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Heard avril Lavigne's 'Complicated' just a wee bit too often? You can thank Lee Abrams, the man who shackled FM radio to the tyranny of mass market research. The 'Moses of programming,' they call him.
By Frank Ahrens
Sunday, January 19, 2003; Page W12 Washington Post
Why does radio sound the way it does today? Why does it sound like it's been prepped, packaged and served up in easy-to-digest bites, like tiny bits of Spam stuck on toothpicks?
We're talking about music radio, so we're talking about FM. Staticky AM remains the province of news, sports, talk and such utility-style information. Silken FM, as it has been for the past 35 years, is the home of music, thanks to its static-free stereo sound.
Owing to a growing sophistication in audience
research, light-speed consolidation of radio ownership and the attendant rise in value of FM stations, the commercial FM dial has been essentially reduced to six musical formats: Pop/rock, hip-hop, country, classical, Spanish-language and variations on the theme of "adult contemporary," a sort of light pop or R&B. Research has shown radio owners that these are the moneymaking formats, and this is where they've flocked. Swept off the dial are niche formats, such as blues, bluegrass, easy listening and jazz, except for Kenny G-style "lite jazz," which falls neatly in the adult contemporary category.
Today's broadcasters will publicly tout what they call the diversity of the radio dial, but they know better. "It's not like the old days," they lament, though never in public.
An example: I once heard the Talking Heads' hit "Burning Down the House" on four Washington stations -- all of which theoretically aim at different target audiences -- within a span of a few hours on one day. Why? Because the song tested well among four different audiences, which meant it was guaranteed to bring ratings and advertising revenue.
Flip around the D.C. dial in the mornings and listen to the top-rated stations: On hip-hop WKYS, you've got the rowdy "Russ Parr Morning Show" aimed at black listeners, ages 18 to 34. On rock station DC101, the cackling "Elliot in the Morning" show is doing a shtick not dissimilar from Parr's -- comedy, a little music, games, listener calls. Except that his show is aimed at white listeners 18 to 34. On Magic 102.3, syndicated superstar Tom Joyner is doing a tamed-down version of the morning show motif, aimed at older black listeners, mostly female, 25 to 54. Up at Mix 107.3, Jack Diamond is doing a Joyner-style show, except it's targeted at white listeners, mostly minivan moms, 25 to 54. There is an old saw in the radio industry: "If it worked in Tulsa . . ."
It's not that Washington radio is bereft of talent. There is an art and skill to radio personality, and all of these hosts are radio pros, as are other notable Washington radio stars, such as Don Geronimo and Mike O'Meara of the "Don and Mike Show," WPGC's Donnie Simpson and WHFS's "The Sports Junkies." But their shows are cut from the same template as shows in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Seattle . . .
Then there are the ads: Most FM music stations play 18 to 22 minutes of commercials per hour -- some as much as 24 minutes. Most are abrasive enough to cause a reflexive lunge for the radio to punch to another station -- any station. The bad news: The same ad might
just be starting on whatever station you land on.
Where does this leave radio in an era when the time spent listening to AM and FM is dropping? In an era of Internet music downloading, Internet radio, MP3s, burnable CDs, commercial-free digital music stations on your home
cable and satellite systems, not to mention the distraction of cell phones, BlackBerries, PalmPilots hooked to the Internet, portable DVD players, TiVo and home video consoles that will soon function as vast digital entertainment libraries?
Who needs radio anymore?
You do, when it's good. Because there is something that radio can do that you can never do. Sure, you can download your entire CD collection onto your iPod and walk around with it. But those are the songs in your library, and even in random play there is a certain joyless satiety to that. The magic of radio long has been and will continue to be: You're alone in your car, flipping the dial, and, every so often, at exactly the right moment, exactly the right song comes on the radio. It makes you slap the steering wheel with happiness. The serendipity is spellbinding.
FM still manages to capture that magic, once in a while. But the response FM increasingly engenders is, "I'm so sick of that song."
But are we sick enough to pull out our checkbooks? Lee Abrams and his colleagues at XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc. are betting their reputations and considerable money that we are. XM is a fledgling business, a company that beams satellite radio to your car or home for a monthly fee. Abrams, an FM radio legend for more than 30 years, is the man who dreamed up XM's 100 channels. He thinks XM can find that perfect song at the perfect moment for enough paying listeners that it can became a sustainable business.
He arrived at XM five years ago like a man stumbling onto an oasis, saved from what he believed had become the wasteland of FM. At XM, he was told to create a new kind of radio. There would be no howling morning shows, no dumbed-down deejay blather and almost no commercials. It would be like starting HBO all over again, except starting with what HBO has become -- the sophisticated "Sopranos," not the polka shows and second-rate movies that marked the channel's early days. It would be a wonderland.
Abrams vowed to save radio. But first XM would have to save itself.
Twenty-one days until the revolution.
On a hot summer morning in the not-too-distant past, several dozen XM employees amble into a conference room at their Northeast Washington headquarters. They and more than 400 other staffers have been scrambling for months to get this billion-dollar, brand-new thing off the ground -- a risky concept called satellite radio.
XM is banking that enough people are fed up with what they hear on their radios that they'll cough up at least $150 for an XM receiver and $9.99 per month to pay for the 100 channels of XM's subscription radio -- something like cable TV for radio -- and have it beamed by satellite into their cars and homes. On this day, XM is putting the finishing touches on its dozens of niche music channels, such as all-blues and all-disco channels, as well as channels devoted to folk, heavy metal, experimental jazz, Big Band swing from the '40s and so on. But the question lingers: Will anyone pay for radio?
This three-story Industrial Revolution brick building -- a former printing shop near the intersection of Florida and New York avenues NE -- has been gutted and turned into a 21st-century technological hive, complete with 82 digital studios, a 200,000-CD library and satellite uplinks on the roof.
Inside, the look is Starship Enterprise, with walls of blinking electronics and high-tech gee-wizardry. You can touch the money everywhere. The false ceiling is steel mesh. Chief executive Hugh Panero even had a special chair installed in the main control room, fashioned after the one that Captain Kirk sat in on the bridge of his ship.
The people in the conference room on this day are mostly programmers -- the staffers who will decide what songs XM's channels play. They settle around a long table made of blond wood. High-tech accouterments populate the room -- video monitors, speakers, whiteboards, a PowerPoint display.
The employees are mostly male, mostly white, with a few spiky-haired punk women and programmers of color rounding out the group. Shorts and aloha shirts are the corporate uniform; loudmouth one-upsterism the conversational norm. There is a brief exchange about the "XM signature," which is a seven-tone identifying tune played on all the channels, customized to the channel's sound. On XM's country stations, for instance, the signature has a twang.
Someone asks the programmers if anyone wants the signature done by barking dogs. Everyone's hand shoots up amid laughter. One programmer deadpans: "We have it in farts, if anyone wants that."
Dave Logan is standing at the head of the table; he rings a bell, signaling that that idea might not be quite appropriate, even for out-there XM. Logan is Abrams's top lieutenant; the two worked together at a Chicago radio station in the late '70s and have been friends since. Logan is a handsome, tanned, high-energy, agreeable sort. He exudes can-do confidence.
"We need to get back to the Holy Grail," he tells the programmers. "And here's the Moses of programming."
Glenn Lee Abrams saunters into the room, generous stomach first, substantial reputation trailing behind. For most of the '70s and '80s, Abrams was the most influential man in FM radio. He is to thank -- or blame -- for much of what FM sounds like today. The programmers burst into applause.
He is a glorious ramshackle. At 50, Abrams has bushy, gray hair, still rebelliously long enough to say "aging rocker" instead of "corporate suit." He has a way with insightful phrases and the occasional cuss word. That, coupled with his legendary past -- which everyone in this room knows of and admires -- makes him an inspirational figure here.
He tells the programmers that XM needs "swagger."
"Are we Pablo Cruise?" he asks, rhetorically, invoking the 1970s California soft-pop group. "No! We're Led [expletive] Zeppelin!"
He urges the group not to make on-air mistakes that are "stupid and terrestrial." He never wants to hear shopworn FM phrases on XM, such as "commercial-free" and "coming up -- more great songs!" He tells the programmers they need to break the FM lock on record labels and band managers. "Get to know them," he says. "Get the guy some free tickets to the circus for his kids. Or get him some blow."
Everyone laughs.
"Kidding!" Abrams emphasizes.
What follows is an all-morning critique session. Of XM's 100 channels, about 30 are talk, news and variety channels, many bought from other providers, such as CNN and the BBC. Most of XM's 70 music channels, however, are original, programmed at the XM headquarters by the people around this table.
In an adult version of show-and-tell, the music station programmers play a two-minute clip from their channel before the group -- Abrams included -- to demonstrate what it will sound like. Most of the clips sound fresh -- bits of songs almost never heard on radio these days, clever interstitial dialogue, canned sound effects. The clips that sound too much like today's radio merit a stern Abrams rebuke.
At lunchtime, Abrams gives his troops a high-octane send-off: "FM gave up on music -- or just tested it to death." One wonders if the irony of this comment sinks in -- Abrams is one of the founding fathers of radio research.
As the industry's top rock radio consultant for more than two decades, Abrams put his stamp on more than 300 stations around the country. Then he watched as research became more scientific and overtook his business, draining the gut out of radio until it became something that had no more use for Abrams, who walked away in disgust from what he'd wrought.
When he landed at XM, he was charged with building 100 new stations from scratch.
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