Christmas Eve 2023 -- A Time for Reflection

My hawthorn "Christmas" (outdoor) tree from 2019. The string of lights burned out, and I didn't put up the ornaments this year because without lights no one would see them. In the stores this season the lights were mostly white, and overpriced. But as you can see in this pic, the ornaments looked nice when the lights worked. 

It's ironic: LEDs were supposed to drop in price, save electricity, and also last forever. 

LOL.

As I write this, it is 12:04 a.m., Christmas morning. I just spent 8 to 9 minutes on the phone hearing the same, annoying and lame recording on the local pizza delivery store's phone system on perpetual repeat -- after which I hung up. I'll get some pizza another time. 

The last time I ordered pizza it was a bewildering look into the New World of internet commerce, a world where you order first, and then you find out what you are getting and what you are going to pay for it.

The store -- which shall go unnamed -- has a website, with a "menu". Of course, the "menu" isn't like a real menu you get when you go to a restaurant, or see when you use a drive-thru window. Clicking on the item on this menu doesn't give you the ingredients or the price. It just places an order, so you're basically ordering in the blind. Awesome. 

You wonder just what are these folks thinking? Last time, when I ordered by phone, it wasn't all that much better: it was $102 for 2 large pizzas, a small one, and some pizza bread. Delivery charge was $8, and then the local and state governments get their ten bucks. 

Even more awesome. But, I'll admit -- the pizza itself was excellent. So there's that. :-)

Such is the state of business and commerce in the United States during the internet age.

But I digress.

These happy little guys decorated my yard from 2009, when I got them, until 2019, when I stopped putting them outside. I figured they were too vulnerable to theft. One can't, and shouldn't, live in fear, but one can't, and shouldn't, be stupid about things, either.

DANCING AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE

Right now it's Christmas, that time when all families gather around the Christmas tree, sing songs, marvel at the gaily wrapped presents beneath the tree's sweet and spicy, fir and pine scented boughs, ooh and aah at all of the beautiful ornaments, and then they all have dinner together, and maybe play a board game or card game before -- or after -- exchanging gifts.

Of course, there are candles above the fireplace, elves and Santas on the windowsills, and a big, beautiful wreath on the front door, perhaps made with real holly, and decorated with ornaments, too.

Yeah, right. For many of us, it's a lonely time. I am not afraid to admit it, especially as I've said before on this blog that most of my family is gone. It's just the way it is. I guess I should feel blessed that I am the survivor, and I am indeed thankful for that. But it makes it rather difficult to get all excited and yippity-yappity about yet one more holiday that seems like another Day Of The Dead, because most of them are. Christmas is a time when I have to block out the memories of the past holidays where family members were still very much alive and things were well. Otherwise, it becomes a time of sadness.

Santa and a Snowman decoration, looking cheery in the night.

Even the religious aspect of the Christmas holiday feels lost on me. It's hard to feel happy about Christ's birth when the greater world out there seems to be ripping apart with war, pandemics, people hating each other for what name they circle on a ballot, and other, similar stuff. I have several Bibles, but the only book in them I can read anymore is Solomon's Ecclesiastes -- the most realistic book of them all. Solomon, who lived quite a life, pulled no punches. Nearly all of what he said in that short book says all that needs to be said: Life Is Short.

So, anyway, I'm not celebrating.

I pet my cat, play my guitar, ride my bike, and do some writing. That is adequate.

Santa Mickey looks out on the 33F weather on Christmas Eve.

THE END OF THE YEAR, HOLIDAY SEASON

Overall, though, I'm doing as well as can be expected. My health is OK. I'm OK mentally and emotionally as well. But on holidays? Aside from Halloween, which is a time to connect with neighbors, I don't celebrate anymore, really. I don't imitate celebration with alcohol, either, as I stopped drinking alcohol in 2011, when I decided to concentrate on taking care of my health.

A pic of several boxes of Christmas holiday tea, most of which are not available in local stores anymore at Christmas season. Eggnogg'n is still apparently available online -- but they removed the Sledding Penguins cartoon on the cover. :-( 

Who doesn't like seeing Sledding Penguins?

As a half-Canadian, whose grandmother taught me to drink "Red Rose" brand black tea, I drink Tea instead. This evening? It's Christmas Tea. It's actually quite good. It's one of those boxes of special tea that sometimes are available every Christmas season -- until the stores around here quit stocking them. Bigelow's "Egg Noggin'" tea -- the box with the happy, sledding penguins on it -- is one of those brands. For maybe 8 years it would be available in the stores every Christmas season, and it was excellent tea. I would buy several boxes every Christmas season. 

Then they got rid of the sledding, cartoon penguins on the cover and stopped selling it in the stores. The Stash brand Christmas Tea (Holiday Chai) I'm drinking now is the same situation -- I bought the couple boxes of it in 2009 or 2010 so. It's not available in local stores anymore, except online only.

Great tea. Big seller. No longer available in the stores. You see a pattern there?

So, you eventually buy it online, or you learn to make your own. Just add vanilla, maple, allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon, and maybe some other spices. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Another cheery display, with a Christmas dog, Candy-Canes, and a small Santa on the chimney!

SHORTWAVE RADIO ON CHRISTMAS EVE = THDDDDT

Anyway, I started this Christmas Eve late in the morning, just before noon, as I'd gotten home late from my aunt's place. My aunt (my late mother's sister) and my uncle have a big family, and there were a lot of them at her house on the night of the 23rd. I played my bagpipes for them, and also was able to reconnect with some second cousins (all Millennials and great people, including a couple veterans) and that was really quite cool. A couple of them are into the same style of music I'm into -- hard rock, metal, and Nu-Metal.

So we talked a little Slipknot, Korn, and Linkin Park.

After I got home I fed my cat and then went to bed. I slept maybe 10-11 hours.

When I woke up just before noon, I switched on my radio -- my Realistic DX-390 -- to tune around and see what was on the Shortwave bands, because -- as those of my readers who are radio aficionados know by now -- Shortwave is hoppin', because we're reaching the "Peak" of the current Solar Cycle. I then switched over to my DX-398, which has a bit more 'pull' on SW signals, especially on sideband.

It was El Deado.

This neighbor went all out. Brightening up the neighborhood.

Another view. Obviously, this neighbor likes Christmas!

It shouldn't have been, of course. After all, on the ham radio sites all of the guys with the massive G5RV's, 4 element Yagis and other big antennas with eight-foot ground rods and baluns; with their fancy Icoms and Kenwoods and the latest crap to go along with them, are all raving about how great this Sunspot Cycle is. Because, you know, they contacted someone in the EU a couple times and another guy in Japan, so obviously that means that shortwave conditions are awesome.

So, why do the bands seem so dead, when compared with 11-12 years ago? Especially on a holiday? Usually, holidays are times when the hams get on the air -- usually before or after their family functions. Sure, a lot of hams have other things to do on a holiday, but a lot of hams like to get on their radios on a holiday, too. I've heard a lot of hams on the air on 20 Meters and 40 Meters during holidays in the past. 

On Christmas Eve in 2014 I heard "Santa Claus" on my DX-398. This Christmas Eve I was treated to mostly static on mostly empty ham radio and SWBC channels.

YES, VIRGINIA -- SANTA WAS ON 20 METERS ONCE. FROM FINLAND

In 2014 or so, I tuned into the 20 Meter Ham Band on Christmas Eve afternoon. And Santa Claus was talking to little kids from Northern Finland (I think he was in Oulu). "Santa", a ham, would get other hams to get little kids on the mic, and "Santa" would talk to them. And one little girl in Chicago said "I love you, Santa!" 

I'll never forget hearing that. I can hear it right now, in my head -- the memory of it was so striking.

The rest of the 20 Meter band was packed that Christmas Eve afternoon, too.

This Christmas Eve, just after noontime, it was DEAD. There were maybe 2-3 QSOs (conversations) on sideband, and maybe two of them on CW (Morse Code) -- on 20 meters, which is the most popular ham band. 40 Meters was completely dead. 12 meters had one or two conversations -- which was cool to hear, as 12 Meters seems to be a fun ham band. The fading was rather severe, but I did hear a guy in Arizona talking to a guy in Colorado.

The CB band, which usually is crammed full of signals when propagation is good, was relatively sparse. The strongest signal was from a jammer, some guy who was trying to fry his CB radio's final transistors playing the same echoed snippet continuously for over half an hour.

Even the Outband (27415-27600 kHz or so) was mostly free of signals. In 2012 27455 would have had numerous Latin Americans from various countries in Central and South America, all saying "Hola Once!" ('Once' is the word for 'eleven', as in 11 Meters), in Spanish, with most of them readable most of the time. This time around? There were just 3-4 Mexican-accented (Spanish language) guys, with a handful of unreadable, weak signal Spanish Outbanders underneath. 

And this is the PEAK of Solar Cycle #25?

After tuning around, and noticing that the 25 and 21 Meter Shortwave broadcast bands were just as mediocre and mostly clear of signals, I switched the radio off. So much for the PEAK solar conditions.

Anyway, that was my introduction to Christmas Eve.

The Moon was nearly full this Christmas Eve, and the photo -- which I took with my Nikon L32 -- came out OK also. Night setting, telephoto slightly engaged.

Later on, I went for a bike ride and took a few pictures of some of the local Christmas lights, which was fun. Here and there you could tell that people were having family dinners, but a lot of the other houses looked buttoned up and quiet, as if the inhabitants were in my own situation -- facing the holiday alone.

So right now I'm going to check on my cat, and go for another bike ride before the temps drop below freezing. Last night -- the night of the 23rd (known as Lille Julafton in Scandinavia) -- it got down to 25F. I think that's minus 6 Centigrade. A bit cold. When I went out to get my mail from the mailbox my shoes were slipping on the black ice. So, last night I decided not to ride my bike before retiring... No point is risking a bicycle mishap on black ice. We don't get black ice all that often around here. But I wasn't about to risk a spill at midnight.

But so far this evening, it's a hair warmer -- around 32-33F, and no black ice. So I'll ride, then I'll make a cup of black tea, and I'll spice it up myself. Gotta have spiced tea. After all, it's Christmas.

My own take on Christmas. I left two of my electric Jack O' Lanterns out. The other ones had burnt out lights. These two just keep on chuggin'. As for the Jack O' Lanterns? Why not? It's just another holiday, after all.

And then I'll do some fiction writing after posting this article. In fiction writing, I can make up all sorts of stuff about holidays. I can create a scene where everything's awesome -- the tree is magnificent, and when you switch off the room lights the multi-colored twinklies from the tree fill the room with all sorts of reds, greens, and blue colors; and all 100 small, shiny, glass ornaments make it look like the tree is loaded with light.

When you write fiction you can make up stuff like this, and make it seem real. You can recreate all the good stuff that used to happen when you were a kid, and if you're good enough at describing it, it can become real to the reader. I suppose that is part of what makes those of us, who can, write fiction. We design, with words, the world we want to live in. It's an escape for the writer as much as it is an escape for the reader.

I hope everyone has a good holiday. If you don't do Christmas -- and that is understandable -- I hope you're doing OK. Keep the head up. Every day above ground is a good day. That was my grandfather's philosophy on life. I think it fits.

I'll close this with the US 1960's rock group The Byrds' Turn, Turn, Turn. The song was written by folksinger Pete Seeger, and The Byrds souped it up a bit. It's from 1965, and it was a #1 hit. The song is a take on the book of Ecclesiastes, mentioned previously. There is a cool stereo version of Turn, Turn, Turn that I managed to copy from where I used to work, but it's not on YouTube.

And here is Eight Miles High. The massive hit that never happened, because some influential radio programmers thought it was about drugs, when it was actually about the Byrds' first foray to the UK, where they weren't treated all that well. So, many radio stations in the US did not play it. On both of these tracks (like most Byrds' tracks), Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker, electric 12-String guitar is heavily compressed, which gives it an extra shimmer to the sound of it on the record. Gene Clark helped write this song -- he came up with the title. I think it's the last Byrds track he sang on before leaving the group.:

Fun fact: the 12-String electric guitar parts during the verses were recorded backwards.

Listen closely. You'll hear it. You read about it here first, too, as I've never read anywhere else that the 12-String was recorded that way.

Merry Christmas everybody.

Peace.

C.C., 24th of December, 2023. I dug up a few of the boxes of Eggnogg'n Tea, and two other Christmas Tea flavors, and took a pic, and added it on January 3rd. Eggnogg'n Tea -- it's great, if you can get it. :-)

So Long ESPN Yakima, 1460 AM -- And What It Means For Radio

What's on the radio? There is still a lot to hear, but with each year, there seems to be less and less stations on the airwaves.

As I write this, we here in the Seattle area are experiencing a slight respite from the freezing weather we had for the last two weeks. It seemed that since the last half of November every time I went out onto the porch to check my thermometer was 25 degrees F (-6C or so) outside. And that cold snap seemed to continue through most of December as well.

We're now in Solstice, the shortest day of the year, and -- consequently -- the longest night of the year. In theory, this is the best time for MW/AM and SW distance listening. The reality is not quite so rosy, but there still is a lot to hear on your radios. You just gotta turn them on and tune around!

But the cold! 25 degrees F is Brrrrrrrr! cold.

That said, I have been doing a considerable amount of DXing over the past few weeks, and there have been some changes to the MW dial here in the PNW at night.

The changes haven't been all positive. And looking at some of the changes, once again I feel the need to opine on the state of the industry that once put food on my table: the Radio industry.

But first -- the changes!

CKJR Wetaskiwin, Alberta -- about 30 miles from Edmonton, has good coverage of the Edmonton metro, and some sports talk hosts in the area decided that Edmonton still needed a sports radio station.

SPORTS TALK COMES BACK TO EDMONTON!

The first major change concerns Edmonton, Canada -- my mother's birthplace. After Bell Canada got rid of Edmonton's sports talk station CFRN 1260 early in the year, when they got rid of 6 or 7 AM stations, another radio company has decided to deliver Sports Talk to Edmonton!

CKJR 1440, which was an oldies and Punjabi station for a few years, has been flipped to Sports Talk. They are now a Fox Sports station, and they apparently have at least a couple local Edmonton shows, too. One of the people behind CKJR's move to sports was a CFRN talk host, who thought that Edmonton still needed a sports talker in their market.

Although CKJR is located in Wetaskiwin, a smaller city maybe 30 miles / 40 km south of Edmonton, at 10KW they do get out OK, and hopefully Edmonton sports nuts will tune in and listen. CKJR does come in well here in Seattle during the night, especially if conditions are good from Canada.

Here at my location CKJR usually dominates the 1440 channel, although KVON, Napa, California is often heard behind them with an interesting mix of Spanish language AC music hits (AC is a radio format that is a combination of pop and soft ballads, and the Spanish language market has their own variety of such hits).

KMED's last logo where they promoted their AM station on 1440. When they were KYVL they didn't have a logo that I am aware of. KYVL, which simulcasted KMED after KMED went FM only, just lasted a couple months at best.

SO LONG KMED AM 1440

KYVL / KMED, Medford, Oregon, which used to dominate 1440, has been MIA. Although the station is, or was, officially KYVL, they were known as KMED for almost 100 years.

I understand that the signal was permanently taken off the air. The Wiki on KYVL 1440 says it is "Silent". That's too bad, because it was fun to hear Medford on my radio. The only other Medford station I can usually hear is KRTA 610, which plays Regional Mexican music (often called "ranchero" by DXers).

I really like the area of Southern Oregon where Medford and Ashland are. It's one of the reasons I enjoy hearing stations from that area. One of the better ones is KAJO, 1270, Grant's Pass, Oregon, a decently large city on the Rogue River maybe 20 miles from Medford. The weather in the Rogue Valley is moderate -- a lot drier than Seattle, but greener than the Eastern halves of Washington and Oregon, which are desert-like. It's a really nice place to visit, and being that they're further south than Portland or Seattle, the cities of Medford, Ashland and Grants Pass get a lot more sun, because it's higher in the sky.

KRLC's last logo -- the LC stood for "Lewiston-Clarkston"

Another AM station that's had its plug pulled is KRLC, Lewiston, Idaho, which used to dominate 1350 kHz. I noticed that it wasn't present in local 1360 KKMO's ranchero splash several nights in a row, which was unusual. Then I went online and found out that the owners had pulled the plug.

Lewiston is a nice area. It's on the Snake River, and there are a lot of orchards there, and it's near the Palouse wheat region in WA and a similar wheat region just south of Lewiston in Idaho. Right across the Snake River is Clarkston, in Washington -- it's Lewiston's 'twin' city. The climate is somewhat desert like, and it's an interesting place, with maybe 40K people in the two cities combined. For those oldies music enthusiasts, the song "Hot Rod Lincoln" was written about a real hot-rod race that took place in the 1950's on the switchbacks on Highway US 95, just north of town. You can see some of the switchbacks in the pic below.

Lewiston, Idaho from the north hill on US Highway 95. Clarkston, WA is to the right side of the pic, in the distance. Photo from Wikipedia.

By Iidxplus, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2452755

KRLC used to be a Top 40 station back in the 1960's and 70s, and then went Classic Country. I used to hear it nearly every night when I got back into MW DXing in 2011, and even during the crap DX conditions after late 2016 I would hear KRLC most nights.

Now it's off the air forever -- another AMer that can't pay the bills to make it worthwhile to operate apparently.

Some celebrate this sort of thing. Even some MW DXers online celebrate this 'culling' of the band. I never have.

ESPN YAKIMA 1460, R.I.P!

Recently, there has been yet another station that used to dominate a MW channel here, 1460, that is no longer on the air: ESPN Yakima, KUTI. ESPN Yakima was generally a friendly standby -- a station I could hear nearly any night, and a couple times I could even hear them during the daytime as well. About two weeks ago I noticed they were MIA. Every night I'd tune in, and I would hear nothing but a very weak KION, Salinas, California, and maybe a little bit of the ranchero station that broadcasts out of Santa Rosa, California, KRRS.

Now, I like hearing California at night, especially when it's cold weather time here in Washington state. But I wondered what was going on with ESPN Yakima? Their Wiki said they were still on the air. The website seemed to still be intact, also.

Earlier this week another DXer online, who lives in Central Washington, informed me that ESPN Yakima is off the air permanently. I guess they don't care much for national sports in Yakima? Sports radio generally does well, and the sports stations don't need much in ratings to sell advertising. But the radio advertising revenue is not what it used to be, and I suppose the owners just decided to pull the plug on KUTI.

Checking out ESPN Yakima's website, it still exists, but there is no streaming button that I can see. It's a page with a table full of news, sports-news, and some infotainment story thumbnails. 

Here is a link to their website:

1460 ESPN KUTI – Yakima's Sports Station – Yakima Sports Radio (1460espnyakima.com)

There is a link to download their app. What their app does, I wouldn't know. Maybe it's the ESPN radio app. It claims to play 1460 ESPN Yakima. They also promote their Alexa stream. Which begs the question: what about commuters in cars and trucks? The ones who apparently use radio the most?

I suppose they are either going to use the app, connect their phone to their soundsystem via Bluetooth, or you won't hear ESPN Yakima.

This is an indication of the future of radio: it's heading online.

PERSON TO PERSON, VIA THE RADIO -- A DECLINING TREND

The demise of 1460 KUTI is sort of sad, because when Mt. St. Helens blew up in May, 1980, I remember listening to this station that night, when the Yakima region was covered in several inches of volcanic ash. A DJ on the station (then called KMWX) was telling the listeners not to despair. "We can beat this thing!" he said. Of course, he was right. But it was interesting hearing the DJ encouraging the listeners to keep the chin up -- there might have been ash everywhere, but all was not lost.

It was a case of radio being used, person to person, live and local communication. Something the radio industry no longer values, because -- according to their beloved research -- the listeners no longer value it. Of course, research shows that listeners no longer value radio all that much, either -- especially the younger demographics, under age 30. The internet has changed everything to a form of 'content.' 

Some of the radio people out there treat the demise of stations like ESPN Yakima with a yawn, like "so what else is new?" Some even have a smug, 'good riddance' attitude towards this station, and other similar stations' demise. They refer to AM stations like ESPN Yakima and the former KMED/KYVL 1440 Medford as "dogs", stations that companies want to get rid of.

And these same experts seem to embrace streaming to a bizarre extent, almost viewing it as being this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, that -- compared to modern day OTA radio -- will be just like pulling the arm on a slot machine and getting nothing but jackpots. There will be no transmitters, no antennas to deal with, no STL's, less hardware -- you'll just curate playlists, put them online, and make tons of money!

American author John Steinbeck's seminal novel The Grapes Of Wrath. The book was set in the 1930's, when the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression wiped out family farms in places like Oklahoma. Poor farmers, kicked off their land, drove West to California in old, teetering jalopies like the one pictured on the book cover. The poor farmers thought that California would be a land of dreams, but for many of them it was a place where they were either used, left to go hungry, or otherwise were not wanted. The book is a must for anyone who wants to understand how the Great Depression affected a lot of Americans. The 1940 movie of the same name, even though it is in black and white, is a classic.

NO POT OF GOLD, NO ENDLESS JACKPOTS EITHER

It's almost like reading John Steinbeck's Grapes Of Wrath, a classic American novel about the plight of Oklahoma Dust Bowl refugees seeking work and a new life in the agricultural areas of California in the 1930s. Early on in the book the grandpa is enthusiastically talking about how awesome it would be once they get to California, where he's going to eat grapes all the time and even splash in a tub full of them. Of course, the reality in the story turns out much different. The grandpa dies before they even get to California, and the family starts to starve (because the California farmers at that time treated Okies like trash), and the oldest son, Tom Joad, ends up on the run from the police. The ending of the book is quite dim. 

Reality often doesn't turn out to be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

In the same way, the reality that hits radio, once it goes 100% online, will be different also.

The majority of radio experts I read and/or interact with seem to be out of touch about this. These guys obviously know radio. There is absolutely no doubt about that. But online streaming is not radio. Online streaming is digital, internet-based audio content distribution. It's a completely different animal. It's a completely different industry, really, and the market dynamics are different, too.

So, even though many in the radio industry embrace the demise of AM stations like KUTI, KRLC Lewiston, and KMED/KYVL Medford as "dogs", just junk, yesterday's trash radio to be discarded, soon enough, it will happen to all of them. AM, FM, TV, Satellite -- it's all headed in the same direction: Online Content. 

And thousands of radio (and TV) people will eventually lose their jobs.

Actually, all of them will.

I don't give the radio industry much more than 20 more years.

Streaming on your radio, the old fashioned way. Back in 2014 -- when I took this pic -- I used to stream several different online radio stations on my Sangean PR-D5, using the AUX IN jack. I listened to KBRE the Bear, NRK's Norsk Folkemusikk and P3 channels, and a few others. It was fun. It was like tapping into the future of radio.

Then I lost interest. Some of the online platforms, like TuneIn, would have dead links, thanks to geo-fencing, and I just tired of having to lug my tablet or phone around and plug it into the radio. I never got into the earbuds / phone thing, either. Either way, this method of streaming -- using a device to stream a radio station's website, has taken second fiddle to just using an online playlist app like Spotify or Pandora. It's a brave new world for what we call "radio".

THE RADIO INDUSTRY LEADERS SIMPLY DON'T GET IT

I hang out at a lot of radio forums, some of which are populated by radio professionals. These are the guys who run the stations, run the networks, fix and install the equipment at the stations we listen to. They also are involved in the business side. They are very knowledgeable people.

Many, if not most of them know the listenership stats: a 50% drop in listeners ("persons using radio") overall since 2008, when the Portable People Meter was introduced. In 2000 the percentage of "persons using radio" was around 18 to 20%. When the more accurate PPM was introduced in 2008, that percentage dropped to 12%, and it's 5% now -- barely 16 years later. 

Here's an article on how one radio personality lost audience due to the introduction of the PPM. The article talks about some of the controversies surrounding the use of the device to measure radio audiences.:

The Queen of FM Fights for Her Throne (bloomberg.com)

LOSING AUDIENCES, BUT WHAT NEXT?

The experts definitely understand the writing on the wall. They all have seen the numbers, and are aware of radio audience research.

Yet, they seem to have their heads in the sand when it comes to radio's actual future. On one hand, they admit that the internet is the future. Everything audio is headed for streaming. Streaming is already the dominant music consumption model, and increasingly it's becoming the dominant non-music, audio delivery model. The experts all know this, and admit that this is happening. In that they are correct.

But what they don't understand is that once your content is completely internet based, you instantly have infinite competition for the same couple of device screens. And you also have nearly infinite competition on whichever streaming platform you are using to deliver your audio entertainment. 

Indie book authors already deal with this effect on just the one or two dominant retail platforms they use to sell their books. Once you put a book up for sale, your new book is instantly in competition with 5-6 million other books on the platform, with thousands of new books being added daily -- all dependent on search algorithms, and all of them competing for screen time. As an author, you may have over 5-10K competing books in your own genre. And -- as said before -- you are also dependent on the platforms' search algorithms.

In one of my book genres, I have at least 5K other authors I am competing against. Maybe 2-3K of them are no longer active. But that leaves maybe 1000 authors whose works are competing with mine. Most of them probably have more than one book out there. Many have 30-50 books or more.

That's in just one genre. 

This is how it is when you are an online content creator / marketer. Your competition is MASSIVE.

You are competing with thousands of other creators. And you are completely dependent on search algorithms. And EVERYTHING is Visibility. In the case of radio, of course, they're not necessarily content creators -- they are also music curators, but the same basic rules apply. 

They are the middleman. Right now, because people still listen to FM and AM radio, they can still make money as middlemen.

But who needs the middleman anymore? Record companies are discovering that fact already. Musicians bypass the middleman. Curators? Gatekeepers? Who needs them?

But -- ignoring that trend, let's look at the next 10-15 years from the standpoint of your average radio company.

If you are running a radio company, and you already have your own dedicated streaming radio website, or channel, your streaming site is already in competition with a gazillion others, worldwide. And what is keeping your station's streaming website visible is your Over-The-Air station, which is sending listeners to your streaming site.

Remove the Over-The-Air station, your visibility is going to drop. You'll be dependent on whatever big tech platform's search algorithm pushes or dodges -- or ignores -- your content channel. Good luck on that. Chances are high that you will be as vital locally as your local #2 or #3 newspaper that maybe went online in the 2010's. I.e., a massive drop in viewers / listeners, lots of clickbait to try to bring in some revenue, etc.

Even if you try to market your own 'streaming app', you are already in competition with a gazillion other apps people will load on their phone's tiny little desktop screen, and then instantly forget about, or move aside, once they load the next one.

Today, if you have a radio station, you maybe have 10-20 competitors in your market. Once you're online-only, you have competition from every other form of internet audio and visual content available -- millions of channels, from all of the channels on Spotify and Pandora, to YouTube channels, to Instagram, to X content 'channels', and even to the thousands of content 'channels' on sites like OnlyFans -- the choices are literally infinite.

And they are all competing for the same one or two screens.

While it's true that -- in a sense -- Radio is already competing with these other, internet based media, once the antennas and transmitters disappear, all bets are off. Your prime source of visibility promotion is gone. You are now completely dependent on the platform, and many stations are already dependent on big platforms for their streams -- TuneIn, IHeart, Audacy, etc.

I've been in convos with some of these expert radio guys about this particular aspect of "radio's" future, and they just don't seem to get it -- they don't seem to be taking the negatives of online-only seriously. 

They seem to think that 'you just build it, people will come' (a paraphrase from the movie Field Of Dreams). But this isn't a baseball fiction movie. This is internet business. And Visibility Is Everything. 

The Radio folks see the future implications, to a certain extent, but the negatives to what remains of the Radio industry are not on their radar screen. They're all caught up in the exciting new technology, but the marketing aspect of it -- i.e., facing all that internet competition -- is not apparent to them. Not yet.

Maybe they don't need to: by the time everything goes 100% online, those guys will be long retired.

But I fear that radio's days in general are numbered. If Dereg 1996 slashed radio jobs by 50% or more, as some seem to think, the move from Over-The-Air radio to online-only will finish off the other 50%. Right now, a lot of stations have their streaming websites, but by 2050 there won't be many, if any, of those radio sites active. They will be reduced to some 'channel' on a large streaming website, and the revenue simply won't support them. The ad revenue really isn't supporting them enough now. Subscription rates only can go so high before people balk at paying for them. And digital music royalties aren't going down. 

Right now, the big streaming sites are still mostly in the red. If they can't make money now, how is podunk online radio going to in a few years?

RADIO: LOOKING AT THE CLIFF

So the entire industry is looking at a cliff, and the movers and shakers, who apparently haven't dealt with online content marketing to the extent that I have, as an indie author, really are in for a rude awakening when they go all online and pull the plug on their AMs and FMs completely -- which the experts admit eventually will happen, sometime later this century. I would say 2040-2050 -- when the older Millennials start to "age out" -- will be the breaking point for that to occur.

They're all going to lose their jobs. The revenue won't support them.

Some of the experts on the radio forums disparage AM stations for running what they think are wonky and questionable ads -- for ED medications, gold and hard assets investments, insurance, timeshare removal, alternative medicines, etc.

But take a listen to your local FM station sometime. You'll often hear the same sorts of ads. I even hear them on highly rated, local FMers -- spots for ED meds, timeshare removal, alternative medical procedures, hair transplants, dental implants, pay as you go cell service, etc. At least two highly rated local FMers run these sorts of ads. It's not just for AM talk radio anymore.

Radio in general, even today, is desperate for revenue. I don't think the online model is going to save the industry in the future. It will be nails in the coffin once the antennas come down and the transmitters are recycled into beer cans.

Even so, as a MW DXer and radio fan, and as one who worked in the industry for nearly 20 years, it's sad to see stations go off the air. 

A bird's eye view of Yakima, Washington -- sometimes known as the "Palm Springs of Washington" because of its generally sunny and dry climate, especially during the Spring, Summer and Autumn months. Photo from Wikipedia.

By Cacophony - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:YakimaWashington.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1374302

250K PEOPLE ISN'T ENOUGH TO SUPPORT A SPORTS STATION?

Back to ESPN Yakima: the situation seems to beg the question -- can't a market of over 200 thousand people support a network sports station? KUTI seemed to be a station that might have a decent enough audience to keep the lights on and the signal on the air. The Yakima market is a metro of around 250K people (98K live within Yakima itself). You'd think there would be enough sports fans in a 250K market to support the station. 

I guess that wasn't the case.

So now that station is 'lost' to the airwaves. So long, KUTI/KMWX/KIMA. You had a long run.

GET 'EM WHILE YOU CAN

I'll end this article on the most positive note I can think of right now: Get 'em while you can.

If you're a radio fan, enjoy what you can hear on your radio before that radio becomes as useful as a paperweight or doorstop -- or, for that matter, as useful as that electronic calculator in your drawer, or that flip phone that no longer works on the cell system but you didn't throw away. Maybe you've got a digital snapshot camera you don't use. You've replaced it with your smartphone's camera, so you can post grainier, semi-HQ and lossy looking pics of your meals on the internet. Even though the old device may still work, it's just too old-school for you.

OK, that happens.

Tech seems to make a lot of devices redundant over time, and radios eventually will be made redundant. I don't like the idea at all, but it's inevitable. Give radios maybe 20-30 more years before all bands -- AM, SW, FM -- are nothing but hiss and static. The revenue eventually won't support the Over-The-Air infrastructure. It's that simple.

Bob Dylan once wrote a song called The Times They Are A Changing, and they always are.

Sometimes you've got to appreciate what you have now, because you never know when it's going to vanish. It's just a part of life.

So, if you're a radio fan, switch it on, throw on the headphones, tune around, grab a book, and just listen. If you're a DXer, enjoy the sound of the distant signals, allowing you to travel hundreds, and sometimes thousands of miles, without leaving your chair.

Appreciate what you've got. MW curmudgeons, please quit bitching about what's on the air at night. Would you rather hear nothing but static?

And if you work in the Radio industry, hopefully you get at least ten more years of employment before they slash your job. Not trying to be negative here, but the media business isn't exactly kind to people. The radio industry wasn't always known as being kind to its workers, but it's even less so now. And as the march of audio/internet tech progresses, and "radio" continues to gravitate towards the online model, the radio / TV industry is going to shed jobs that will make Dereg 1996 look like a birthday party.

Keep your wits about you, guys. 

Peace.

C.C. Solstice, December 21st, 2023. Picture of Steinbeck's book Grapes Of Wrath and accompanying description added on Christmas Eve -- December 24th, 2023.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HALLOWEEN 2023, a Fun Time in Cold-tober -- & Canada rocker Myles Goodwyn RIP

My biggest electric Jack O' Lantern, and one of the two last ones I bought, probably in 2018. They used to be in the living room to keep my mom cheered up, as she liked pumpkin lights.

As I start to write this article, it is the day after Halloween. Halloween is a fun US holiday, that is rooted in many traditions brought here by our colonial forbears -- the Scotch-Irish (Ulster Irish people who colonized the Appalachian and Allegheny Mountains) and English colonists in particular brought with them some customs that became Americanized over the centuries, and it's become a fairly big holiday here in the US today.

Halloween has also spread worldwide. I have seen social media posts from friends and acquaintances in places like Norway and Germany, who have gone to Halloween parties. Some social media influencers posted pics of themselves in Halloween costumes.

 

Although there are some similar folk traditions in non-British and Irish regions -- Friesland's and Northern Germany's Laternelaufen and Austria's Laternenfest being a couple of them (where young people carry lanterns from house to house on St. Martin's Eve, November 11th), most of the Halloween traditions in America came from Scotland, Ireland, and England. German immigrants in the US appear to have adopted the Halloween traditions of their Ulster-Irish, Scottish and English neighbors.

A turnip Jack O' Lantern, the predecessor to the carved pumpkin. The Scots and Irish carved turnips for Halloween because they didn't have pumpkins. Maybe next Halloween I'll try to carve one. 

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

An example of "Soul Cakes". From Wikipedia.

Here in the US, what we now know as Halloween is a combination of a bunch of diverse folk traditions -- Scotch-Irish folk traditions (the idea of putting out lighted turnip and pumpkin lanterns to ward off the spirits of the dead), All Saint's Day (a Catholic holiday that celebrates the saints -- hence the name "All Hallow's Eve"), the UK traditions from All Souls Eve (the night before All Souls Day, when in Victorian Britain young people would go from house to house to ask for "Soul Cakes"), and -- more recently -- the Latin American traditional holiday the Day of the Dead has played a part in Halloween also.

Trick-or-treating developed from some Scotch-Irish and British traditions. The jack-o-lantern pumpkins developed from the older, carved turnip traditions brought over by the Ulster Irish in the 1700's. America's larger pumpkins were adopted as the turnip lantern's replacements.

REAL TRICKS TO 'TRICK OR TREATING'

Some rural areas of 19th Century America saw actual tricks played on Halloween night. My grandfather, who grew up in rural northern Wisconsin, remembered tricks being played on farmers. One farmer work up in the morning to see his wagon had been disassembled, and then reassembled on the top of his barn!

So -- yes, kids, there really was a "trick" in "Trick-or-Treat"!

Boo! One of my electric pumpkins placed in a tree, looking out towards the street.

FREEZING NIGHTS BEFORE HALLOWEEN

This Halloween it was COLD, maybe 33F (+2C). But it was OK otherwise. One problem I was having during the week before Halloween was that I was really tired all the time. I think it was left over from the little sleep I was getting during the period just before the trial we dealt with at work (something I wrote about last week here in my blog).

The lack of good sleep knocked my energy level back a bit.

I also wasn't eating enough good food for more than a week, and I don't think that helped.

The night before Halloween I had a good meal of beef stew, and I went out -- in the COLD -- and put out my electric Jack-o-Lanterns and cleared away a path to my front door (my hedge has grown out a lot over the past couple months). I got the candy in its bowl, set it near the front door, and then got my dancing pumpkin puppet out of the closet, because last year when I left the puppet in the closet one of the trick-or-treaters said "Where's the puppet?"

They even went back to the street so I could get my puppet, and then open the door the right way, with the puppet looking out and saying "Trick Or Treat, give me your candy!" to the kids.

So, this Halloween, I was ready. And so was my dancing pumpkin puppet.

When the last of the trick or treaters had gone, I went out on my bike, riding through the neighborhood armed with my Nikon camera. A house a few blocks away from mine had a really cool display, with a giant skeleton monster that lit up and moved!

A close up pic of the skeleton monster.

The Skellingtons, I think, made their mark on Halloween this year in the neighborhood.

Another house in the area had a cool laser display of a spider dropping into its web.

I had maybe 15-18 trick or treaters, in four groups. The last group was a neighbor and his wife, who brought up their young son. I gave candy to the son, and then to the neighbor and his wife. If the parents come up with their kids, I always give some candy to the parents. I don't eat much sugar, really, and I always have candy left over after Halloween, so I have no problem giving the candy away. Also, I think giving the parents a candy bar or two is a good, neighborly thing.

After all, how often do neighbors see each other over something fun like Halloween trick-or-treating?

Finally, my cousin showed up. He still gets some of my mail, which is directed at my mother's estate, because he lives in my mom's old house. I hadn't seen him for a few months, and we talked a lot.

When trick or treating was over, I went for a bike ride around the neighborhood, and took a couple pics of one neighbor's really cool display, with a massive pumpkin monster out front of his house. 

Then I went home and inside the house, as by then it was just below freezing.

My Halloween 'treat', which arrived on my porch early Halloween morning. An XHDATA D-328, which cost $15 US, along with another $9 shipping. Not bad for a good performing SW radio with worldwide FM band coverage (64 MHz to 108 MHz) and good MW performance, too! In this pic you can just see the alligator clip that holds my 25 foot / 8 meter indoor wire antenna to the XHDATA's whip antenna. This radio works terrific with an external antenna. Even 3 meters / 9 feet of wire helps bring in SW stations. I have an article in the works on this radio and another XHDATA I got two weeks or so later.

Early in that morning I tuned around on my XHDATA D-328 AM-FM-SW radio, which was delivered early Halloween. The XHDATA is a very cool, inexpensive, and old-school looking radio that I'm writing an article about that I hope to post later on this week.

I was able to hear a MW DX station from Southern Oregon (KAJO 1270, Grants Pass) and some stations out of China and the Far East on SW, by adding a wire to the whip antenna. Adding a MW loop antenna brought in some DX, too. The XHDATA is a fun little radio, and works quite well, considering its size and cost.

RAIN, AND SOME HESSIAN FOOTBALL!

The last couple days it's been 50F (8C?) and rainy, which is a respite from the cold. I have been able to crack open my bedroom window to sleep a little better, without freezing in the process. :-)

Later this morning as I write this there will be an NFL game broadcast from Frankfurt, Germany. As any German knows, Frankfurt is in Hessen, a state in the west-center of Germany. Some of my German ancestors may have been Hessians, although the ones I can actually track, or trace, came from Ansbach in Bayern. In colonial American days most German immigrants, like my German ancestors, were called "Hessians", a holdover term from Revolutionary War days, when the British hired "Hessian" mercenaries (German regiments from Hessen & Bayern) to help them fight the war. After the war, many "Hessian" soldiers stayed on in America, after taking an oath of allegiance to the US. For a few decades afterwards, Americans referred to all German immigrants as "Hessians". I guess the American colonial people back then didn't know their German geography. :-)

Anyway, there will be an NFL game in Frankfurt later on this a.m., which will start about 6 a.m. local time.

Last year there was a similar German NFL game, staged in Munich, where the Seattle Seahawks played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. It was a good game, even though Seattle lost. The Tampa Bay quarterback, Tom Brady, played well, and it was the last game on the radio I heard him playing. Brady has since retired. There are some football fans here in the US who don't like Tom Brady, but I am not one of them. The guy was an excellent player, and played well even at age 45 -- showing people that age can be overcome if you dedicate yourself to your health, and to your trade.

This time around, the Frankfurt game is being played by a couple Eastern US teams. It still should be cool to hear on my radio.

Until next time, I hope all who celebrated had a cool Halloween, and all the Catholics had a great All Saints' and All Souls' Day, and my Latin American readers had an OK Dia De Los Muertos.

THIS BLOG REACHES 100K UNIQUE VISITS!!

Last but not least, some time in late November this blog reached the 100,000 visit mark. That means my blog has been viewed, read, or visited 100,000 times since I started blogging in 2015. I know that there are blogs out there that get a lot more visits, but I always feel humbled to know that all of you out there are reading these articles.

The most popular article on this blog is, amazingly enough, the article on Powersound pickups. It's probably because a lot of guitar players who have Ibanez guitars (and there are a LOT of Ibanez fans out there) are aware of Powersounds, which were installed as stock pickups on a lot of Ibanez guitars up until a few years ago. There also is so little information on Powersounds out there -- at least from anyone who uses them and has figured out how to get the most out of them. Apparently my article has fulfilled a service to Powersound pickup guitar owners. :-)

That article alone has been read 7,290+ times.

Some of my other popular articles are my articles on the Realistic DX-375 (5340+ readers), the Realistic DX-370 (3040+ readers) and my article on the Sangean PR-D5 power button issue (3580+ readers). My article on the analog-dial, Realistic DX-350 radio got 3368 readers. The fact that my articles on these radio and guitar pickups could draw so many readers is humbling, really.

I hope some of the articles here have helped you in your DX hobby or guitar hobby, and I hope that the non-hobby articles have still been informative and entertaining. The fact the name of the blog is a bit unusual and difficult to remember probably doesn't help with the stat counts, but I'm leaving it as is. "Interrock" was going to be the name of a band I was going to put together. The "nation" part of the name was going to be a reference to fans of the band. The band, of course, didn't happen. The name, however, was carried forward with this blog.

MYLES GOODWYN OF APRIL WINE, RIP

I shall end this article on a sad note: Canadian 70's-80's rock musician Myles Goodwyn died several days ago of undisclosed causes (he was fighting diabetes). Goodwyn led the pioneering, 70's Canadian rock group April Wine, which was one of the first Canadian groups to benefit from CANCON, the early 1970's Canadian law that stated that 10% of all music played on Canadian radio needed to be of Canadian artists or songwriters. The law was a boon to Canadian musicians, and virtually created the Canadian music industry.

The law led to a 'second wave' of Canadian rock and pop artists like April Wine, that were able to become known not just in Canada, but in the U.S. as well -- all helped by CANCON.

I had a chance to interview Myles Goodwyn in the 1980's. He said that without CANCON, there would probably be no Canadian record labels, or Canadian music publishing. I suppose by today that would be different, but in the early 1970's when CANCON was implemented, there was no Canadian music industry to speak of. That obviously changed through the next three decades or so.

Most American rock fans were unaware of the Canadian rock scene -- which had bands like the Wackers, Mahogany Rush, A Foot In Coldwater, The Dudes, Crowbar, Fludd, Painter, Moxy, Chilliwack, Downchild Blues Band, the Stampeders (who had some cool rock hits), Brother, Brave Belt, Quebec singers like Robert Charlevoix, folksingers like Valdy, and others -- until some of the bands who benefited from CANCON, like April Wine and Rush, began to become popular Stateside. Then the US began to look north.

Here is April Wine's official video for their first big American hit, Roller. It's off First Glance, an album that Goodwyn named that way because he realized that the album would be America's 'first glance' at his band, even though they had several Canadian albums previously -- none of which sold in the US.

This is the opening track from First Glance. I think it got some airplay on KISW Seattle, but don't quote me on that. It should have. The cover shown on the vid is the US LP cover.:

Here is a track called Gimme Love, from one of April Wine's earlier Canadian albums, which was released in the US a couple years before First Glance but got zero airplay, and few, if any, sales.:

And yet another -- this one is really good, too. Victim Of Your Love. In the late 1980s I found this 1973 or '74 LP at a used record store. I think this album had a ballad that got a lot of play at Canadian high school proms and dances. This track was one of the rockers.:

This is an 80's FM rock hit by April Wine called Enough Is Enough. I'm sure it got airplay on KISW, which was more rock heavy than a lot of other stations in the US. Myles Goodwyn was able to write rock songs that pop-tinged just enough to be radio-friendly hits.:

I'd like to close this with one of my favorite April Wine songs, Silver Dollar, the closest thing I think they did that sounded like an anthem. It was the last track on First Glance, and I always thought it should have been an FM rock hit. The cover shown on this vid is the Canadian LP cover.:

RIP Mr. Goodwyn. You helped put Canadian rock and roll on the world map. And being half Canadian myself (my mother was born in Edmonton), I think that is a good thing. :-)

I don't have any new cat pictures, but my Squeakers is doing better. She still wants me to watch her eat. She doesn't like football -- when I took a radio in to listen to a game while watching her eat she wouldn't eat. Doesn't like my acoustic guitar, either. I already know she dislikes bagpipes intensely. :-)

But here's a pic of a rarity: A Thanksgiving holiday decoration! They're rare as hen's teeth -- or should I say turkey's teeth? A neighbor put this one up last year, and I never got a pic of it. This year, I managed to get one. So cool to see a holiday decoration for a holiday that doesn't seem to get many of them.

I hope to get another article posted before Christmas.

Until then,

Peace.

C.C., November 1st and 6th, and December 10th, 2023.

Obviously, I was delayed in posting this. I had some car issues, and also didn't feel well for a couple of days after Thanksgiving. But, here it is. With some extra content as well.