Farewell to the worst thing on local radio
I'm glad the new all-news radio station is starting in Washington. I'm happy not because the station is going to be great or WTOP needs the competition — but because the arrival of the station means the last of placeholder broadcasts on 99.1. Following HFS and El Zol to that spot on the dial, the placeholder there has been The History of Rock and Roll.
We ran across the radio documentary on the drive back from Staunton, and the moment nearly drove us to madness. Madness, I tell you! We were scanning stations and stopped in our scanning when we thought we heard oldies. Oldies, I tell you! The format hadn't been on a major D.C. signal in years. The format had jumped to a satellite or "evolved" into overplayed classic rock. To hear a true Motown classic, early rock number or non-Beatles Invasion hit was a rarity. But there one was.
For five seconds.
After five seconds, the song switched to another terrific oldie. Then it jumped five seconds later. More songs followed, more jumping into the next, over and over, dozens of jumps between the best parts of songs where we were ready to sing every word, climb through the radio in a white-rabbit style, even pay money to a free medium to hear the rest.
We finally had to change the station. Ten minutes later, we ran across the station again, this time in an ad break. Maybe on the other side of the break, we told ourselves, the quick-clip feature would be done. But how wrong we were. The seconds of clips began rattling off again, and we had to change stations. We felt broken. The radio was torturing us.
Five Seconds Of Every #1 Pop Single Part 1 by mjs538
Only yesterday, through the station article and a Wikipedia listing, did I learn the mistreatment was purposeful and once even popular. Wiki:
One of the lengthiest documentaries of any medium (48 hours in the 1969 version, 52 hours each for the 1978 and 1981 versions), The History of Rock & Roll is a definitive history of the Rock and Roll genre, stretching from the early 1950s to its day. … Notable features of this documentary include the "chart sweep," featuring a montage of #1 songs and notable hits from a given year or artist, a "time sweep" for each one-hour segment providing a montage of the major hits for each year or individual artist, and closing with a special climactic time sweep featuring a montage of every #1 hit from 1955 to the year of the latest version.
Yes, mind-destroying now when oldies are scarce, the "chart sweep" was the Girl Talk, the mash-up, the year-end DJ Earworm of its day.
It's cool to imagine all the work that went into this initial production. This link, where the above audio comes from, explains the work well. But in 2012, radio stations should know the conflicts of modern ears.
January 24th, 2012 at 2:14 PM
And let me guess. Because they're only playing 5 seconds, they don't have to pay any royalties on the use of the song. Which makes for cheap timefill.
-jbn
January 25th, 2012 at 9:56 AM
Very possibly, but I couldn't find a reference to it. Airing the clips in a documentary format as they did also would have helped a fair-use case.