Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Leykis, Carolla, Opie and Anthony all gone from CBS Radio

A very interesting thing has been happening for a while now with traditional terrestrial radio. There are no more "shock jocks" or interesting non political, non sports talk shows on FM terrestrial radio anymore. Building on the success of Don Imus in the mid to late 80's Howard Stern revolutionized radio and this helped shows like "Opie and Anthony" (Which I have listened to continuously for 4 years now) Adam Carolla, and Tom Leykis.

And then came Janet jacksons boob.

Since then these shows have been tightly governed by repressed Puritans, and interest watchdog groups governed by sleazy lowlifes such as Al Sharpton. All a sudden now shows were actually getting fired for imitating a stereotypical Asian accent (interest groups targeting advertisers) Or making a bad joke about a womens basketball team. I can still remember Al Sharpton's daughter scornfully looking at a sheepish Imus and wishing Imus would ask to look at her Ipod to see how many times the word "Ho" is used in the songs she most likely listens to. So while shows like "The Office", SNL and "30 Rock" can get away with smart edgy humor with sexual and racial elements...for some reason radio can't.

So a few things happened...Howard Stern jumped to Sirius for a 1/2 billion dollar contract....more and more people (especially younger) were just listening to their IPODs...and the somewhat affluent to affluent crowd starting to get Satellite radio which took away their consumer base. But there were shows that were still doing well such as Leykis and Carolla and to a lesser extent Opie and Anthony on WCBS in NY....But because all three command enormous salaries it was just cheaper to dump them and program a top 40 jukebox which is what they did with their two flagships WCBS and KLSX out here in LA.

I wrote a post a year ago or so about how I think Satellite radio was on it's way out, but now I am not so sure. With clever Iphone integration satellite radio I think is here to stay...and that is great because it is so much better than "regular radio" The sound is always crystal clear and you won't hear any commercials for music, but here is the best thing...You hear hardly any commercials for talk programs either!! Opie and Anthony (now exclusive to Sirius XM) can go an hour and a half straight sometimes!! And it is the same with the baseball channel on 175....and many others. Yes I am entertained by listening to Rush and Hannity as well sometimes but the amount of commercials is just way too much!! It is ridiculous actually. For a couple hundred bucks for 2 years...Sirius XM is more than worth the price....

When cable first came out in the late 70's people were wondering...man it sure is stupid to pay for something you can get for free. Well guess what people? You still can get it for free and it sucks!! That is why people pay for Directv or Cable, or an ISP to watch their shows on Hulu.

You know what I think is insanity? Paying for a Landline in your house as well as a cellphone!!?? Allright this blog has rambled long enough......

1 comments:

Brett said...

In my day we didn't have terrestrial radio or extra-terrestrial radio. We would chew the bark of tress for entertainment, and without commercials... sometimes for an hour and a half straight.