I would like to do a quick shout out of thanks to the folks
at www.feedspot.com . They are a Google
reader replacement that allows you to aggregate your feeds. Welcome to the
readers who follow me over there.
Tropics Radio
Just after I got here I pressed the search button on the
rental car’s radio and there it was, Local Radio. You don’t get Local Radio in
urban areas. They’re more interested in serving a large metropolitan audience,
with carefully proscribed "demographic content targeting" by an out of town
“broadcast consultant” who usually has more data than sense.
Here in my corner of the tropics I found Local Radio has an
amazing listenership of nearly 40% of the audience at some point during the
day. On one shopping trip it followed me through all my stops practically uninterrupted.
It’s in cars, stores, restaurants, homes and offices. Take that you urban
slicing demographers! Local Radio does it by playing a range of music that has
an appeal to a broad swath of the listenership. That appeal doesn’t mean they
haven’t done their homework. Certainly the demographic in my corner of the
tropics skews to over 40, but the listener results show a significant audience
under 40 as well.
My interest in Local Radio is through a curiosity born of a
former profession, and a keen interest in the local people themselves. The
format of Local Radio is called “True Oldies”. They might call it that because
they play Beatle’s music. From the dusty depths of memory I recall Paul
McCartney saying something to the effect of, “ …you know you’re getting old when
you hear your music in elevators played by The Strings Unlimited”. Now that may
not be exact, and my memory might be wrong (it happens sometimes), but I think
you get the general idea. Local Radio’s format is 60’s and 70’s with occasional
dips into the late 50’s and early 80’s. The music programming is from a
syndicated program supplier called “The TOC: True Oldies Channel”. Your host
all day, Scott Shannon and his producer Beaver Cleaver!
It’s the music of my childhood, adolescence, and early adult
years. The music that had me singing along, rocking along, dancing along, and
generally getting along with the early parts of my life.
Everyone’s life has a soundtrack, and Local Radio seems to
have mine. Like life, the music of Local Radio crosses genres, from Beach Boys,
Beatles, Chicago, Elvis, Frankie Valli, Janis Joplin, Motown, Herman’s Hermits,
Neil Diamond, Gallery, Rolling Stones, CCR and even some Disco. At one point I
even heard Frank Sinatra. They take requests, do theme weekends, some light social
commentary, and in general are quite pleasant to have around. They help to keep me
company on those late nights when I’m trying to turn a phrase, parse a thought,
and generally trying to enjoy my chosen craft of writing. More than once a “plot
thought” has been inspired by a piece of music from The TOC.
Local Radio is more than the music. It has fishing reports
from Captain Skip Bradeen “on the charter boat Blue Chip 2”. Several times a
day he reports by phone on fishing conditions, fishing tips (slack off the reel
at night), and local charitable events. He has sponsors that he mentions, if he
has interesting clients on board, and where other captains are getting bites.
This morning he referred to the clear tropic sky as Windex Blue. Then there’s
Captain Slate’s Dive Report. A daily look at water conditions for snorkelling
and diving. There are history vignettes about local points of interest, highly
abbreviated local news, local and marine weather, and some low budget local
commercials.
It’s the local commercials that give me a solid feel for this
place. Mostly they’re restaurants, Andy and Dave’s garage (for over 70 years),
car dealerships, bars, pawn shops, marinas, real estate agencies, Rob’s 24 hour
car wash in Marathon (across from Burger King) where he always “leaves the
lights and water on”, Travis Bennett “…your gentle dentist at Mile Marker
103…”, and well, I think you get the
idea. Most of them are voiced by the proprietors themselves (Daniel from the
Banana Café in Key West is my personal fave), or local announcers.
The whole package reminds me of hometown radio when I was a
kid. We got fishing reports throughout the day on weekends, marine weather,
hyper local commercials voiced by the station’s announcers, and music you could
sing along to. It was a time when the city where I live had an economic focus
on fishing and lumber, and everyone in town worked in those industries or the
supporting businesses. Now my local radio at home has no marine reports, no hyper
local commercials, and nothing much I can sing along to. My home city grew up
and lost its local focus to try and be a “world” city, and it succeeded. The
only cost was its Local identity. A few years back I totally abandoned local
radio in favour of tapes, CD’s, and now satellite radio. At home local radio
has become homogenized with similar formats and national chain store commercials,
being broadcast across corporate media chains that, except for the all traffic
station, made it irrelevant to my life.
Local Radio seems unpolished, and I like that. It seems like
its run by people who care but know their limits. It doesn’t sound corporate.
Local Radio is the perfect sound for this place because there isn’t much of a
“corporate” feel to anything. There’s a “billions served” place a few miles
south, the red headed burger girl and the King have stores a few miles north.
There’s even one of those green mermaid logo coffee shops.
There’s not much else colored corporate here, and I don’t
hear advertising for corporate chains. Maybe corporate people don’t feel right
in this place. There are a lot of individuals here who are wary of outsiders
who aren’t tourists. This place shows skepticism towards change, and it’s a
good thing too. There are severely limited natural resources. The land is
crushed coral, with mangroves, palm, and pine trees. The highest natural point
is 15 feet above sea level, and one local joked with me even that was man made.
At its widest point it may be half a mile across. A lot of people came here to
get away from the one size fits all “corporate” influence in their lives. I
think Local Radio helps play to that. Local Radio here is unpretentious, like
the locals I’ve had the privilege to meet.
That’s why I like Local Radio; it knows its customer base is
the listener, not the advertiser. The advertisers show up because the listeners
are there, but Local Radio needs that organic link to the audience to bring in
the money.
Here in the small market, the argument of syndicated
programming versus locally employed DJ’s can be raised. That argument goes away
when you fill other air time with short features, newscasts, and community
oriented columnists. Captain Skip Bradeen mentions many local events and causes
during his reports.
Local Radio seems to remember that the audience matters, it
doesn’t seem to care for the advice of data heavy, micro slicing, demographic
spouting, over paid consultants who don’t live here. Local Radio trusts its gut
to get it right.
So Local Radio is what I’m listening to, here in the
tropics.
BTW – if you’re interested in listening to Local Radio
follow the link and click on “listen now”:
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