Soul 73 Goes Automated

[JSngry]

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/dc9/2012/05/kkda_lays_off_its_staff.php

Truly the end of an era...this was a true Southern R&B station that worked from, for, and in the community from which the music sprung.

They're keeping the music, but ditching the DJs. It will not be the same thing. It can't be the same thing.

Another piece of Reality As I've Known It checks out.

So long.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Hm.

Technical question - is a traffic report really what I think it is? Some kind of survey of listeners or phone calls to the DJ? Or is it stuff like, 'traffic on highway 45G at a standstill because of three naked women cavorting on the central reservation'?

MG

[JSngry]

It varies from having a reporter in the sky (the usual, and they're often third-parties who do individual reports for individual stations) to somebody listening in to these reporters, police scanners, etc. and then giving an in-studio summation of their findings.

In between are the third part services that perform the latter function. You can hear the same person giving the same report on several different stations, just with a personalized-to-the-station sign-on/sign-off.

All things being equal (and they never are) the best ones are the "eye in the sky" guys who get into some kind of back-and-forth with the DJs. Soul 73 was real good at that.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Not unrelated to this sad story is the story of my trying to book a short trip to Paris today.

I went into Thomas Cook's branch. I used to work for Cook's in 1960-62, in the Harrods branch, so I do remember how things used to be

After the usual discussion of where, when and how much I wanted to pay, the guy at the desk finds something that looks right. Good; it's only been a quarter hour. So he tries to book it on his computer, through some organisation that's apparently another part of Thomas Cook. After several tries he apologises and says there's something wrong with their site and he'll have to phone the booking through. (I'm supposed to be meeting daughter and grandson for lunch and want a quick flip through Kelly's LPs first, so this worries me.) Things haven't changed much, because he gets put on hold, just like we used to fifty years ago. Only instead of Brrr Brrr... he gets rock music, which he hates, and the same song over and over.

Eventually he gets through to a human being, who takes the details and asks him for a password.

Now the password changes daily. It's a password for the whole shop and it comes up on their computers. OK, so far so eccentric... but every day, IT COMES UP IN A DIFFERENT PLACE!!!! so they have to hunt the fucking password! SO after a loud discussion with the other members of the staff, an Indian lady tells him the password for the day is 'villa'. Oh yes, loudly enough to be heard by everyone in the shop.

So he has to try again, because the human being on the other end had closed him down when he couldn't give the password - another wait. More of the same rock song. So I ask him, while we're waiting, to give me a quote for holiday insurance, and he asks my age, then starts doing that. After a couple of minutes, he says, 'that's not working, either!'

So, if you listen closely, KKDA might play the music of the Dogon, or Henry Treadgill one day.

Oh yes, I did get the booking. The phone calls and other stuff took four times as long as sorting out what I wanted, but I did get to Spillers for an hour before lunch.

MG