From Chris Core, long-time and now ex-mid day guy at WMAL, Washington, writing in Sunday's Washington Post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052302450. html

Very nice. My favorite part about this article is that Core correctly extrapolates his experience to other businesses and industries. Things were just different 30 years ago. However, the guys who just arbitrarily cut staff to make the financials look better to investors are bound to lose because they are throwing away talent and expertise when they do this.

Here is a question specifically about media: what are the increasing amount of choices and the related loss in audience share going to do in the long run? In the WMAL example, that station went from having 25% of the Washington radio listeners to having just a few percent. The station just isn't as important as it used to be and due to declining revenues, they have become more limited in what they can do. Will there come a day when most media is of YouTube quality? I am afraid this could one day become a reality.

We live in a fragmented culture. It therefore follows that media will also be fragmented. XM Radio and the internet is part of the shift to diversity. The American Culture in 2008 cannot be brought back to where it was. We have become more isolated and selfish. Its not as easy as de-fraging our computers for us to get back to connection with our neighbors and society as a whole. Programming that serves a specific mind set is the future. Henry Ford began with a simple automobile. How many makes and models are available now?

To answer the automobile analogy...not many models are worth shit in my opinion.

The poor bastards at MAL didn't deserve to be cut. Citadel is being run into the ground by an accountant's mentality. The irony is that Citadel before Suleman was arguably a great small market company. The second great irony is that (again) arguably the single best radio station in America is under their umbrella. I was going to say that the management team at KGO don't care who owns them but obviously they do. There is one great story about a former RVP being thrown out of Mickey Luckoff's office when he flew in and dared assert his mid-level corporate bs. This same former RVP now has Central Oregon connections.

As Radiohead says, we live in a fragmented culture. In my opinion there are a whole bunch of fragments not being served very well.

What a wonderful opportunity!

Happy Memorial Day!!

I agree 100% with the fragmented culture comment. "New" technologies, such as "new" stations on FM, cassette Walkmans (and their successors, portable CD players and digital file players), Cable TV, the Internet, and satellite radio have helped to bring this about. People like things that are a feel like a good "fit" to their tastes and psychographics, so--I agree--there is no way to put that genie back in his bottle. I think that eventually this fragmentation will hit a limit due economic reasons. When the niches get too small, it gets harder and harder to recuperate the production costs of whatever the media might be (radio, TV, music, movies, etc). Where is this limit? I don't think that anybody has the answer, but it is a very fascinating question.

....We have become more isolated and selfish....

BINGO!

What is lost in the mix is that the wealthy can get wealthier by trimming employees. The flip side is the tax burden will have to increase to pay the social costs. Pay em thru welfare or put them on the payroll, you're going to pay one way or the other. Personally, I would think a working person is more apt to spend their money on consumables therefore creating more opportunity. The welfare income is more likely spent on necessities of life with nothing left over for economic growth.

We are becoming a no frills society fast.

Some kind of a version of Europe. Dont drive much, take public transportation. Living in a hovel in a crowded neighborhood, Tea @ 5, Fish and Chips on Friday nights, out for dinner once every two weeks if your lucky. Go on Holiday by taking the train or fly and stroll the same beach for two weeks, then go home.

The Rich get Richer and the middle class gets poorer and the poor live off the state and become the new middle class. And why shouldnt Broadcast Radio follow this new refreshing paradigm ?

And we are about to elect a president who doesnt know the difference between Auschwitz and Buchenwald when telling a family story. This is all part of the plan, you know. Century 21 has arrived.

" Go on Holiday by taking the train or fly and stroll the same beach for two weeks, then go home."

Sounds good to me.

Downright Utopian

"And we are about to elect a president who doesnt know the difference between Auschwitz and Buchenwald when telling a family story."

I always got those two places mixed up too.

> Century 21 has arrived.

In some respects, I long for the days when Century 21 was just the name of a real estate company.

My family war story is better......

When Hitler foud out my father was in Belgium, and on the way, he killed himself....

Or when Century 21 was the name of a world's fair in Seattle.

I stood for hours gazing at the DJs inside the glass encased studio booth on one of the fairways. The station was KING. You could see them all around each side of this glass studio while they did their shows. I was 11 years old in the Summer of 1962. They had cart machines and quite a few of them. I had never even seen a tape cartridge or the machines they put them in before ! I was fascinated with all this of course. My folks kept comming back bugging me about how I was missing all the rest of the fair. I didnt care, I just kept watching all this and trying to figure out why sometimes these DJs just stood there doing nothing while programing continued over the air monitor. I finally figured out that they were going back to the main studio occasionally. Brilliant huh? I got a clue after awhile.

We went to the fair again that Summer, and I was banned from the radio studio by my parents !

> We went to the fair again that Summer, and I was banned from the radio
> studio by my parents !

You were having too much fun!

I was at the Seattle World's Fair the day in 1962 when Telstar beamed the first live video from Europe to the U.S. It was July 23rd, according to Wikipedia. I saw it in front of the same KING Broadcasting Exhibit. I thought it was the highlight of the fair. It was the same week that I first heard KJR on my Westinghouse transistor radio as I walked across 1st Ave. I had no idea that I would work there 25 years later.

Well, this has slid a bit off-topic, but it's too fun to resist. In the late 60's, I remember the studio at the top of needle. I want to say it was KIRO, but not positive. I think Jim French did his show from there well after the fair. Then, later in the 70's KJR used it for Friday night high school football broadcasts, with Memorial Stadium 600 feet below. I'll never forget popping my head in and giving KJR night jock Tracy Mitchell my Nathan Hale football score. I think we won. Good times.

Ya, that studio on top of the Space Needle was KIXI for a number of years, and I dont know exactly when, but it seems to me it was in the 60s and maybe the early 70s, then it was KIRO and KJR later. On the top of the hour there was some kind of light on the top of the Needle that KIXI used to turn on when they went into network news. I remember some story about that...

I don't see a radio station in the diagram but maybe it's the wrong side:

http://i168.photobucket.com/albums/u184/fronning/crosssectionoftherestaurantando bser.jpg

Paul probably can address that one, since he went up there at least once.

Not once, probably 25 times in my lifetime, what with out of state visitors, family events, etc.

That diagram is a little hard to figure out. I really don't know if the radio studio was built in the original plans, or if it came later. I do know it was on the eastern side on the observation deck floor. It seemed to be empty most of the time.

I went to the fair and was facinated by some kid who just stood and stared at the glass KING studio booth as he watch the DJs inside. I missed the whole damn fair watching that kid!

:-D

HAAAAA...touchet !

And another thing I learned that day about Carts and Cart machines ( I didnt know what they were called ). One of those Announcers layed a cart down on the table, and it was right next to the glass where I was standing. I saw the end of it and recognized that there was electromagnetic tape inside these square things. My Grandfathers both had reel to reel machines then and I knew what EM Tape was cause I got to play around sometimes and record myself for fun and games once in awhile.

So I figured out right then and there that those square things they put in those machines were actually some kind of recording tape and the light bulb came on.

I remember Frosty Fowler doing the morning show on KING-AM from the space needle studio in the 1960's. Whenever visiting the needle, it was a letdown to see no one broadcasting from the booth, as it was mainly used for the morning show - a time of day when the needle was not open to the public.

The booth, I recall, was near the steps to go outside with a spectacular window view of Seattle. The inside walls had those 1950's-60's sound deadening tiles and there were some pegs with 45 rpm records on them. I don't remember other equipment cause maybe I was too young to see inside completely.

I think it was in Popular Electronics where I saw an article on the Space Needle studio, mid-60s. The hook for the article was that they had a CB up there to collect traffic reports from the public. (This was back when CB was becoming a hobbyist thing, but before most people had seen one.)

I spent a lot of time gazing into the KISN window, as my dad worked a block from there, though I was seldom downtown on weekdays when the studio was manned. As the board was custom-designed for their format and more or less ergonomic, and the DJs were of course all highly skilled in its use, it wasn't actually very interesting to look at (i.e., no blinking lights, few labels).

So the bank of world time-zones clocks on the wall (a gimmick from, I guess, the early days of the Today Show) was actually the most eye-catching element, though I think there was a mirror mounted behind the DJ so one could see the console while looking in from the front.

The mirrors had a more functional purpose after a few bullits went through the windows in that KISN studio.

> As the board was custom-designed for their format and more or less ergonomic, and the DJs were
> of course all highly skilled in its use, it wasn't actually very interesting to look at
> (i.e., no blinking lights, few labels).

There used to be an article online about that board, but said article seems to be long-gone. Does the board in this photo look like the custom built KISN board?

http://bp0.blogger.com/_isUvlzkZPIQ/RquIoVy2ryI/AAAAAAAAAhs/qWisl-baN-Y/s1600/em peror_kisn.jpg

Can anybody explain the operation of that board? What I remember from the article was that the board was designed so that all the DJs had to do was press a button when they wanted to start a record, a cart, or open the mic. AGC boxes were built into the board so that the levels between the different sources would always match properly, freeing the DJs from having to adjust levels. The cart machines were also built into the board so that the DJ didn't have to reach very far to stick in a cart. Although this is all primitive by today's standards, I think that the ingenuity and creativity of the enginner who designed and built this thing is cool and timeless.

Alfredo,
I don't know if that is the actual board from KISN, but it sure looks similar to it. I say I am not sure because the orientation looks wrong from my memory. The DJ's were on the wall side of the room, not the window side. If you were outside looking in, the DJ would be looking to the west (left). They were not in the "corner" room, but the second room, and there was a news studio to the right (east) of the DJ booth. That picture looks backwards.
I started looking into that room when they first went there. As time went on, I went by there less and less so they may have changed it at one time.

That was not the console they started with at that location. The original one was a narrow RCA four channel board with custom side mixers. They changed to the custom board later. Stoner has said that the board was built by Byron Swanson. I would accept that because I don't know but I do remember seeing it in there but I don't remember when I first saw it there. It was simple for the DJ's to use because, as you mentioned, everything was preset and they were so heavily compressed with a Gates Sta-Level that it didn't matter, loud stuff was pushed down, and low stuff was brought up. When they were talking normal or when there were quiet passages with the mike open, you could hear the background level pickup and you would always hear trucks going by the window and some loud cars, also.

Last I heard, Byron was still in town. Perhaps those that know him could ask him about it. Of course, we are talking 45 years ago.

I still get a 404 error.

I remember watching Mr. Murphy in "the window" whilest being driven past in 1959. He was always impeccably dressed in white shirt and skinny tie. A handsome lad he was at 19 years old! I hear tell he's still a handsome lad. However, I also heard that he doodled with his pen on that custom board while talking on the request line with underage women!

Try this URL:

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2007/08/real-don-steele.html

If you click on the photo of Steele at the board, you'll see a larger version. Apparently, the links on this page somehow get generated dynamically each time you visit, so copying the link location doesn't work.

First time I ran across that snap it puzzled me, too. But if that station wagon behind him is in Wentworth and Irwin's showroom (i.e., across 10th and above street level), then it's taken looking ENE and the orientation of the desk seems right (mostly S toward Burnside but tipped a bit toward the corner). The reflections in that window were also puzzlers until I noticed the microwave feed horns atop the Oak St telco building among them.