The debate about analytics vs. old school baseball has caused me the rethink some of the things in “FM, the Rise and Fall of Rock Radio”, or at least understand the other side a little better.
The old WNEW-FM jocks,(Scottso, Alison, Fornatale, Elsas, me, etc) viewed the station as commercial art. True, we wanted to make a buck, but only if it meant doing what we considered ‘good’ radio. Radio with heart and soul. Music that was real, that stood for something, even if that something was the quest for love (and sex). Sure, we’d play stuff that was popular, but stuff we judged to have artistic merit.
When the corporate guys dominated, the goal was simple — make the most money possible. Play whatever sells, regardless of whether we thought it was any good
. Stop with the long raps, they were tuning in the hear the hits. Segues? Who cares? They backed this up with science.
To us, it was flawed science. To them, we were old school Luddites who were too stubborn to embrace the new technology. As in baseball, refusing to admit that you have a better chance of scoring if you don’t bunt to move the runner. We clung to the old beliefs that WE knew what was best, WE knew what the listeners wanted and invaders from these other markets didn’t understand what NY radio was all about.
They won in the the end because they were the owners, just like the bosses in baseball now only hire managers who will yield to the metrics, rather than their gut.
Maybe rock radio would have died anyway. Maybe the partial sell out to unbridled greed hastened the process. Or maybe it kept it going past its natural expiration date.
I always believed in a third way. Use the stats and research to point the way, but use experience and heart to temper the excesses of commercialism. I suppose the other side would say that if us old schoolers would have gotten on board early, stations like WNEW-FM would still be thriving.
I constantly take calls on WFAN decrying the modern way of playing baseball as the ruination of the sport. They can’t watch it any more, they say. Will baseball go the way of prog rock radio and die a slow death, or will the newbies who love the science replace them and make the game stronger than ever?
