have ubiquitous decent
wireless bandwidth for a reasonable monthly cost - then mobile streamed
audio will provide a real alternative - with all the choices you get at
your desktop now.

Of course, it's anyone's guess when we'll get to that reality.

(if I may borrow from Chuck "man of many middles" Igo)

-Peter "360 degrees of geekness" Murray (N3IXY)
Pittsburgh, PA