"Did you know that Tom Clay actually lost his gig at KDAY over Johnny Mathis? I heard this one on the air as a 16 year old high school student in San Diego around 1960-61 and later confirmed it with Tom when we worked together [Honolulu, San Diego and Los Angeles]. 

He came on the air one afternoon and talked about how much he loved Johnny Mathis and that as we listeners knew, he played a lot of Mathis records on his show. He said that he’d received a memo from management saying that Johnny Mathis didn’t fit the format and he [Tom] had been ordered to stop playing Mathis. There was then a dramatic pause after which Tom said: 'Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Johnny Mathis hour.' He then proceeded to play an hour of Mathis. 

I thought it was a radio bit but the next day Tom was gone and whoever was doing the show made no mention of him. I never heard his voice again until he showed up at KGMB in Honolulu in 1966. His first on-air shift was filling in for me!! Kind of amazing. 

As I said I asked him about the Mathis thing and he confirmed that it was no bit. KDAY fired him and he went through a long period of unemployment. Becoming so broke he had to sell his wife’s wedding ring to make the rent. The deal went down at Martoni’s. Tom was foolish enough to take a check. It bounced. He never saw the guy or the ring again.  

Thought you might find the story interesting, Don. Glad you’re back and sending intermittent stuff. I missed you." - Neil Ross

*** 

"Johnny Mathis was a great high jumper when he attended S.F. State - 6' 5 1/2". He was asked to attend Olympic trials in 1956 but his music career was taking off and he decided not to try out for the Melbourne Olympics." - Bob Fox

Terrestrial Radio Sucks
by Ken Levine

Terrestrial Radio is the guy in an iron lung who’s smoking. Except the guy is smart enough to know he’s dying.

For almost a hundred years Terrestrial Radio has ruled the airwaves. And as readers of this blog know, my first love (besides Natalie Wood) is radio. That’s why it really pains me to not only see it heading towards its own demise but sprinting. Now we have satellite radio (such as it is), internet radio, music services like Pandora, our own playlists, and my book-on-tape. At one time the only way you could hear the hits was to tune to a terrestrial station or maybe two. Now there are literally thousands of alternatives. On iTunes radio there are 543 stations streaming Top 40/pop music. Right this minute a Lady Gaga song is on 523 of them. There’s probably a 24/7 station that plays nothing but Spandau Ballet – and they only had one hit. So how does Terrestrial Radio deal with this? By ignoring it. By increasing their commercial load.

What’s the single biggest complaint listeners have about Terrestrial Radio? No. Rush Limbaugh is number two. Commercials! Of course! So to counter-program all these alternative delivery systems they just add more commercials. Do stations know they’re mortgaging their future? Of course again. But they don’t care. They just want to bring in a profit now. In their list of priorities, the listener falls right below watering the plants in the lobby.  

Listen to your local Top 40 station (if you can). There are probably close to 20 minutes of commercials an hour. When one of those stations goes into a spot break it can last up to seven minutes. Do the math. Most commercials these days are 30 seconds. That’s 14 commercials all at once. Even the Guantanamo detainees weren’t subjected to that. And not only is that horrific for the listener (assuming he hasn’t already tuned out or given the name of Bin Laden’s courier), how’d you like to be the sponsor with your commercial number 8 of 14? What impact does that have? None. You’re taking your advertising budget and lighting cigars with it. And what about news and sports formats? Those stations are either on AM or if they’re on FM they come with the full load of commercials. Here’s the problem with AM: You can’t buy AM radios anymore. Go to a Best Buy or any major store selling radios. Good luck finding an AM. And if you want an AM transistor radio – the one-time staple of every teenager -- your best bet is to buy one on ANTIQUE ROADSHOW. Transistor radios that receive AM are almost impossible to locate. You have to special order them as you would a Betamax player or Teri Hatcher’s self help book.  

Most people listen to the radio in their cars. For any of these new delivery systems to really make a dent they have to be easily available on the dashboard. Satellite radio already is. For a number of years now auxiliary outlets have been available so you could play your iPods over your auto’s audio. And in newer models iHeart Radio – a collection of stations although most commercial – is an option. Manufacturers are hard at work making receivers that will play streaming internet radio. You’ll be able to set push buttons for your favorite internet station the way you’ve set one for KISS-FM (every city has a KISS-FM).  

On the new Prius you can mix and match the push buttons. 1 – a satellite station, 2 – your favorite FM station, 3- satellite, 4—an AM station, etc. And once internet stations are as easy to play in the car as terrestrial stations then the terrestrial stations are toast. Internet stations contain little or no commercials. Their overhead is minimal. And it’s only a matter of time before a few break out and become viral hits. That means that some dude’s station that he runs out of his mother’s walk-in closet could be worth more than the terrestrial stations Clear Channel and Cumulus and CBS overpaid millions for. This does not just apply to music-based stations.  

Long-time talk show host Tom Leykis now does his show exclusively on the internet. And in less than a year he has millions of listeners. I am firmly convinced that the next great radio star, the next Howard Stern, will come from an internet station. Actually, that’s almost a given since Terrestrial Radio, in another effort to cut costs, rarely employs live talent. They just run syndicated programming or voice tracks. So there’s no training ground for young talent anymore. Asking Terrestrial Radio to clean up its act is like asking Lindsay Lohan to clean up hers. You know it’ll never happen (even after that jaw-dropping Liz Taylor movie).  

Terrestrial Radio needs to cut way back on the commercials for starters. Then they have to figure out what they can provide that all of the alternatives can’t. Local programming is one answer. I’ve heard so many stories of tornadoes and freak storms hitting cities and the citizens turn to the radio to get disaster coverage and are treated to Carrie Underwood’s greatest hits. It used to be that radio had an obligation to provide public service to the community. That’s now a joke. Who cares where the emergency shelters are located? Taylor Swift has a new single! The other thing Terrestrial Radio can offer is personalities. If everyone plays the same songs it’s what’s in between them that make the difference. But personalities cost money. And reducing commercials loses money. So it will never happen. Lindsay Lohan will be arrested for urinating on Kim Kardashian and Terrestrial Radio will go on believing surveys that say that most people still listen to them. I think those surveys are from the same pollsters that predicted Romney was going to win.  

As Bob Dylan said, “the times they are a ‘changin’.” You can find that song on one of 267 iTunes stations streaming Classic Rock and 212 Oldies streams. With little or no commercials. 

Note to Terrestrial Radio: Cigarettes will kill you. (Essay written by Ken Levine: bossjock@roadrunner.com ) 

2.15 Ken Levine's Terrestrial Radio Sucks Blog  "Oh, I don’t know. Every study I read says that cume is up but TSL is down. If there’s more cume, there are MORE listeners. Cut back on commercials and viola, more TSL. And Satellite? Puleeze. Once the introductory free subscription runs out, these radios go silent until the next Sirius 'free this month' promotion, like, um, NOW.   I recently bought a new car that offered Internet service, for hundreds of dollars. Pass. Radio, for what it is and what it does, and how quickly you can tune it in and hear it with a sound quality that outperforms everything but CD’s, is terrific." - Ed Mann

2.15 More Levine Rant Reaction 

"I don't smoke!" - Fred Lundgren, KCAA  

Brother Walrus
By Ken Leighton, San Diego Reader  

(February 14) Rich “Brother” Robbin returned to the airwaves last week, spanning six decades of spinning the hits in San Diego.He returned to afternoons on oldies station Walrus 105.7.

Robbin started in 1969 as a nighttime jock on Boss Radio 136 KGB, when everyone listened to music on AM radio.

Robbin moved to KCBQ in 1971 and became program director there in 1973. He is lauded as San Diego’s most successful rock-radio figure — San Diego’s current top–rated station, KSON, has a 6.0 rating; Robbin’s 1973 KCBQ once ruled local airwaves with a 13.4, dominated by his rapid-fire delivery and upbeat tunes. 

Robbin’s first radio gig was as a 14-year-old intern in 1958 at WCCO, Minneapolis. “They still had live-music shows and they would play an occasional 78 RPM record.” He launched a backyard pirate-radio station in 1960 in high school.. His first commercial radio gig was 1963, where he spun Top 40 hits from seven-inch 45 RPM records at a station in Redwing, Minnesota. After an Armed Forces Radio Vietnam war stint in Saigon, where he played the hits (think Good Morning, Vietnam), Robbin returned to the U.S. and climbed the radio food chain to rock station KGB in the summer of ’69. 

As a programmer, Robbin broke his share of hits: “There was ‘Wedding Bell Blues’ and ‘Proud Mary,’ by Ike and Tina Turner. Then there is the one I never talk about: Marie Osmond’s ‘Paper Roses,’ which went on to reach number five on Billboard’s Top 100.” 

And at KCBQ, Robbin witnessed music history: “My boss accidentally played the flip side of Rod Stewart’s ‘Reason to Believe.’ It was ‘Maggie May.’ We played it every hour for two days straight.... Because of KCBQ, ‘Maggie May’ went on to become the second biggest single of 1971.” 

After stints in other cities, Robbin came back to the local airwaves in 1992, to the now-defunct oldies station KBEST-95. He left the airwaves in 2001 and started voice-tracking his DJ shifts via digital download to other markets. 

When he realized that oldies radio was ignoring certain hits from the ’50s and ’60s, Robbin launched his own internet oldies station, richbroradio.com, from his Ocean Beach home in 2007. “We’ll play 60 to 70 Beatles hits and 30 to 40 Beach Boys hits you just won’t hear on the radio.... So, there I was, living the good life in Ocean Beach,” Robbin tells the Reader, “with the website and my old cars, and along came the Walrus with an offer I couldn’t refuse.” 

Whether Robbin gets to play more Seeds and Standells and less Eagles and Michael Jackson remains to be seen. But he and everyone else in terrestrial radio still must compete with Pandora and SiriusXM. 

“Radio adds personality and a level of in-your-face excitement that you just can’t get from Pandora. It sure is a hell of a lot more interesting than listening to one song after another on your iPod.”  

Emails 

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