Growing up, I had a few favorite radio stations and when I think of the reasons that I was so attracted to them, the top three reasons would have been:
- Air Personalities
- Station Imaging/Jingles
- Music
Favorite Songs
When it comes to music, the number one way most people today access the songs they want to hear is via streaming with YouTube now the top source for streaming people’s favorite songs.
No longer in our “I want it now” world does anyone want to wait until a radio station decides to play their favorite song, we just ask Alexa, Siri or Hey Google to play it.
Gone for radio is the #3 reason on my list above.
Don’t Be Generic
As I spin the radio dial today, all radio sounds much the same; in a word “generic,” and no one ever became attracted to anything generic.
Gone for radio is the #2 reason on my list above.
People Made Radio Attractive
Over the years, radio has had personalities that made the medium special: like Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Dan Ingram, Larry Lujack, Robert W. Morgan, Wolfman Jack, Arnie “Woo Woo” Ginsburg, Dick Biondi, Boom Boom Branigan, Ron Lundy, Dale Dorman, Paul Harvey and many more.
As these people retired or were RIF’d (Reduction In Force), my #1 reason for listing to radio went with them.
People are attracted to people and experiences which stimulate the part of the brain that triggers craving and longing, releasing habit-forming, feel-good chemicals such as dopamine and endorphins.
Your iPhone does that for you.
Your voice activated smart speaker does too.
For radio, great air personalities did it for you.
Radio Is Show Business
Unfortunately, most of today’s radio is focused only on the business part of the equation.
Don’t get me wrong, the business part is important, but without a focus on the show part, the business end will suffer.
Radio’s big advantage is offering advertisers an engaged audience to expose their goods and services to, but without unique air personalities, which attract listeners to tune in every day, radio’s audience will depart, as will those very advertisers that provide the economic engine for the radio industry.
DickTaylorBlog 
I still have favorite radio stations. Unfortunately, none of them are on the AM/FM dial. I can program 18 stations in my truck and all are pre set with Sirrus XM choices. Music, comedy and sports. What I hear on the radio dial is generic, boring and technically weak. Way too many commercials, dead air, poor audio quality and technical melt downs that take, in some cases, hours to fix. No passion. No excitement. No energy. No reason to listen. I used to love driving on a long trip because it meant listening to new radio stations. Now it’s thank goodness for Sirrus XM so I don’t have to try to find an over the air station that’s fit to listen to. You’re absolutely right about You Tube. It’s introduced me to new songs and new entertainers.
Great article Dick. You nailed it. I noticed on your list of personalities only Rush is of recent vintage. Very sad for radio.
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Thank You Mike for your kind words.
I certainly can understand your love for SiriusXM, as Sue & I have enjoyed it when on long trips (using 3 month trial subscriptions, which are frequently offered). We also find streaming audio content in our cars to be easy to do, and I wrote about that two years ago. You can read how we do it (in our old cars) here: https://dicktaylorblog.com/2022/01/09/why-i-stream-all-my-radio-listening/
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Mike.
-DT
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As always, Dick, you are 100% on the mark! Your listing of 3 top reasons for me were:
1. Ted Brown–WNEW AM 1130
2. WNEW’s Jingles were the best
3. MOR
I also, as a teenager, listened to “Woo Woo”, Dick Biondi and “Boom Boom”. They were pretty much lined up on the right side of the dial: 1510, 1520 and 1540. Like you, I believe, I’m from New England (the coast of Maine) and those stations were very clear, especially at night.
One of the reasons for the decline in AM radio is that the stations provide nothing to listen to. Radio personalities are pretty much gone and THAT was a huge reason to listen.
Thanks again for your great blog.
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Thank You Rick.
I too, loved the great MOR radio stations. WBZ, WHDH, WHN, WNEW etc.
I loved Herb Oscar Anderson on 1050AM – WHN, who would be followed by Bruce Bradley.
Dave Maynard and Larry Justice were my companions on my commutes to college back in the 70s.
Great radio — and great personalities — were all over the dial when I was growing up.
-DT
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there is no question that WNEW had the best promos and jingles
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They were one-of-a-kind. And that’s what made this radio station so special.
-DT
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I agree number one is “Air Personalities” or at least the human voice. My son, in his 40s, listens to satellite radio most of the time, and he admits he prefers channels with an announcer on them. And he did not grow up listening to over the air radio. I told him that is because generally those channels had “flow” as we called it in the olden days when it comes to programming the music. My favorite local over the air station is a small “Mom and Pop” (owned by a guy and his wife) operation that plays classic country. But it’s only live about three hours a day in the morning, as the station owner has to go out and sell ads. I have tried to get him to voice track the afternoon drive..but instead it’s like a computer playing one song after another with dropins and commercials in between. Even these days the weather forecasts are from a national service and automatically download to his studio computer to be played when needed. Times have certainly changed.
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Thank You Paul for sharing that story.
I remember in my university programming class, playing air checks of some of the radio stations and personalities that inspired me. My students would ask me, “why don’t they do that kind of radio anymore?”
Somethings, like great radio personalities, never go out of style. Something an Excel spreadsheet never revealed.
-DT
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NPR-affiliate radio stations are to me the closest to radio in my days on-air (1960s). They contain local, national, & global news, pod\broadcasts in the public interest, and reasonable commercial (“underwriter”) interruptions at “natural breaks in content.” The eclectic “Morning Edition” with knowledgeable Steve Inskeep and soft-spoken Leila Fadel, “Weekend Saturday” with clever Scott Simon, and “Weekend Sunday” with personable Ayesha Rascoe. I especially value earlier weekend fare “On the Media” and “The Nevotiators.”
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I completely understand why you feel that way Robin.
-DT
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Typo: The Negotiators.
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Insightful and straightforward as always, sir. I grew up listening to so many of the great radio personalities of New York. From the WMCA Good Guys to the legendary jocks of WABC; Dan Ingram, Cousin Brucie and Ron Lundy. Later on, WPLJ-FM became my station. Pat St. John, Jim Kerr, Tony Pigg and Jimmy Fink were entertaining, knowledgeable, fun! All the things you’d hope for from a good companion. They were my inspiration for getting into the business myself. I am recently retired after 43 years behind the mic. There’s nothing like them or it today. While still a lover of pop and rock, today I’m drawn to the Classical station in NY, WQXR-FM. Though more subdued than those mentioned above, Elliot Forest, Annie Bergen, Jeff Spurgeon and Paul Cavalconte provide that comforting, all-important companionship that has been driven out of the Radio that you and I both love and miss.
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Thank You for all you’ve shared Kerin.
Funny that you should end with WQXR. I find much the same companionship with the air personalities on WETA out of Washington, DC. Linda Carducci in the morning, Bill Bukowski in the middays and my favorite, Nicole Lacroix in afternoons. They have the right mix of information and music all flowing together seamlessly by these (and others) hosts. Their knowledge of the music increases my enjoyment of what they play.
-DT
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GM Dick:
Great dissection of the past and present. I currently listen to WABC in NYC. What John and Margo are doing is amazing, especially with the current market space. I listen to Sid Rosenberg and Friends in the Morning. But still the long breaks between content. Cheers, Stay safe and Healthy. J
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Thank You Jay for stopping by the blog today and sharing your thoughts.
-DT
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Retired from radio news in 2000. I grew up in the golden age of top 40, when personalities ran their shows, and it took talent to be entertaining. Stations had their own sound. I remember KBOX in Dallas and Frankie Jolly …and KLIF Dallas with Ken and Granny, Hal Martin, Charlie Van Dyke and Jimmy Rabbit. I don’t listen anymore because there isn’t, for me, anything to listen to.
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When you’ve been raised on prime cut steak, it’s hard to settle for ground beef. I get it Jay. I think most of us who grew up with radio at that time feel this way.
Thank You for sharing your experiences.
-DT
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Hi, Dick!
Good points one and all. When I was inducted last year into the Dayton Area Broadcasters Hall of Fame, I laid out a challenge to the broadcast industry.
As I you know, I work in a place that allows for local radio and local personalities whether live or voice-tracked. But, I feel in way too many places, this is not the case. Here’s what I said:
“Before I close, I would like to make a couple of statements about radio in Dayton and radio in general. There are some good stations here, and not just the ones CMG owns. These stations “play to win”. But there are others, who, but who simply “play to exist”. Big and small and it not only happens here, but in every market in America. This is one of the problems that resulted from Telecom ’96. It’s a plague on our business. And it is driving our audiences away.
We can and MUST be better than this. Or else, we’re going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. But there’s time to fix it, too. And the time is NOW.
To me, all radio is LOCAL. And local radio needs PERSONALITIES. And not just in morning drive. There are young people out there who, when they hear recordings of top 40 and CHR and stations like KHJ, CKLW, WLS, WCFL, WABC and the like, they can’t believe how good that radio was. And they’d like to do their own version of that. Please companies, invest in your product and your talent again. We’ve proven we don’t have to be live 24/7, but we need to be local and we need to be personalities. Let it happen.”
If anyone wants to see this speech, it’s on You Tube.
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Hi, Dick:
We’ve known each other for a number of years now and you know that I am fortunate to work for a company that allows for local broadcasting and encourages local personalities. Sadly, that is not the case everywhere.
When I was inducted into the Dayton Area Broadcasters Hall of Fame last year, I addressed this in my induction speech and challenged the industry to fix the problems. Here is what I said:
“Before I close, I would like to make a couple of statements about radio in Dayton and radio in general. There are some good stations here, and not just the ones CMG owns. These stations “play to win”. But there are others, who, but who simply “play to exist”. Big and small and it not only happens here, but in every market in America. This is one of the problems that resulted from Telecom ’96. It’s a plague on our business. And it is driving our audiences away.
We can and MUST be better than this. Or else, we’re going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg. But there’s time to fix it, too. And the time is NOW.
To me, all radio is LOCAL. And local radio needs PERSONALITIES. And not just in morning drive. There are young people out there who, when they hear recordings of top 40 and CHR and stations like KHJ, CKLW, WLS, WCFL, WABC and the like, they can’t believe how good that radio was. And they’d like to do their own version of that. Please companies, invest in your product and your talent again. We’ve proven we don’t have to be live 24/7, but we need to be local and we need to be personalities. Let it happen.”
The speech is posted to You Tube if you’d like to see it. I think I am about 31 minutes into the ceremony.
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Sadly, as a transmission shop owner once said to me, all it takes is just one transmission shop to mis-treat the customer and EVERY shop gets branded as being crooks.
I believe its much the same with radio stations; the bad eggs hurt the industry. While there have always been a few bad operations, today they outnumber the good ones.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year Kevin. Keep fighting the good fight. You work for an operation any of us would be proud to be a part of.
-DT
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Thanks, Dick. And Merry Christmas to you and Sue!
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Me? It’s the legendary and sometimes iconic WEBN.
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