KVI is now Oldies

Includes archive of Bill Virgin's columns fromJ une 2006 - March 2009

KVI is now Oldies

Postby radiofan » Sun Nov 07, 2010 11:29 pm

Seattles KVI 570 is now oldies and they're streaming ...

KVI Website

Image

Nice to hear Charlie Van Dyke Imaging again too!
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby ThisIsNotCBC » Mon Nov 08, 2010 9:49 pm

That seriously rocks. I used to listen to KVI on my DX prowls back when it had been oldies in the late-'80s, so bringing the oldies back is a step in the right direction.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby Mike Cleaver » Mon Nov 08, 2010 11:30 pm

Well, maybe.
Just tried the stream, got four minutes of commercials and psa's and then American Woman by the Guess Who!
I hoped they wouldn't play any CanCrap.
I know they don't have to but it would be nice to find one oldies station on this continent that didn't force us to listen to this overplayed to death stuff.
That's it for me for now, I'll try again when they add jocks.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby jawbone » Mon Nov 08, 2010 11:48 pm

Mike Cleaver wrote:Well, maybe.
Just tried the stream, got four minutes of commercials and psa's and then American Woman by the Guess Who!
I hoped they wouldn't play any CanCrap.
I know they don't have to but it would be nice to find one oldies station on this continent that didn't force us to listen to this overplayed to death stuff.
That's it for me for now, I'll try again when they add jocks.


Maybe no one told them they were programing for just an American audience, so they shouldn't play what is basically good old rock & roll that knows no political boundaries.

Me thinks thou dost protest too much.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby Anotherwpgguy » Tue Nov 09, 2010 8:19 am

Methinks Mike Cleaver is right on the money.

Perhaps you weren't around at the time CANCON Regs were foisted upon us on-air types by having the crap shoved down our throats with a toilet plunger ... oh, but thats all just "old fogie crap" isn't it?

Yeah, yeah ... I know ... we should have happily given up one out of every three songs on the number one radio station in a million plus market to some local bands recorded on an Ampex 601 and a single ElectroVoice 635 at the corner pub, and mixed that in between The Temptations and Elton John so we could develop a broad talent pool for the future ... all the while thanking Pierre Trudeau for being so ... well, anti-American.

Well, some of us still resent government intrusion.

Enough of a rant ... I'm late for work, we have deicing operations being conducted this morning and I have important stuff to do.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby jawbone » Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:09 am

I have been around for a while, but only as an interested observer and lover of music. What I cannot understand is why so many 'old timers' on this board, hold grudges for so long.
Here we have a heritage station in Seattle doing 'what's right', for ITS home audience and people on here are complaining about a classic Canadian song, from classic Canadian band, being played on a non Canadian station. Why? Beacause of some stupid regulations here.
C'mon fellas, give your heads a shake and look at the big picture.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby kat » Tue Nov 09, 2010 10:10 am

Mike Cleaver wrote:Well, maybe.
Just tried the stream, got four minutes of commercials and psa's and then American Woman by the Guess Who!
I hoped they wouldn't play any CanCrap.
I know they don't have to but it would be nice to find one oldies station on this continent that didn't force us to listen to this overplayed to death stuff.
That's it for me for now, I'll try again when they add jocks.


I guess Mr C was too busy in the newsroom at CHUM to take notice that some Canadian songs actually became legitimate hits in the US. I'll bet if you were to listen
to KVI or any other US oldies station you'd quite likely hear a few songs by The Guess Who, some BTO, Gino Vannelli, Nick Gilder, Lightfoot and maybe even Anne
Murray or Frank Mills.

What bugs me even more than Cleave's intolerance for Canadian music is his stupid little plays on words. Using them once is kind of funny, but seeing things
like CanCrap or limpdick games over and over gets old real quick. What's next, Gordon Heavyhand?

:cat2:
The world has two kinds of people. Cat people and idiots.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby Mike Cleaver » Tue Nov 09, 2010 3:24 pm

As is everyone, Kat, you are entitled to your opinion.
However, you didn't live through those days and you were not working "on air" when CanCrap was imposed.
There virtually was NO PRODUCT available to play but you still had to find 30 per cent no matter what format you were doing.
Some unbelievable crap went on the air just because it qualified as Canadian and anyone who had to constantly hear it (jocks and newsies alike) quickly grew to hate the mediocre crap we were forced to play and push on the audience.
As for newsies not hearing those songs over and over, at CHUM, the monitor always was on because Mr. Waters wanted to make certain no misinformation went on the air.
If a jock said something that was incorrect, the newsperson was supposed to let that jock know the facts so a correction could be made.
I managed to correct that situation when I was in Edmonton by having a switch on the monitor which only activated it when the jock turned on his mic.
Anotherwpgguy also was on air during those times and went through the same stupid period with nothing decent to play, sandwiching garbage between superstars.
Comments from others are well and good but if you weren't there and didn't experience the pain of having your show interrupted with crap, don't judge those who did.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby jawbone » Tue Nov 09, 2010 4:34 pm

Mike Cleaver wrote:Comments from others are well and good but if you weren't there and didn't experience the pain of having your show interrupted with crap, don't judge those who did.


But it is OK for you to judge others and the music they may like?
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby Destro » Tue Nov 09, 2010 6:53 pm

Anotherwpgguy wrote:Methinks Mike Cleaver is right on the money.

Perhaps you weren't around at the time CANCON Regs were foisted upon us on-air types by having the crap shoved down our throats with a toilet plunger ... oh, but thats all just "old fogie crap" isn't it?


I think Jawbone means... they don't HAVE to play Guess Who but chose to... that is kinda neat. Their audience isn't retired Canadians burnt on old Cancon.

I do agree, that there is more to Oldies radio than many current programmers jam out... and AM radio will be the new frontier for something a little more eclectic.

To program an eclectic oldies station would be an uphill battle of re-programming decades of radio and musical taste abuse.
blog: http://morningaftershow.wordpress.com "A voice of reason amongst the doubters!" - Sandclan
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby Mike Cleaver » Tue Nov 09, 2010 8:44 pm

When it comes to "oldies," there is so much good stuff out there that never gets played.
All you have to do is look at the charts posted here daily.
On commercial radio, we hear the same tired old four or five hundred selections over and over and over again.
That's because most of the music comes from a "service" which packages the tunes and sells them with the software to play them.
Actually having to go out and source your own music is passe.
Most radio stations don't have music libraries any more with the actual cds or vinyl.
They gave it all away or sold it to collectors.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby jawbone » Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:12 pm

Destro wrote:I think Jawbone means... they don't HAVE to play Guess Who but chose to... that is kinda neat. Their audience isn't retired Canadians burnt on old Cancon.


Thank you Destro. Exactly what I was trying to get through a couple of thick skulls.
One of them gave the new KVI a few minutes and dismissed it because of one song. Not very professional, in the opinion of this non-broadcaster.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby Mike Cleaver » Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:19 pm

The other problem is the "clustering" of spots and psa's that can go on for several minutes.
What's wrong with doing it the way we did in the last century, play a tune, do a couple of spots, play a jingle, play another song talking over the intro, etc.?
Jamming a whole bunch of boring commercials together is a tune out.
Space them out throughout the hour, not three clusters of six minutes of spots each.
The advertiser gets a better bang for the buck and the listener doesn't suffer commercial tune out.
And for jawbone's edification, when people hiring talent listen to audition audio, the "talent" gets about 30 seconds to prove him/herself.
It may not be fair but that's the way it is.
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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby Anotherwpgguy » Tue Nov 09, 2010 9:59 pm

Presuming I am one of the two "thick skulls" that you may be sanctimoniously referencing, its a shame you never experinced the thrill of doing a radio show, or being a a part of an operational team at one of the top five radio stations in North America. It was "a real hoot," and the peak of the profession in the day which few achieved. I was fortunate enough to have been one.

Pulling rank, I therefore must say you have no idea of the damage done to the on-air product by a scummy politician grubbing for a couple of hundred votes, and a group of beaucrats that saw only an additional level of salary classification by supervising additional staff at the CRTC.

You ask "so why didn't those directly affected just get over it?"

Well, ask somebody who has had his historical family farm expropriated for an airport development, or a proud homeowner whose house was torn down to make way for a highway widening project ... or to take it to an extreme, why not tell residents of Taiwan to "just get over" having their land stolen from them, and run off the mainland by Chairman Mao.

As Mr Cleaver has stated, there just wasn't the product in the marketplace to play and be credible to immediately go to 30% right off the hop ... argue all you want based upon your external view of the business ... I was the one there in the control room trying to figure out how in the hell was I going to mix Led Zepplin, and Aretha Franklin with The Irish Rovers and Paul Anka because the quota said thats what I had to work with in the next few minutes.

Rant all you like about people like Cleaver and I being "thick skulls," but we were there doing the job day in and day out while you were sucking on lollipops in your strollers. I believe unless you were there, you can theorize after the fact all you like and rewrite history, but are clueless as to the job that had to be done at the country's largest broadcast outlets because of an arbitrary quota system, driven exclusively by political forces.

That CANCRAP LAW caused me to abandon my previously held pride when I would hear a Canadian group ... for example ..... Guess Who cut, and revel in them being from Winnipeg, and doing well on the world stage. Or a Gordon Lightfoot, and marvel at his expressive writing in a song like "Beautiful." It got so I was so disgusted by any..... and almost all of the "legislated music," that immediately after the intro was completed where I had hyped some piece of overplayed crud out of profesional requirement and PD issued memo directive, and hit the vocal, I'd toss the headphones onto the console and turn the monitor off until the last ten seconds on the clock, then turn up the monitor to do the next mechanical action, like a "More Music" fast to fast jingle into a laid under instrumental hitpoint, and then be enthusiastic about playing something that was on the playlist because it was a "real hit" around the world instead of a subsidized, underwritten, overplayed, overexposed, mediocre piece of drivel that should never have made it on-air, and the record should have been held over a gas stove and turned into a salad bowl.

But then, you just wouldn't understand what it was like to have mix after mix, after mix ruined because of a slimy Liberal Party of Canada politician.

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Re: KVI is now Oldies

Postby PicturesForYourEars » Tue Nov 09, 2010 10:56 pm

Agree with you guys. And nothing was worse than the evening jock having to make up for the morning show that was excused by programming from having to play 30% by virtue of their time slot...the evening jock ended up during the last couple of hours playing MAPL virtually back to back.

The slogan of the day was 'Up Your Cancon'. And it didn't mean play more of Bond Dancing On A Saturday Night either!
...LEFT PLACES I SHOULDA STAYED,
STAYED PLACES I SHOULDA LEFT...
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