Dave's Radio Waves: Daytime Radio Beats Daytime TV Anyday (Mar 1, 2002)

That is the finding after six years of listening to talk radio on an occasional basis. The radio topics are varied, intellectually stimulating (except for Tom Leykis), and offer something for everyone ranging from talking about fighting the new war with the terrorists and what the president said to car repairs and computer talk.

Will you find any of these topics on daytime TV talkers? No. Instead, we find topics for small minds involving affairs, rivalries, and dates from hell. This is innovation?

Turn on the Clear Channel stations and you hear Rush making fun of the Democrats, Dr. Laura dishing out advice, Roger Hedgecock and Stacy Taylor getting the locals to speak up and do something to change the course of the community, the sports talkers on XTRA finding new imaginable ways to deservedly blast the greedy and out-of-touch San Diego Chargers football team management, and so forth. Hell, even Sully and Scooter can beat the brains out of those idiot talkers Ricki Lake and Jerry Springer anyday!

Earlier I talked about the stale state of daytime television as I find absolutely no signs of intellectual life except for the good old reruns such as I Love Lucy, Gilligan's Island, even reruns of Saved By The Bell! Earlier I talked about how great daytime television was when I was growing up in the 60's and 70's with some two dozen game shows on between 9am and 5pm, cartoons for all ages, movies, and variety talk that entertains.

Fast forward to 2002...daytime television is a vast wasteland not even suitable for young viewers nowadays. Nothing but trash talk shows, outdated soap operas, courtroom dramas, and endless versions of Love Connection under different names. This stuff is suitable for small minds. As Weird Al would say, "I Can't Watch This!"

Just recently, the Financial Times ran an article on the sad state of Daytime television that's just as bad in Britian as it is here in the states.

http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/article.html?id=020206001741&query=BBC+Radio

"Switch off and tune in instead: TELEVISION: Daytime television is a desert of patronising rubbish, says Graham McCann. No wonder radio is winning fans.

"The news that radio seems to be in the process of clawing back a significant percentage of its former audience should come as no great surprise to anyone who has sat recently through an hour or two of daytime television. While the small screen's grandees continue to behave as if there is more than enough money and talent to provide a constant flow of high-quality programmes for an apparently infinite number of new cable, satellite and digital channels, the existing output on show between the hours of 6.00am and 6.00pm continues to suggest that there is actually nowhere near enough of either to fill even our five old terrestrial channels.

"Daytime television has always been a desert... Radio today, like yesterday, has a quite different attitude. Radio regards the daytime as a splendid opportunity to engage and interact with a broad and bright audience.

"Television, however, appears disinclined to be even a little daring with either the content or structure of its daytime routine, preferring instead to treat its potentially rich and varied audience like some kind of large but docile chunk of the lumpenproletariat.

"The mornings are bad enough. After the BBC 's surprisingly slapdash breakfast news, GMTVs gabbling animated tabloid magazine and Channel 4's fast-decaying Big Breakfast come the unashamedly trashy and cynical "discussion" shows, BBC1's Kilroy and ITV1's Trisha, snarling, shrieking and sobbing like something out of an unfinished sketch by Hieronymus Bosch. BBC1 follows this with Garden Invaders and House Invaders (Ground Force and Changing Rooms on even smaller budgets and tighter schedules), while ITV1 persists - for the moment at least - with This Morning (a depressingly patronising programme whose mixture of PR-prompted puffery, problem-page platitudes, rushed recipes, hamfisted makeovers and increasingly risible quizzes had been looking painfully out of date long before the predictably tearful departure last summer of the oleaginous Richard Madeley and the chronically fidgety Judy Finnigan).

"The afternoons, however, are even worse. BBC1 has taken to stripping a visibly fatigued imported soap opera (Neighbours), a frankly ludicrous imported detective drama (Diagnosis Murder - which stars Dick Van Dyke as an elderly tap-dancing, crime-fighting doctor) and an unfunny homegrown vintage sitcom (Birds of a Feather) across its vapid weekday schedules, while ITV1 offers nothing more inspiring than Crossroads, and both Channels 4 and 5 rely heavily on a succession of increasingly mediocre movies.

"Such laziness, such impudence, such a striking lack of imagination, should not go uncriticised. If television today is truly serious about both itself and its audience, then daytime, just as much as, if not more than, prime-time, should be the measure of its ambition. During the daytime, the medium has the opportunity to attend to the diverse needs of the increasingly sophisticated and selective viewers that are now said to exist. During the daytime, even the mainstream terrestrial channels can afford to experiment with programmes that aim to inform and educate rather than merely, and cheaply, and weakly, entertain. During the daytime, television has a rare and genuine and glorious chance to wake itself up, as well as its audience.

"The radio was a wonderful invention, but then so too was television. Whenever we switch on it should remind us of that fact."

Less Listener$, Less Ad Dollar$

Many people are taking this common thought to heart and are literally reducing their time spent listening to broadcast radio in droves. Translation: less listeners mean less ratings, less ratings mean less ad dollars a station can commmand.

The competetion? Online streaming radio now available via wireless Ricochet ISP, 400-CD changers for work, CD's that can play MP3 files totalling 10-40 hours, antiquated cassette and single CD players, even old eight tracks are being run at some rest homes.

Let's face it, corporate radio, you're doing something that's driving the listeners away. What is it that you're doing wrong? The answers can be found when you radio station PD's and MD's look in your mirrors. Time for a change in how radio music is programmed, back to the way it worked back before 1995!

You want a bigger bottom line? Do some honest things (and I don't mean nationalized McDonalds-like contests or mean-spirited bullying tactics) to get them back to listening to the radio. Your listeners are being their own Anne Robinsons and turning off your stations while saying about you "You ARE the weakest link. Goodbye."

To Radio: Where's The Music!

Thanks to Internet radio, music that's not getting exposed, such as rare oldies, truly alternative rock, electronic dance, rocking country, euro pop and dance, classical, novelty, and blues, are now being heard by millions of people everywhere they have a computer hooked to a modem! It will be a matter of time before these rarely-programmed songs will be making it to mainstream radio once corporate radio finally discovers that people want to hear more than the same old pigeonholed genres they keep dishing out repeatedly.

And why do people keep complaining that I don't do enough talk radio articles? Well, I work three jobs, and when I'm working, I prefer to hear music over talk, which I very much cannot concentrate on while I am doing many thinking chores associated with my jobs.

I do listen to the fun talk shows like Hooked on Trivia and Jeff and Jer every now and then, but the fact is, if you want to see more talk radio articles here, take the bull by the horns and compose them yourself and send them in.