Sunday, May 11, 2003
Email from Todd(o) in response to my Friday piece about easy listening:
Thomas
Reading your piece about WMRI brought back some memories for me of that
kind of radio. When I was a kid there was a station in Rochester MN that had
a similar format. "Easy Listening" with really good announcers and a
format that probably wasn't as eclectic at MRI but it was similar in that
there was a commitment to do something of quality. I grew up in central Iowa and
I used to pick up the station when FM propagation was just right.
A few years later, I read a piece about them in a trade paper... they
were one of the early adopters of the digital reel to reel format because
they said they were so committed to audio quality that they didn't want
their overnight listeners to be aware that they weren't live. They had been
recording at 15ips analog before that but the announcer's voice was so
deep that there was a low level of hiss on the tape.
I still remember reading that piece because it was symbolic of a
commitment to quality that I thought was nonexistent in commercial FM.
And now it truly is nonexistent. It's really too bad.
-- todd
A fellow queer radio geek! [Of course, he does work in radio and television.] Yay! [His blog's pretty great stuff, too, and you should check it out.]
Thomas
Reading your piece about WMRI brought back some memories for me of that
kind of radio. When I was a kid there was a station in Rochester MN that had
a similar format. "Easy Listening" with really good announcers and a
format that probably wasn't as eclectic at MRI but it was similar in that
there was a commitment to do something of quality. I grew up in central Iowa and
I used to pick up the station when FM propagation was just right.
A few years later, I read a piece about them in a trade paper... they
were one of the early adopters of the digital reel to reel format because
they said they were so committed to audio quality that they didn't want
their overnight listeners to be aware that they weren't live. They had been
recording at 15ips analog before that but the announcer's voice was so
deep that there was a low level of hiss on the tape.
I still remember reading that piece because it was symbolic of a
commitment to quality that I thought was nonexistent in commercial FM.
And now it truly is nonexistent. It's really too bad.
-- todd
A fellow queer radio geek! [Of course, he does work in radio and television.] Yay! [His blog's pretty great stuff, too, and you should check it out.]
# posted by Thomas : 8:27 PM
