#Metromedia Station

[grantgoddard]

From Russia with lawlessness : 1994 : Metromedia, Park Place, Moscow

“I am a paediatric doctor,” said the young woman cleaning the toilet bowl in the bathroom of my apartment. “I work at the hospital during the day but I cannot live on my salary, so I have to work as a cleaner every evening.”

I was embarrassed. Although the doctor had been cleaning my apartment nightly, this was the first occasion I had attempted to strike up a conversation. I had mistakenly presumed that my ‘cleaner’ spoke no English. How wrong I was! Maybe she assumed I was a snobby American corporate manager who had just been posted overseas. How wrong she was! I was an unemployed Brit forced to take some freelance radio consulting work abroad, having failed to secure a job in my own backyard. Both of us were having to do what we did to survive.

I felt disorientated here. It was my first time in Russia. I would never have chosen to work here. But it could have been worse. My client, American public corporation Metromedia, had initially told me my destination was to be Nizhny Novgorod. I had had to consult a map to even locate that industrial city on the Volga. Thankfully, instead, I was sent to cosmopolitan Moscow. But looks are deceiving. My surroundings gave the semblance of a modern city but almost nothing actually worked as it should. Here was an incomplete facsimile of Western capitalist infrastructure in which the Soviet state had copied the designs without implementing the mechanisms. It recalled the era when a ‘Made in China’ label was a surefire guarantee a product that might look good would quickly fail.

My one-bedroom apartment appeared quite luxurious, about three times the size of my poky second-floor flat in London, with floor-to-ceiling glass windows on an upper floor that looked out over the permanent pollution rising from Moscow’s busy streets. It was inside a huge, newly built trio of linked office blocks containing office spaces and 330 apartments intended for foreign businesses that required a secure location 14 kilometres from the Kremlin. It was like living in one of those vast complexes portrayed in American movies about the self-destructive life of a harassed corporate ‘road warrior’. Maybe it was designed to offer ex-pats that kind of bland fictional familiarity.

In January 1994, Metromedia had bought one of the least popular FM radio stations in Moscow, planning to turn it into one of the most popular. There was a hitch. The Americans were baffled by the radio market not just in Russia, but in the whole of Europe. They could hear 30+ stations broadcasting in Moscow but they could not fathom what they were doing on-air. This was not simply a language problem. It was a challenge because Americans were accustomed to tightly defined music or speech broadcasters in their commercial radio system. You only had to listen to the vast majority of American radio stations for around ten minutes to recognise their ‘format’. Europe was not like that, largely because ‘public service broadcasting’ had been legislated as the bedrock of its broadcast systems since the invention of radio.

Before my flight to Moscow, I had purchased a Sony all-band radio from an electronics shop in Watford for almost £100. It was now put to service all day while I listened hour after hour to a particular Moscow radio station, writing notes about the music played, the talk, the advertisements, the jingles and anything else I heard. I was used to listening to radio stations in languages of which I had no comprehension, having spent so many weekend nights as a schoolboy DX-ing radio stations from all over the world on a Trio 9R59DS radio receiver. I had also analysed local radio markets in the UK for groups applying for new licences, monitoring existing stations’ broadcasts and tabulating the results. It might be boring work but at least I was being paid to do it!

One morning I received an email requesting my presence at an important staff meeting to be held in the Metromedia office within Park Place. This surprised me for several reasons: I was not an employee, I had never previously been invited to such a meeting in Moscow and, most astonishingly, nobody had told me that Metromedia even had an office within the same building where I was living. I had to call the phone number on the message to ask where precisely this office was located within the complex.

After spending so many days alone in the apartment listening to my radio and writing copious observations, it was an adventure to walk through the building’s labyrinth of anonymous floors and numbered doors to eventually locate and knock on the Metromedia office. After weeks of perpetual solitude, it felt like coming out of prison to be greeted by a surprise party. The room was full of Americans of whom I had never been aware, let alone met, all chatting away noisily. None of them had the faintest idea who I was, requiring my explanation that I too had received THE email. They were very welcoming in the American way, despite probably wondering why on earth this unknown, scraggy Englishman was present.

The meeting started soberly with an update on Metromedia’s progress attracting paying subscribers to its broadcast television service ‘Kosmos TV’ and mobile phone system it had apparently launched in 1991 in partnership with the state’s ‘Moscow Television & Transmitter Centre’. I had no idea that Metromedia had been operating in Moscow several years already and had been investing around US$5m annually in that particular joint venture business. The good news was its success in building a growing subscriber base. However, the reason for this meeting was the bad news that the Russian who had been appointed manager of the business had just disappeared with all its funds and had proven untraceable. There were long faces. Oh dear.

Welcoming the variation from my usual lonely routine, I spent the remainder of that day in the office chatting with some of my newly discovered Metromedia colleagues. At that stage, it seemed unclear whether the television business could continue and whether the office would even remain in operation. I met the corporation’s financial analyst Muema Lombe who shared my interest in pirate radio and he generously introduced me to the basics of Excel, the software that has been the mainstay of my analysis work ever since. We remain close friends since that chance introduction in Moscow.

On the way back to my apartment, I called in at the ‘Garden Ring Irish Supermarket’ in the Park Place lobby to buy my regular supplies. It was a smaller satellite branch of the bigger shop in the city centre that had opened in 1992. I was surviving on breakfast cereal, milk, bananas, tea and snacks, particularly American ‘Oreo’ cookies which I had never seen before. There was no cooking equipment in the apartment beyond a kettle, probably to encourage residents to eat in the complex’s vastly overpriced restaurant. Lacking a corporate expense account, I only ate there when my American line manager John Catlett was in Moscow, enduring hour-long waits to be served the simplest meals.

Although the Park Place shop’s range of food was limited, it felt too dangerous to shop outside as a foreigner. Russians bought provisions at kiosks where they could ask for the items they wanted, whereas foreigners like me had to frequent self-serve retailers where they became easily identifiable targets. In 1993, more than 7,000 crimes against foreigners had been reported in Russia, including the editor of the English-language ‘Moscow Times’ newspaper who had been robbed of cash and a laptop by men with knives outside the city centre’s Garden Ring Irish Supermarket. I had watched a ‘CNN’ report that Russia’s murder rate was three times higher than the United States’ and was only surpassed by South Africa.

Due to its success attracting foreign customers, the Irish Supermarket itself soon became a target. After its owners resisted a takeover by their Russian partner Dmitry Kishiev, there were reports of an alleged overnight explosion at its city centre store. The ‘Moscow Times’ reported: “Apparently fearing for their safety, the Irish partners then fled the country, urging their more than two-dozen expatriate employees to do likewise.”

Once Russians took over the ‘Irish’ supermarket, I noticed food on sale in Park Place marked with long gone expiry dates, the prices increased, customers deserted and eventually the shops closed altogether. Like everything else in Russia, ‘business’ was not considered a product of entrepreneurial spirit or managerial prowess. Instead, it was considered a lucky lottery ticket permitting almost anyone lacking relevant skills to intimidate, bully and exert power to enrich themselves over others.

Russia during the 1990’s was frequently referred to as the ‘Wild West’. There was a sense that just about anything you could imagine might happen there … and it frequently did. My corporate apartment felt like a haven of relative ‘normality’ within a crazed parallel universe. I cannot recall anyone being murdered at Park Place during my initial stay, unlike subsequent visits to Russia when I was given accommodation in hotels of variable quality and security. Never did I value boring old Britain so much as the days I would thankfully walk on the tarmac of Heathrow airport after yet another prolonged stay in Russia.

“A powerful bomb blast in the city’s centre on Saturday afternoon took the life of a Moscow student. The bomb which, according to police, had power equivalent to approximately 400 grams of TNT, had been placed inside a large metal dumpster on ul Bolshaya Spasskaya not far from Leningradsky train station. According to eyewitnesses, at the time of the blast, the 23-year-old female student of farming was walking by the dumpster. The strength of the explosion tore off one of her arms and blew out most of the windows in neighbouring buildings … Witnesses reported that just a few moments before the blast, several men had tried forcibly to enter a building next to where the explosion took place, but that after a doorman refused to let them enter the building, they threw a package into the dumpster.”

Small story on PAGE SEVEN of the ‘Moscow Tribune’, 30 January 1996

[truck451]

The Passing Of A Person Who Was Instrumental In Kaiser Broadcasting, Metromedia's Television Stations, Independent Television Stations, And The FOX Television Network; A Fellow By The Name Of Richard "Dick" Block

The Passing Of A Person Who Was Instrumental In Kaiser Broadcasting, Metromedia’s Television Stations, Independent Television Stations, And The FOX Television Network; A Fellow By The Name Of Richard “Dick” Block: Former Kaiser Broadcasting Head Dick Block Dies

[taperwolf]

FWIW, "The Oscillographer" was the house magazine for DuMont, a company that made cathode ray tubes and devices using them, like oscilloscopes and televisions. They even briefly ran the US's fourth television network, from 1946-1956; the stations they owned ultimately became Metromedia, which formed the nucleus of the Fox network.

[chrisgoesrock]

KSAN FM95 - A Metromedia Station Poster

[airchexx]

Dick Clayton on 610 WIP Philadelphia | August 28 1973

Dick Clayton on 610 WIP Philadelphia | August 28 1973

   WIP 610 Philadelphia – Dick Clayton – August 28 1973 Courtesy: Alan Tolz This aircheck features Dick Clayton on 610 WIP Philadelphia. Metromedia’s WIP was an MOR stations, that performed very well in the Delaware Valley. The format was very similar to it’s sister station WNEW 1130 in New York. Dick Clayton hosted the early afternoon shift for years. He had a great wit and a dry sense…

[malifee]

[ID 1: A black-and-white image of the logo of radio station KSAN. /end ID 1]

[ID 2: A short newspaper article from Wednesday, March 27, 1974, entitled "KSAN's Gay "Follies"". The article reads as follows:

"A 35 minute comedy special, "The Gay Liberation Follies", will be aired by KSAN-FM, the Metromedia outlet in San Francisco, Sunday, April 21, at 9 a.m. The show is a joint production of KSAN and San Francisco Pacifica Foundation station KPFA-FM.

Written and directed by Len Richmond, coauthor of the Ramparts Press "Gay Liberation Book", the show is described as mixing elements of guerilla theatre and vaudeville to present "a new style of gay humour - not the old, self-effacing gay humour but one that laughs in the face of society."

Special segments include a soap opera titles "Gays of Our Lives", "Frankenstein Meets Gay Liberation" and Naomi Ruth Eisenberg (formerly of Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks) singing "Love Is A Many Gendered Thing". /End ID 2]

1974.

The Gay Liberation Follies.

[blueimmersion-blog]

TDI Advanced Trimix Diver

It was written off as a useless trade, significantly with the demise of tobacco promoting. It has been known as a blight on the American panorama. It even earned the nickname "air pollution on a stick." However issues have modified with out of doors promoting and we're not speaking about your father's billboards. TDI Advanced Trimix Diver

Right this moment, the out of doors billboard trade contains not simply the small Eight-sheet poster alongside your native rural highway; it contains mammoth indicators that tower above the tens of 1000's of people that cross via Instances Sq. every day. It contains rolling ads on the perimeters of vehicles and buses. It features a plethora of signage at speedways, and in sports activities stadiums. And it contains "out of doors furnishings" signage comprised of bus shelters, benches and nearly anyplace else the place individuals congregate.

Like them or not, out of doors billboards are right here to remain and the trade has by no means appeared brighter. Total spending on out of doors promoting is sort of $5 billion, a ten % development price and greater than double a decade earlier. Furthermore, billboards are the place to see among the most artistic work in promoting, despite the truth that you might have just a few seconds to seize the viewer's consideration. To these within the trade, out of doors is in.

A Cell Society

Modern social tendencies favor billboards. People are spending fewer hours at dwelling, the place TV, cable, magazines, newspapers, books, and the Web all clamor for consideration. Individuals are spending extra time than ever of their automobiles - day by day automobile journeys are up 110% since 1970, and the variety of automobiles on the highway is up by 147%. For most individuals caught in visitors, the one media choices are radio and billboards.

Read More

Anybody who's sufficiently old to recollect the previous Burma Shave indicators alongside the freeway is aware of that out of doors billboards will be very participating and right now's out of doors billboard trade contributes tens of millions of of house to numerous public service causes.

The brand new computer-painting know-how utilized by the trade is making out of doors billboards brighter, extra thrilling, and upbeat. Their messages are sometimes extra intelligent, humorous and inventive - there's even a major awards packages known as the "Obie" to acknowledge excellent out of doors artistic, together with a class for PSAs.

The brand new single-column buildings have cleaner strains than the previous phone pole or I-beam buildings, and are supporting and complementing right now's crisp, new, shiny, architecturally-designed shops, buildings and malls.

Like different rising stars of the knowledge age, billboards have gone excessive tech. Digital know-how developed at MIT has reworked the way in which billboards are made. Till the 1990s, most billboards had been hand-painted on plywood. High quality was inconsistent and when paint pale and wooden chipped, billboards grew to become eyesores. Right this moment, computer-painting know-how has all however eradicated the old style signal painter, and plywood has given solution to sturdy vinyl that may be minimize to any dimension, then rolled into tubes for straightforward transport. Big graphics will be produced extra shortly and at decrease price, and digital printing ensures trustworthy reproduction--so that an advert for Levi's blue denims seems exactly the identical in every single place.

Billionaire John W. Kluge, a significant drive within the billboard enterprise for 4 a long time, introduced laptop portray to the market by way of his firm, Metromedia Applied sciences. From 1959 to 1986, Kluge owned Foster & Kleiser, then the nation's largest billboard operator, and Metromedia is now the world chief in large-scale imaging. Different innovators are including three- dimensional buildings, digital tickers, and steady movement to out of doors adverts.

Regardless that out of doors is just two % of general advert spending, its impact is rising, significantly in one-of-a-kind places reminiscent of Instances Sq. and Sundown Boulevard, the place publicity is unattainable to calculate. Indicators there can pop up on the information, in motion pictures and in magazines, and that does not even consider the tens of millions who stroll via the areas weekly. "We will not even inform an advertiser what number of impressions they're getting," says Brian Turner, president of Sherwood Outside, which sells 60 website "spectaculars" at One and Two Instances Sq. and 1600 Broadway, making it the 12th largest out­door firm by way of income.

Outside Goes Inexperienced

This New 12 months's Eve revelers at Instances Sq. could have a close-up view of the nation's first environmentally pleasant billboard. Powered totally by wind and solar - 16 wind generators and 64 photo voltaic panels - the signal is anticipated to avoid wasting $12,000 to $15,000 per thirty days in electrical energy prices. Multiply this by all the opposite cities within the nation utilizing electrical energy for out of doors illumination, and it quantities to a signficant price financial savings and eco-friendly out of doors.

A variety of advertisers reminiscent of Normal Motors' Cadillac, Samsung, Prudential, NBC, Budweiser, New York State Lottery, even the New York Instances pay six-figure month-to-month charges to carry house for 10 years, a far cry from the times when the indicators used to show over each six months. Instances Sq. is a lot in demand that Inter Metropolis constructed a 50 story lodge and 300 foot tower at Broadway and 47th Avenue with a complete of 75,000 sq. toes of outside promoting. "The tower is the most important construction ever constructed solely for promoting," says Bob Nyland, president of Inter Metropolis Premiere. Advertisers embody American Categorical, Apple, AT&T, HBO, Hachette Filipacchi, Levi's, Morgan Stanley, Nokia and the U.S. Postal Service.

The Morphing of Outside

"Outside was once referred to as the beer, butts, and babes medium," says Andrea MacDonald, president of MacDonald Media, a New York company that focuses on out-of-home promoting. Now, she says, "every little thing's modified. New know-how has made us extra artistic, and advertisers are seeing billboards in a brand new gentle."

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http://blue-immersion.org/courses/tdi-courses/tdi-trimix-diver/ http://blue-immersion.org/courses/tdi-courses/tdi-decompression-procedures/

To ensure they stand out within the crowd, trendy billboards are taking even new kinds. In Chicago, Transit Show Worldwide (TDI), wrapped a two automotive, 96 foot lengthy commuter practice with an advert. And in some areas, no house is left uncovered. For instance, in New York's World Commerce Middle, TDI helped Dodge take over each doable house of the rail station ­ flooring, partitions, posters, banners, escalators ­ to create a single exhibit. The World Financial institution draped its constructing in cloth to help World AIDS Day. Billboards, transit kiosks, posters and different types of out of doors will be strategically positioned round Washington, DC Metro stops on the Pentagon or an government department company such because the Division of Transportation to make an announcement a few marketing campaign or difficulty.

"We have had requests for shifting, smoking and smelling boards," says Pat Punch, who's a co-owner of Minneapolis-based Atomic Props, an organization that focuses on distinctive spectaculars. For Poland Springs, Atomic Props created a 30 foot water bottle and an outside poster for Jell-O in Instances Sq. serves up a large spoon with four,000 smaller spoons.

In Minneapolis, dwelling base for Goal, individuals sit up for a brand new three dimensional billboard object each month, reminiscent of Outdated Devoted, full with spray each 10 min­utes, which symbolizes Goal's donation to the nation's parks. Minneapolis retailer Dayton-Hudson as soon as had three dimensional bins of sweet that emanated a mint scent. Says Punch: "During the last 10 years, our enterprise has tripled as individuals see the chances."

Since 1996, the Large 4 of billboards--Outside Programs, Eller, Clear Channel and Lamar--have spent greater than $5 billion to gobble up dozens of mom-and-pop operators, in addition to the out of doors divisions of huge firms like Gannett and 3M. Collectively they management about 40% of the revenues generated by the 400,000 or so billboards throughout America. As trade giants, they will function effectively and supply one-stop buying to nationwide advertisers. Goodwill Communications's out of doors database has been decreased from over 600 out of doors firms two years in the past to only over 400 right now, attributable to consolidations and buy-outs.

PSA Communications Benefits

Outside is probably essentially the most ignored medium of all in the case of launching PSA campaigns. Admittedly, the price of printing billboard paper will be costly, however given the everyday outcomes we've skilled for shoppers, we consider that out of doors offers wonderful publicity alternatives.

When used to tell the general public about public causes, out of doors billboards present many various communications benefits, and the overall universe of outside alternatives is nearly limitless, as proven by the next desk supplied by the Outside Promoting Affiliation of America.

First, out of doors is usually out there even in cities which can be too small to have a radio station or an area newspaper.

Second, billboards can present communications attain proper all the way down to the neighborhood degree. This can be helpful in case your marketing campaign is concentrating on inside metropolis residents or highschool college students and you'll persuade the out of doors billboard firm to put up your PSA messages close by.

One media purchaser for a significant promoting company demonstrates the pliability of outside: "I am working Russian copy in a New York neighborhood, Filipino in San Francisco, Arabic in Detroit."

Third, when used along with different types of out of doors - sports activities stadium signage, transit and place-based media - they will present the communications effectiveness of an area community, supplying you with attain and frequency all through the neighborhood.

Fourth, public service messages on out of doors billboards are sometimes out there as a result of out of doors firms do not need to have an unpleasant signal with clean paper staring out at motorists for an prolonged time period.

The Basis for a Higher Life, (FBL) in partnership with the Outside Promoting Affiliation of America (OAAA), launched a nationwide PSA billboard marketing campaign with a dramatic kickoff on the NASDAQ digital billboard in Instances Sq.. With a theme of "Move It On," the billboards are a part of a seamless PSA marketing campaign to advertise optimistic values by way of viral methods. Over the course of a yr, OAAA member promoting firms across the nation donated house on greater than 10,000 shows for the Move It On marketing campaign, with an estimated advert worth of greater than $10 Million.

Created by Jay Schulberg, well-known for his well-known Milk Mustache adverts, every billboard within the Move It On marketing campaign is supposed to underscore a easy, but galvanizing message. In accordance with Gary Dixon, President of The Basis for a Higher Life, "The Move It On marketing campaign was created to advertise optimistic values and encourage individuals to cross them on to others. We're thrilled to launch it on the NASDAQ board within the very metropolis the place the resilience of the American spirit has proven so brightly for the whole world to see."

A few of the personalities featured in "Move It On" billboards embody: Wayne Gretzky, Muhammad Ali, the Tianamen Sq. Protester, Mom Teresa, Albert Einstein Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln..

Airport Dioramas & Mall Posters

Maybe the world the place out of doors has seen the best development is at airports. The entire variety of guests on the prime 44 airports within the U.S. tops 765 million passengers and over a half a billion individuals cross via simply the highest 10 airports. There are message alternatives now aboard the airways by way of in-flight movies, on the drop down tables in every seat, the napkins positioned on the tables, and even on the underside of the safety bins the place passengers place their objects earlier than going via safety screening. There are dioramas (backlit indicators) within the terminals and on video screens whilst you wait on your baggage. Prefer it or not, the messages are inescapable.

One of many main companies that fabricates the Duratrans materials utilized in airport dioramas is TKO Visible Communications. Manufactured by Kodak, Duratrans is designed for making good show transparencies from shade negatives or internegatives. It's out there in sheets and rolls that are fabricated to suit numerous sizes for posting in airports.

"Duratrans is mostly regarded within the massive format graphics show trade because the benchmark for high quality in translucent, backlit graphics," observes Tom Ortolano of TKO. "It's supposed for big format, full-color show of photographic content material in a managed, backlit atmosphere, in order that gentle passes via and illuminates the graphic show, offering most shade saturation and distinction."

TKO works intently with the 2 largest firms controlling signage at airports and buying malls - J.C. Decaux and Clear Channel Communications. "Since availabilities and sizes are continuously altering nearly day by day, one of the best ways to get PSA messages posted at these venues is to contact the 2 firms, share the artistic with them and they're going to order particular sizes to suit their out there places," Ortolano factors out.

In accordance with Ortolano, "the most typical dimension for the preliminary request must be 62" vast x 43" in top general, with 58"x38" viewing dimension, which is able to work with each firms controlling airport places. Usually they may order dioramas in 5 different bigger sizes which will likely be utilized in key airport places," he mentioned.

Purchasing Mall Shows

Mall shows are available quite a lot of totally different codecs and sizes starting from overhead banners, to exterior signage. Mall banners are massive format, double-sided 12'Wx 16'H and 9'W x 12'H frames hung within the atrium of a mall providing commanding publicity to nearly each mall shopper. Faces are printed digitally utilizing excessive decision copy that vividly recreates every bit of artistic. Banners are offered within the vertical "journal" format and are proportionately similar to magazines (12'x16', 9'x12') so just one piece of art work is required.

Mall posters, essentially the most dominant mall media, measure four' vast x 6' excessive, are backlit and situated at eye degree at main choice factors within the mall - often related to a listing unit. Specialty mall promoting consists of a variety of media codecs - trumpet banners, decals, escalator wraps - that allow entrepreneurs to dominate the mall atmosphere. Positioned in in main city malls, specialty media present a singular branding alternative to supply shoppers with a number of publicity alternatives.

Rail/Transit/Bus Cease Signage

Transit promoting - and corresponding PSA availabilities - are the confluence of a number of elements. More and more transit firms and municipalities that management the house, want extra income and promoting can present a hassle-free revenue stream. Additionally, attributable to rising fuel costs, the "go inexperienced" motion and freeway congestion, extra persons are utilizing mass transit. To succeed in busy commuters, transit promoting now takes many kinds. These vary from subway platform signage, adverts on the perimeters, again and interiors of passenger busses and subways. Even the columns and flooring of ready areas are being lined. Just like airport dioramas, the location of PSAs in these venues requires a personalized method, working with the assorted firms that management the house reminiscent of CBS Outside, after which offering personalized signage to suit the assorted availabilities.

In conclusion, a society continuously in movement, extra out there places, and the facility of outside to convey a compelling message, are all tendencies which have contributed to the success of outside. One factor that hasn't modified - those that management entry to out of doors signage don't need to see an empty signal or poster - and that's what creates nearly limitless alternatives for PSA placement.

Related Topics:

TDI Advanced Nitrox Courses TDI Instructor Courses

[gennarostuff]

Who Owns Fox News? The Murdoch Family Empire In A Nutshell

Who Owns Fox News? The Murdoch Family Empire In A Nutshell

Fox News is owned by 21st Century Fox. That is a global video brand comprising FOX, National Geographic, FOX News, FOX Sports, FX, Star India, Hulu, and Sky, owned by the Murdock family, which retains most of the controlling power. On June 2018, 21st Century Fox has accepted Disney acquisition of its assetsfor $71.3 billion, for the film studio and TV assets. Yet a lawsuit from Fox shareholders…

[donsinclair]

Metromedia vs Aries Waltham Park, Kingston 1987                                                                                                                                     Selector - Sky Juice, Puddy Roots, Daddy Life, Michael Prophet, Danny Dread, Pinchers, Professor Nuts, Daddy Major, Lecturer, Junior Demus and Joe Lickshot...

❤️💛💚 Uk's Leading Broadcast Station For Reggae & Sound System Culture Preserving & Documenting #Reggae SoundSystems Culture For more Quality Vibes Subscribe to our YouTube Channel. https://youtu.be/foVDVlJAwGk

[grantgoddard]

The invisible manager : 1993 : Bud Stiker, Radio Juventus, Hungary

Nazi soldiers were everywhere. Battalions of Nazis marching down wide boulevards. Nazis standing on convoys of tanks, waving flags. Row upon row of Nazis saluting speeches by their leader. Nazis fighting on battlefields. It was exhausting to watch for too long and nothing like 'Indiana Jones'. In fact, it was a little bit frightening.

I had viewed so many hours of ‘MTV’ that I knew Stina Nordenstam’s song ‘Little Star’ by heart. Seeking alternative entertainment, I manually retuned the hotel room’s television and was shocked to discover a grainy black-and-white channel that was broadcasting Nazi propaganda twenty-four hours a day. I was like Dennis Quaid in the movie ‘Frequency’, pulling signals from the ether transmitted several decades earlier. This bizarre television service must have been a sideshow of the civil war raging on European soil only a hundred miles from my present location, atop a Budapest hill 479 metres above sea level.

My life under ‘hotel arrest’ was proving extremely tedious. To be accurate, I could leave any time I wished but my accommodation was hardly ‘Hotel California’. I was stranded alone, five miles from the city centre in countryside popular for walking holidays in summer but dead as a dodo mid-winter. No buses, no taxis, no shops, no mobile phone, no laptop, no internet access. It felt like sensory deprivation to be cooped up in a hotel room for days with absolutely nothing to do. My sole consolation was that I would be charging the client my daily rate.

My task had been to interview each of the staff of tiny ‘Radio Juventus’ in Siófok to determine their role, their skills and their future potential. The station had been launched in 1989 by a local newspaper to serve German tourists who summered at Lake Balaton. It was about to be acquired by American public corporation Metromedia, owned by billionaire John Kluge, and I had been hired to discover precisely what he was buying and to plan its transformation into Hungary’s first national commercial radio station. I had completed a fortnight’s work when…

Three soldiers in military uniform suddenly burst into the underground bunker where I was installing computer programmes, talking loudly and waving around their guns. I was surprised but not initially alarmed as I knew they guarded the gate of the compound. Every day it took them ten minutes to inspect and approve my passport before they would let me enter. Maybe today they were simply bored. However, events quickly turned nasty when station staff translated the soldiers' demands into basic English:

“They say: 'you must go.' They say: 'go now and no stop.'”

Sorry? They mean me? But I work here! I am just doing my job! The staff were adamant. The soldiers had received orders. All foreigners (which meant only me) had to leave the compound immediately. I asked if I could telephone Metromedia’s office, a one-hour drive away in Budapest. While the soldiers glared at me, seemingly eager to make an arrest, the phone just rang and rang and rang. Where was the office secretary? In her absence, there was usually an answering machine on the end of the line. But now there was nothing.

I collected my belongings and the soldiers escorted me up the narrow stairs and out of the building. The bright sunlight made my eyes squint but the fresh air was invigorating. The bunker housing the radio station received no natural light, no fresh air and was always thick with cigarette smoke. Dust lay everywhere because it had served as an underground coal store during Soviet times. The soldiers stood in a line, holding their guns menacingly, and watched as I searched for my car keys. Above us loomed huge transmitter masts that the Soviets had built during the Cold War to jam broadcasts from West European radio stations. I drove the car slowly out of the compound and gave a friendly wave to the soldiers as I passed their checkpoint. They did not respond. In the rearview mirror, I saw them lock the gates behind me and put down their guns. This must have been the most action they had seen in months.

An hour later, I was sat in the Budapest ‘office’ of Metromedia, in reality a converted bedroom within the Normafa Hotel owned by the Americans’ Hungarian business partner György Wossala. There was no sign of Bud Stiker, imported from Maine to manage this operation. No sign either of his harassed Hungarian secretary. I called Stiker’s mobile phone but it was switched off. The remainder of the afternoon, I stayed in the office but nobody came. The office phone rang regularly, which I had to ignore as I spoke no Hungarian. It had been a baffling day. I returned to my room, watched MTV and fell asleep to the sounds of loud revelry in the hotel grounds.

The next morning, I was eating breakfast in the hotel’s deserted dining room when Wossala appeared, so I asked if he knew what was happening with his American business partner. He was evasive and wanted only to talk about the wedding party that had hired his hotel the previous evening for a huge banquet and, when presented with their invoice, had drawn guns on his staff, then fled in their fleet of Mercedes.

“This is not good business,” he suggested to me.

I sat in the office again. Nothing happened until late afternoon when the secretary finally appeared, looking flustered. She had been trying to find Stiker the last two days, visiting downtown bars he was known to frequent.

“Everybody is looking for him,” she told me, “but he has just – pouf – disappeared.”

Stiker had worked for Metromedia in the 1980’s, managing radio stations in Colorado and Maryland. Prior to his arrival in Budapest, he had been executive vice president of Bonneville Broadcasting System, the US radio network owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I recognised that Stiker would understandably be unfamiliar with the European radio industry, probably the reason I had been hired as consultant. More puzzlingly, he appeared somewhat uninterested in visiting the business Metromedia was acquiring in Hungary, meeting the staff he was nominally managing, or creating a plan to transform the radio station … all of which was delegated to me, leaving him ‘hands off’.

Stiker’s mobile phone remained switched off and we found he had left no information about his whereabouts. The secretary checked with the hotel which confirmed he had not returned to his bedroom for two days. We were both totally confused.

The next day, the secretary arrived for work and told me she was quitting her job. She had checked her bank account and found that her wages had not been paid. Neither had the expenses she had rung up on behalf of Metromedia. I helped her carry the contents of her desk to her car outside. It did not seem to matter anymore whether the office items she was taking really belonged to her or to her former employer. I was on my own now and starting to get a little worried.

The next day, Wossala told me he was repossessing Metromedia’s office to convert back into a hotel room, despite the fact that I had observed no more than five guests staying in his hotel that mid-winter. He insisted I return the keys of the tiny Hungarian car I had been using to drive to the radio station, as he claimed it belonged to the hotel rather than Metromedia. That left me completely stranded.

My anxiety intensified the next morning when I found a hotel bill had been slipped under my door during the night, demanding I pay for my stay immediately, an expense that should have been taken care of by Metromedia. I told Wossala (truthfully) that I did not have sufficient funds to pay his bill, and neither could I change the date of my charter flight back to London, still several weeks away. The situation turned into a stalemate – he grudgingly let me continue my stay in his near-empty hotel, but now refused to serve me further meals.

I had to find food. I walked out of the hotel and turned left. There was nothing but a miniature railway, closed in winter, that would take hikers further into the forest hills. I walked back the opposite direction. About a mile from the hotel was a tiny roadside kiosk where I would point to dry biscuits, cola drinks and imported chocolate bars that I purchased with the limited amount of local currency I had previously changed. I had to eke out this basic diet the rest of the week.

Ten days after his disappearance, Bud Stiker suddenly reemerged at the hotel. Amazingly, he had almost nothing to say about his sudden absence. He barely apologised for the inconvenience he had caused me and explained only that he had been “attending to important business” elsewhere. He said that there had been a “misunderstanding” between Metromedia and its Hungarian partner. I was more shocked by his lack of candour than I was by my treatment at the hands of the Hungarian soldiers ten days earlier. I half-heartedly completed my work and counted off the remaining days longingly until I could fly home.

Back in London, I wrote and submitted my report. Stiker queried my invoice, claiming I was overcharging because he believed the rate we had agreed was 'per month' rather than 'per week.' I found insulting his attempt to cut my fee by 75%, particularly after the experience I had just endured in Budapest. It seemed a bit rich coming from one of Metromedia’s old-timers whom my colleagues later alleged were being offered US$1,000,000 per year to manage one of its newly acquired stations in Europe as a kind of pre-retirement reward for earlier corporate loyalty (Metromedia had sold all of its 27 US radio stations by 1986). I resisted vociferously and was eventually paid in full. I hoped for more consulting work like this, though I wished Metromedia would not assign me to Stiker again … but it did.

That bleak winter month spent in a Budapest hotel room, watching ‘Nazi TV’, was the closest I had come to a war zone and the scary propaganda it produced.

[benju-min]

Fox Network Television History

Fox Network Television History

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The Fox Network television history has not all been plain sailing. It was launched in October 1986 after the parent company of 20th Century Fox, TCF Holdings, sold 50% of its shares to News Corporation for $250 million in 1985. New Corporation then bought six television stations in various major cities from Metromedia. At this time, the stations that they bought were broadcastings to just…

[mx2555]

John Gorman on the glory days of WMMS, and how it all began | cleveland.com

John Gorman on the glory days of WMMS, and how it all began | cleveland.com

via John Gorman on the glory days of WMMS, and how it all began | cleveland.com

This! Was the “Radio Station” to end all radio stations!

I remember getting my very first AM-FM radio. And at that time. the call letters were WHK-FM all instrumental. Given the fact that! Fm was just coming into its own. Not a lot of radio stations on FM.

At the time. Both WHK AM-FM was owned by Metromedia.

WMMS

The…

[musicandamos-blog]

Week of 23 July 2018

This week’s focus was on the rise of Smooth Jazz and the consolidation of information related to the various Jazz genres.

In the late 60s, Jazz record company owner Creed Taylor, who recognised the commercial value in fusing easy-listening non-Jazz pop genres with Jazz music, aligned his company CTI Records to leverage on this trend and signed numerous Jazz musicians who played such music.

As easy-listening Jazz Fusion groups sprouted throughout the late 60s and in the 70s, many notable musicians such as singer George Benson, composer Antonio Jobim and renowned producer Quincy Jones were signed to Creed Taylor’s record label who helped promote this emerging genre of easy-listening Jazz. 

In the late 80s, a large broadcasting company called Metromedia, conducted a market research which concluded that the market for featuring Smooth Jazz on radio was largely untapped. They then rebranded the Los Angeles radio station they owned in 1987 to feature this new genre on their broadcasts. After this change, this radio station ‘The Wave’ KTWV-FM 94.7 eventually became one of the most profitable radio stations in the US.

Members of Metromedia’s research team who helped rebrand the radio station started their own broadcasting consultancy firm shortly thereafter called Broadcast Architecture.

This firm coined the new genre of Jazz “Smooth Jazz”. The firm then helped hundreds of other US radio stations assimilate this genre into their broadcasts programmes and created Smooth Jazz playlists for its clients. 

Because of the commercial viability of Smooth Jazz, it was a genre used by radios stations to attract more listenership which resulted in more advertisements and overall revenue for radio stations. And by the 90s, most large urban areas in the US already had a smooth Jazz radio station operating in them too.

Jazz saxophonist Kenny Gorelick (Kenny G) who emerged in the 80s was also one of the foremost proponents of Smooth Jazz. From the early 80s well into the 90s, Kenny G released a string of hit records that were widely featured on radio stations across America and even abroad, making him a household name.

Smooth Jazz radio stations received some of the highest listenership which made them one of the most lucrative radio formats around. And as Smooth Jazz music received more airplay, this increased musicians’ abilities to attract more audiences to their performances and followers to buy their records.

Radio stations which featured traditional Jazz genres such as Cool Jazz, Free Jazz, Bebop, Swing etc. dwindled as they paled in comparison to Smooth Jazz radio stations.

As Smooth Jazz was for easy-listening and meant to be catchy for mass appeal, solo improvisations were also almost non-existent.

Here is one of my favourite track by George Benson called Breezin’:

[airchexx]

Charlie Kendall with Ed "Flash" Ferenc, 100.7 WMMS Cleveland | 1975

Charlie Kendall with Ed “Flash” Ferenc, 100.7 WMMS Cleveland | 1975

  WMMS 100.7 FMhas been rocking Cleveland for over 5 decades, and is still rolling. It started out as part of the MetroMedia Radio group of Progressive Rock stations, which included KMET/Los Angeles, KSAN/San Francisco, WMMR/Philadelphia and WNEW-FM/New York, but low ratings and revenue in Cleveland led the company to drop the rock format at WMMS by May 1969. WMMS then turned to adult…

[encyclopediaesoterica-blog]

Episode 24: For Pete’s Sake - The Man With The Talking Steel Guitar (10/9/2017)

On this week's episode of the Encyclopedia Esoterica, we'll be hearing music from the great Pete Drake - famed Nashville producer and session musician who would have turned 85 yesterday. Pete performed on the "talking steel guitar" in the mid 60s, played on classic recordings by George Jones, Tammy Wynette, as well as Bob Dylan and George Harrison's early 70s country-tinged LPs. Click play to hear the steel talk, and stick around for a cross section of skewed pop and fuzzy warbles.

The Encyclopedia Esoterica Episode 24: For Pete’s Sake - The Man With The Talking Steel Guitar 10/9/2017

Pete Drake - “Welcome To My World” / Talking Steel and Singing Strings (Smash, 1964) Pete Drake - “Forever” / Forever (Smash, 1964) Pete Drake - “The Spook” (Smash, 1964) Roger Miller - “Lock Stock and Teardrops” / 45 (RCA Victor, 1963) George Jones - “I’ve Got To Get Used to Being Lonely” / Mr. Country And Western Music (Musicor, 1965) Pete Drake - “Penguin Strut” - Stars of the Steel Guitar (Starday, 1965) Pete Drake - “I’m Just A Guitar (Everybody’s Picking On Me) / 45 (Smash, 1964) Pete Drake - “Blue Velvet” / Talking Steel and Singing Strings (Smash, 1964) Bob Dylan - “Lay Lady Lay” / Nashville Skyline (Columbia, 1969)

George Harrison - “I Live For You” / All Things Must Pass Sessions, Vol. 16 (Unreleased, recorded 1970) Pete Drake - “Talking Steel Guitar Demonstration” / All Things Must Pass Sessions, Vol. 16 (Unreleased, recorded 1970) Harvey Mandel - “Nashville 1am” / Cristo Redentor (Philips, 1969) The Holy Modal Rounders - “Love Is The Closest Thing” / Good Taste Is Timeless (Metromedia, 1971) Pete Drake - “My Abilene” / 45 (Starday, 1966) Alvino Rey - “St. Louis Blues” / film soundtrack (1944)

Omni - “Southbound Station” / Multi-task (Trouble In Mind, 2017) Tin Foil - “Glamorous” / Tin Foil (Almost Ready Reords, 2017) Cleaners From Venus - “Drowning In Butterflies” / Under Wartime Conditions (Man Off At The License, 1984/re: Captured Tracks, 2013) Bablicon - “Chunks of Syrup Amidst Plain Yogurt” / 7” (Contact Records, 1998)

Amps For Christ - “Miss You Mother” / Canyons Cars and Crows ( Ice Skates With Arms - “Old Hat” / Buy This Record and No One Gets Hurt (Puck Records, 1978) Eduardo Mateo - “Yulelé” / Mateo Solo Bien Se Lame (Discos De La Planta, 1972/re: Lion, 2013) Bobb Trimble - “Premonitions: The Fantasy” / Harvest of Dreams (Self-released, 1982/re: Secretly Canadian, 2007) Billy Nicholls - “Would You Believe?” / Would You Believe (Immediate, 1968) Catapult - “No Time To Turn Me On” / 45 (Sceptor, 1972) Mu - “Who Will Write The Song” / Mu - Recorded in Hawaii 1974 (Sundazed, 1997) Howard Hanger Trio - “God of Grace” / Thru A Glass Darkly (PMH Records, 1970) Haruomi Hosono - “Rockabye My Baby” / Live at Hyde Park Festival, 2005 (originally released on Bellwood Records, 1973) Song - “Banana High Noon” / Album (MGM, 1970) Victor Jara - “Que Alegre Son Las Obreras” / Victor Jara (Odeon, 1967) Getachew Degefu - “Wondemiye” / Amhara Wedding Songs of Ethiopia (recorded in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia, 1973/ Domino Sounds, 2012) Mary Lattimore & Maxwell August Croy - “Caroline” / Terelan Canyon (Constellation Tatsu, 2015) Pete Drake - “Forever (Alternate Version)” / Men With Broken Hearts (Mississippi Records Cassette Compilation, 2010)

[hatimtanger]

Canal Fox en vivo por internet - FOX LATINO EN VIVO POR INTERNET

Canal Fox en vivo por internet - FOX LATINO EN VIVO POR INTERNET

Canal Fox en vivo por internet - FOX LATINO EN VIVO POR INTERNET

"FOX" and "Fox (TV channel)" divert here. For "Fox" TV slots outside the United States, see Fox (channel). For the film studio that the system was named after, see twentieth Century Fox. For different utilizations, see Fox (disambiguation). 

Fox Broadcasting Company[2] (frequently abbreviated to Fox and adapted as FOX)[3][4] is an American business communicate telecom company claimed by Fox Entertainment Group, a backup of 21st Century Fox. The system is headquartered at twentieth Century Fox studio on Pico Boulevard in Century City of Los Angeles with extra significant workplaces and generation offices at the Fox Television Center in close-by West Los Angeles and Fox Broadcasting Center in the Yorkville neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is the third biggest real telecom company on the planet in view of aggregate incomes, resources and worldwide scope. 

Propelled on October 9, 1986 as a contender to the Big Three TV stations (ABC, NBC and CBS), Fox went ahead to wind up plainly the best endeavor at a fourth TV station. It was the most astounding appraised communicated organize in the 18– 49 statistic from 2004 to 2012, and earned the position as the most-watched American TV station in absolute viewership amid the 2007– 08 season.[5][6] 

Fox and its associated organizations work numerous stimulation diverts in worldwide markets, despite the fact that these don't really air an indistinguishable programming from the U.S. arrange. Most watchers in Canada approach no less than one U.S.- based Fox offshoot, either finished the-air or through a compensation TV supplier, despite the fact that Fox's National Football League broadcasts and the majority of its prime time writing computer programs are liable to synchronous substitution controls for link and satellite suppliers forced by the Canadian Radio-TV and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to ensure rights held by locally based systems. 

The system is named after sister organization twentieth Century Fox, and by implication for maker William Fox, who established one of the motion picture studio's forerunners, Fox Film. Fox is an individual from the North American Broadcasters Association and the National Association of Broadcasters.

twentieth Century Fox had been engaged with TV generation as right on time as the 1950s, delivering a few syndicated programs.[7] Following the death of the DuMont Television Network in August of that year after it ended up plainly buried in extreme monetary issues, the NTA Film Network was propelled as another "fourth network".[8] twentieth Century Fox would likewise create unique substance for the NTA network.[7] The film organize exertion would bomb following a couple of years, yet twentieth Century Fox kept on fiddling with TV through its creation arm, TCF Television Productions, creating arrangement, (for example, Perry Mason) for the three noteworthy communicate TV stations (ABC, NBC, and CBS). 

The Fox system's establishments were laid in March 1985 through News Corporation's $255 million buy of a half enthusiasm for TCF Holdings, the parent organization of the twentieth Century Fox film studio. In May 1985, News Corporation, a media organization possessed by Australian distributing head honcho Rupert Murdoch that had basically filled in as a daily paper distributer at the season of the TCF Holdings bargain, consented to pay $2.55 billion to obtain autonomous TV channels in six noteworthy U.S. urban areas from the John Kluge-run broadcasting organization Metromedia: WNEW-TV (channel 5) in New York City, WTTG (channel 5) in Washington, D.C., KTTV (channel 11) in Los Angeles, KRIV (channel 26) in Houston, WFLD-TV (channel 32) in Chicago, and KRLD-TV (channel 33) in Dallas. A seventh station, ABC associate WCVB-TV (channel 5) in Boston, was a piece of the first exchange however was spun off to the Hearst Broadcasting auxiliary of the Hearst Corporation in a different, simultaneous arrangement as a major aspect of a privilege of first refusal identified with that station's 1982 deal to Metromedia[9][10][11] (after two years, News Corporation gained WXNE-TV (channel 25) in that market from the Christian Broadcasting Network and changed its call letters to WFXT). 

In October 1985, twentieth Century Fox declared its expectations to shape a fourth TV station that would rival ABC, CBS, and NBC. The designs were to utilize the blend of the Fox studios and the previous Metromedia stations to both deliver and convey programming. Authoritative gets ready for the system were held off until the Metromedia acquisitions cleared administrative obstacles. At that point, in December 1985, Rupert Murdoch consented to pay $325 million to get the rest of the value in TCF Holdings from his unique accomplice, Marvin Davis. The buy of the Metromedia stations was affirmed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in March 1986; the call letters of the New York City and Dallas outlets were therefore changed separately to WNYW and KDAF.[12] These initial six stations, at that point broadcasting to a consolidated reach of 22% of the country's families, wound up plainly known as the Fox Television Stations gathering. Aside from KDAF (which was sold to Renaissance Broadcasting in 1995 and turned into a WB subsidiary in the meantime), the majority of the first possessed and-worked stations ("O&Os") are still piece of the Fox arrange today. Like the center O&O gathering, Fox's partner body at first comprised of free stations (a couple of which had kept up affiliations with ABC, NBC, CBS or DuMont prior in their presences). The nearby sanction partner was, much of the time, that market's first class autonomous; notwithstanding, Fox picked to associate with a moment level free station in business sectors where a more settled autonomous declined the connection, (for example, Denver, Phoenix and St. Louis). To a great extent in light of both these elements, Fox – in a circumstance fundamentally the same as what DuMont had encountered four decades previously – had minimal decision yet to offshoot with UHF stations in all aside from a couple (for the most part bigger) markets where the system picked up clearance.[13]

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