Friday, 24 August 2012

You Talk Too Much


For as long as can remember, I've been shouting at my radio.

Rather, I've been shouting at the DJ's who talk too much. Time was I used to shout when they talked over the beginning or the ending of a song I liked. These days, I wish they would.

You see, they used to talk over the beginning and ending of songs because they had stuff to say. Not always important stuff, but it was usually information: coming up in later in the program, one of those live, announcer-delivered commercials, whatever.

Thing is, they had songs to play and information to impart. so they talked over the music to cram it all in. And yes, those were the good old days, because now they talk to avoid playing music.

The more they talk, they less music they play. The less music they play, the less they pay in royalties. The less they pay in royalties, the higher their profits are.

You can picture the meeting, where the suits sit around a table and figure this out. You can imagine the internal memos to the DJ's exhorting them to blather on about how hung over they are, share drunken bar-style drivel (aka opinions) about things they don't understand, to drone on with celebrity gossip and incorrect factoids ... anything but play music.

Morning DJ's have supposedly been the funny guys for as long as I can remember. It was one of the first good ideas that got replicated by our culture to the point where it became pointless.

But the old morning DJ's were professional comedians. They wrote material. Today's clowns just ad lib, and pretend whatever nonsense they utter is funny.

The insult on this injury when you tune in later in the day (or Saturday morning) and they play back highlights of this garbage!

By contrast, talking over a bit of a really cool song was like living in paradise (well, maybe just a bit at the end of Hey Jude).

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