4-4-13
A wickedly sarcastic article written by Variety TV Critic Brian Lowry is headlined "AM Radio: Welcome to the Cesspool." Lowry got an itch to blast AM radio after hearing about FCC commissioner Ajit Pai's panel on AM revitalization, at the NAB show in Vegas. The TV critic let loose on a number of other topics that bother him about radio saying, "radio is often viewed as the bastard cousin at NAB, the medium that doesn?t garner much attention alongside TV and new technologies." He doesn't like the advertising, the diversity of stations in L.A., weekend infomercials and of course talk radio. He claims there is no equivalent on TV as insidious as AM radio.
Lowry writes, "AM?s most obvious excess would be its contribution to political polarization, in the form of talk hosts (most conservative, a la Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, but with a few high-profile liberals as well) who have helped foster the current endless-campaign environment. As Los Angeles Times theatre critic Charles McNulty summed it up recently, talkradio is a ?boisterous realm in which innuendo substitutes for evidence and fear-mongering replaces analysis.? Moreover, the financial attractiveness of that model ? requiring little more than a loud voice and amplifying megaphone ? has become dominant in cable news."
Lowry says there?s no direct equivalent on TV. "Even in the murky realm of product-placement, since the dulcet voice listeners hear all the time begins pitching a product ? without any visual cue to signal the shift. Just try to imagine CNN?s Anderson Cooper or Wolf Blitzer saying, ?The North Korean border is certainly a gray area. And speaking of gray, while I?ve gotten used to my hair color, if you?d like to look younger, consider the good folks at Grecian Formula.?"
Read the full Variety article HERE
And as always, we encourage you to leave your comments below
(4/4/2013 11:28:53 PM)
Hell, just tune across the AM dial in your market. The Variety writer is most likely right; not much out there. You guys are spewing crap. Not much better on FM either and I'm vomiting at Ryan Seacrest, Limbaugh, Savage, and all the voicetraking. We used to call that "automation" when Radio was real, and we kicked it's A.
You guys in the corporate clusterf's don't even begin to understand how to do Radio with any spirit. Randy Michaels and Dan Mason do understand it, just don't do it.
(4/4/2013 10:15:15 PM)
Variety TV Critic Brian Lowry had a great opportunity to offer suggestions on how AM radio could be improved but instead did exactly the same thing the national talk show hosts featured on AM Radio do every hour, everyday.. he complained.
Makes me wonder about the value of "Variety".
Your mouth is a cesspool, and I am going to urinate in it!
(4/4/2013 5:50:54 PM)
TV became a cesspool shortly after it was termed a wasteland 50 some years ago by Newton Minnow. TV is 90% filth, 5% talent, the rest undecipherable. I wouldn't pay attention to TV critics viewing radio any more than I listen to Democrats tell me what the Republican Party needs.
(4/4/2013 4:49:26 PM)
If a broadcaster wants to blast the airwaves with a delinquent Jehovah's Witness reading from a ratty, old copy of None Dare Call It Treason, It will find an audience and supporters or it will not.
Meanwhile, so long as I can still refer to it as a "cesspool" if I wish... everything is just fine.
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