ROCK ON RADIO

REWIRE YOURSELF

ROCK ON RADIO

by

Richard Robinson

Once upon a time, in our electronic past, radio broke the news of the beat across America. Wild nights with Alan Freed playing a crazy crazy sound in the heartland of the nation. Elvis shook, kids screamed, parents growled, the sound pulsed and jumped.

Without radio it wouldn't have happened the same way. Sure, cheap plastic record's, Elvis's hips up on TV, Leo Fender's electric guitars and amps all helped, but on a day to day basis, beat by beat, it was radio that made the difference. Speed crazed disc jockeys, stuffing dollars in their pockets, playing the sound, playing with the sound. And a generation buying the sound, believing it.

Golden days from the late '40s, through the payola '50s, into the '60s. When AM radio, at home with the first portables, in the car on the dashboard, did it. Clear channel 50,000 watt stations like WABC in New York, WKBW in Buffalo, WOWO in Fort Wayne, Indiana making it happen from Elvis to the Beatles.

Then the music changed, but AM radio didn't. So the music moved to FM, a new waveband, poor relation to AM radio with less power, lower overhead, and a chance for Tom Donahue and Murray the K and Rosco to play the psychedelic '60s to their heart's content without having to worry about stopping for commercials because there weren't any.

And the audience moved, too. New kids came along with new bands, and soon FM stereo was where the action could be heard. Through the late '60s, into the '70s. Pushing out the foreign language and classical music stations on the FM dial, pretty much killing jazz and classical music in America. And the Japanese joined in, with cheaper and cheaper higher quality FM stereo radios. And the advertiser^ got wise. And FM radio became the radio that nearly everybody who was under 30 at some time between 1965 and 1980 listened to.

In time FM radio became all the things that it had once accused AM of being: stodgy, commercial, unadventurous. Until we have the FM radio of today, playing it safe for dollars, taking no chances with any new music, and busy pretending to its listeners that it is still young and hip and with it.

AM radio was left in a shambles. Some AM stations went all news, some all talk, some just faded into easy listening obscurity, others brought country to the city. But basically AM with all its strength and power couldn't compete.

Now AM radio is trying to make a comeback. By playing the music we're not hearing on FM? By cutting down on compression and commercials? By playing records at the speed at which they were recorded instead of faster so they can play more music and still get in as many commercials? Nope. By going stereo.

AM stereo. Its advocates think it will' make all the difference. The Japanese are delighted. After all, AM stereo would mean they could pitch the consumer, tell the consumer that the present home and portable radios are obsolete. Sell new ones. Pitch AM stereo radios for the Walkman crowd, who will find the reception better than FM stereo Walkmaning.

Big government and big business are working on it. The FCC (the people who license broadcasters to play shit on the air but make it illegal to say so) has been busy considering proposals for AM stereo. They've bundled out our tax money writing papers and making tests and going to lunch to talk about it. The corporations have been pitching them, working late in the labs so they can be the ones who will come up with the systems and the patents that will make them and their stockholders prosper.

At this writing it seems to be down to three AM stereo systems. Three companies are in the running to be the ones to capture a big slice of the AM stereo technology pie: Magnavox, Kahn, and Harris. They're each pitching American broadcasters, Japanese manufacturers, and Federal bureaucrats to convince them that their AM stereo system is what will make the public most happy.

Most happy? I'm not saying that AM stereo is like FM quadrophonic (The FCC spent a lot of our tax dollars sorting that one out, without the slightest consideration as to who cared.), but I'd be willing to bet that AM stereo is not going to do much for radio. It isn't going to give the listener more choice, better music, fewer commercials, or any other obvious benefits. It's just going to cost the listener money, because it will be a new toy to buy.

Will it put AM radio back on its feet? Make it as powerful as it was before FM stereo stole its thunder? No, not at all. Because it has been the music that's done that. When AM came along with rock 'n' roll, people listened, it caught their ear. When AM got into such a tight format that if the music was longer than 2 minutes 59 seconds it wouldn't play that music, well then FM came along and pulled the carpet.

AM could make a comeback without going stereo. There's plenty of music that FM doesn't play, plenty of radio that has been lost by the success of FM. AM could have it all back tomorrow morning. The fact that it hasn't caught on to that proves that AM stereo is a waste of time and technology. After all, who wants to hear all-talk or all-news in stereo?

If the medium is the message, or, in truth, the message is the medium, all you have to do is turn on the radio to discover the obvious: AM has no message at all, and stereo broadcasting won't change that one bit.