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 Posted By: Jim Liddane on: 09/29/2009 15:55:31 EDTSubject: RE: Same Song, Same Time, Different Artist |
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If you go back to the 1930's, there were often a dozen or even more cover versions of the one song, but as time went by and radio became more mass-produced, and of course, radio tip sheets were introduced, stations began to hone in on playing the one version of rhe one song. By the 1950's, it was geting rarer to find more than two versions of the same song being played, because even if you were a Program Director out there in Albuquerque New Mexico, you could read in Radio & Records each week what your opposite number in New Jersey was playing. So if he had switched from Ricky Nelson's version of "I'm Walking" to Fats Domino's version - you probably thought "well he is on a bigger station, and they probably spend money on research, so that one is obviously doing better in research" and so on. Eventually of course by the 1970's, all the small stations were being bought up anyway, so that the kid in Fresno ended up listening to what a PD in head office in New York thought he ought to be listening to - whether he liked it or not. The Beachboys would not have made it if 1960's radio had been like 1980's radio because what New York based PD in his right mind would have seen the point in surfing music when 90% of the US was not on a beach? So even in California, they probably would not have got airplay! Look at today's playlists in Billboard - everybody everywhere is playing the same stuff. Somebody said once, no one ever got fired for buying an IBM - well no PD ever got fired for playing what every other PD was playing either. He might get fired for experimenting (that is a dirty words nowadays in radio). Radio as we knew it is dead. Long live Ultimate Oldies! |
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