Radio (G)Rumble
I make a habit of tuning into the radio whenever I’m in the car. I often get stuck on NPR (especially if it’s a Saturday and there’s a double-feature of Car Talk/Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me), but I do venture out onto traditional stations. It’s easy to get trapped in nicheland when you blog, so I figure that’s not a bad way to hear some of the more populist songs that I’d otherwise not hear. It’s always good to expose yourself to things you don’t necessarily like.
I just saw one of these babies at a yard sale yesterday
I had my 12 year old niece with me in the car yesterday, and we were scanning from station to station. We ended up doing this a lot, because there were a lot of commercials. I mean, A LOT OF COMMERCIALS. In some cases it seemed like they’d play 1 or 2 songs, then immediately go into a 5 minute commercial break. To make matters worse, they all do it at the same time, so it feels like a conspiracy to force you to listen to really poorly made radio commercials (or in some cases, TV commercials that are very visual and subsequently fail to translate in a rather hilarious way). There was also an abundance of repetition, as my niece pointed out. She loves Miley Cyrus, but after 3-4 plays of ‘Party in the USA’ even she was annoyed. ‘Why don’t they play different songs?’ she asked me.
It got me thinking about radio, and what a wasted medium it is. It seems as though even the people they’re targeting (surely my niece is part of their target demographic) don’t like the way it’s packaged and presented. There’s absolutely no risk-taking going on. Everything is carefully placed and tested and guaranteed to perform. The problem seems to lie in the fact that here in America we don’t have a John Peel. We don’t have a Steve Lamacq, Zane Lowe or even a Jo Whiley. No, we have Ryan Seacrest.
I’m not sure why Ryan Seacrest has a radio show. I know he’s ‘the hardest working man in show business’ and hosts 12 different shows while producing 27 more, but besides hosting American Idol – and let’s face it, that show isn’t doing much to encourage risk-taking, either – I’m not sure where we ever got the idea he knew anything about or gave 2 shits about music. Producing Dick Clark’s Rocking New Years Eve doesn’t necessarily mean you know much about music. Of course, based on some of the unsavory elements of Dick Clark’s past that have unearthed, I’m not entirely sure he cared much about music, either.
I’ve had a big exposure to Seacrest’s radio show in the past week, as it seems every time I’m in the car he just so happens to be on. The music is pretty benign but boring, and I can’t think of a single time when he’s really said anything about it. All the banter between him and his cronies usually consists of celebrity talk – ‘Oh so and so was seen at such and such a place, she was there with whatshisname and they did this and that.’ Then they have this bit where people call in and ask Ryan Seacrest for advice. WTF? If you’re calling in to ask how you can better market yourself, or a good place to network, then yes, by all means call Ryan Seacrest and I’m sure he’s got some dynamite recommendations for you. But these people are calling in with real problems, like abusive relationships and the like.
Take yesterday’s show, where a girl calls in and says that some of the girls in her office want to do a ’sexy Halloween’ day at the office. She mentions that she’s really not comfortable with this and feels it’s kind of inappropriate for an office setting (my opinion: it is). She says she doesn’t mind dressing sexy but doesn’t want to look trashy. What’s Seacrest’s brilliant advice? Just do it, you know you want to! It’ll get you laid! I’m not even paraphrasing here – the guy literally told her to dress like a whore and stop whining. And yes, he even made a crack about her getting laid. What did his female sidekick have to say? ‘Oh Ryan!’. She just laughed it off as if he was a lovable scamp. And sure, if you call in to the Ryan Seacrest show you should really know what kind of advice you’ll be getting, but the whole thing kind of turned my stomach, as if his sexist remarks were some kind of adorable screwball comedy. I certainly don’t want my niece walking away from this thinking that Ryan Seacrest is giving reasonable advice.
Where exactly was I going with this? I’m not sure. I think I’m just having a rant, though there might be some kind of coherent narrative to be found in it all. I suppose I’m complaining about kind of obvious things, like the fact that radio stinks and Ryan Seacrest is a jackass. ‘Oooh, revolutionary ideas, Sean! You should write a book about stating the obvious!’. I think you could make a connection between the two, like maybe radio is kind of terrible because we give Ryan Seacrest the biggest spot on it, or that perhaps he’s merely a symptom of what’s wrong with it. I know when I sat down to write I had a clear idea of what I wanted to say, but I don’t think I’ve said it – or I haven’t said it effectively, at any rate.
In the end I’m just massively disappointed that one of the greatest free mediums out there is completely wasted on people who don’t care about the music or the people they’re talking to. Whatever happened to the Wolfman Jacks of the world? A guy who was actually seen as dangerous and challenging. There are wonderful terrestrial stations out there, but most of them are regional and certainly don’t have the listener base that Ryan Seacrest’s show does. Even someone as cornbread as Casey Kasem could actually discuss the music and put it into some kind of context. Meanwhile, Seacrest takes time to promote soul-destroying dreck like Denise Richards: It’s Complicated.
The Vines – Don’t Listen to the Radio
The Calculators – Kill My Radio
Tags: the calculators, the futureheads, the ting tings, the vines
Nice rant though i like it !!!