Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Gary Stevens at "Keener 13"

If you've been on the "Keener 13" website lately, you've noticed they've put up a couple new posts.

One of them has an 11-minute air-check of a 1964 broadcast of one of disc jockey Gary Stevens' shows.

Of course, having listened to "Keener 13" back then (when I was still in grade school) it was a chance to be "nostalgic" in a personal way.

However, it also brought to mind how professional and synchronized the media was "back in the day"
---and how automation and formulaic programming over the years has made everyone so lazy and bland-and-boring.

One listen to any aircheck of a top-40-style radio station from the 1960s and you have the ultimate definition of "synergy":
You had all these disc jokeys, sound engineers, radio programmers, news programmers, and so many others all interacting and coordinating non-stop for 3 to 5 hours straight,
with one main objective in mind:
To put on the best on-air performance possible while "on the clock", any way they could, whatever it took.
There was no time for any "personal issues" or any "personal crisis"
...those would have to wait until it was time for the next shift to come on and they could "log out" and return to their own private lives.
That's what used to be called "Professionalism".

Yes, the most impressive aspect of all that was the synergism---the cooperative joint efforts by individuals who, in their spare time might not even otherwise have enough in common to even get together for drinks and coffee afterwards---but this one common thread, the love of broadcasting and commitment to professional on-air performance, is what binded them together for the 3,4, or 5 hours they worked together.

I lament to think that spirit of cooperation doesn't exist so much among people anymore.
Everyone's too cynical anymore---there isn't the trust factor necessary to put together and pull off a creative venture of the sort which would require the joint efforts of numerous individuals at any given one time.
And radio programmers are so lazy anymore. Everything is either automation, or "pre-programmed" playlists where the disc jockeys merely announce whatever's on the written list they're handed.

What a shame.
Everything now is so boring and tiring.

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