POLL: In which decade was radio the most enjoyable?*

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Oldies trivia guy, Jul 10, 2018.

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  1. BluesOvertookMe

    BluesOvertookMe Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX, USA
    The worst year for me was 1986 - I stayed away from radio for years after that.
     
  2. Fullbug

    Fullbug Forum Resident

    Location:
    Seattle
    Late 70s FM rock radio was magical.
     
  3. Teek

    Teek Forum Resident

    Location:
    Philadelphia,PA
    This poll should provide a pretty good age breakdown of forum members.
     
    audiomixer likes this.
  4. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    I loved rock radio in the 70's and very early 80's, but to be completely honest, I have to pick the 90's. NOT because of the rock music, because I wasn't listening to any of it, but because of the constant and rich tapestry of other music and programming that I was consuming at the time, Classical, jazz, new age, gospel, preaching (for one year I listened to about five different preachers every day), news-talk, NPR, I found a TON of interesting stuff on the radio during the 90's. I don't think it was all peculiar to that decade, that was just the time I became really immersed in it.
     
  5. mindgames

    mindgames Forum Resident

    Location:
    -
    10's: Beats 1, BBC Radio Music 6, all the internet radio options.
     
  6. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    We are both from Perth so I think I know which stations you are referring to.

    6UWA, which became 6UVS and is now RTRfm, was always sort of there in the background, but I never gave it much attention until the last couple of years. I now listen to that almost exclusively, unless I want to listen to real-time news like an election coverage or something.

    I used to love 96fm# (that was how they wrote it) in the early days of FM. They really made an effort to differentiate themselves from the run of the mill commercial AM stations. I actually heard tracks from A Trick of the Tail and Wind and Wuthering on that station. Sadly that is all gone, and now it's all just the same old "classic rock" tracks from day to day. Every so often they advertise the fact that the station has had a makeover so "tune in and discover the new 96fm" and I give it a go and still the same old crap.

    I very occasionally listen to Triple J just for a change. My problem with them is that as soon as anything starts to get any sales volume whatsoever, they drop it like a hot potato as if afraid it will damage their cred. Also they rarely play anything more than six months old.
     
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  7. Kingsley Fats

    Kingsley Fats Forum Resident

    RTR FM has some evening & weekend programs that are OK but not very listenable during the day

    96FM still tries to claim it was the first FM station in Perth. I must admit I never heard anything at all like early Genesis on that station - must have been very late at night.
    Regardless in the US free form FM radio was around from the late 60's. We missed out on all of that & got stuck withsomething slightly different from run of the mill commercial AM stations.

    Triple J has always been wanky.

    As I said the radio here is & has always been appalling.
     
  8. Oldies trivia guy

    Oldies trivia guy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Lakeland, Florida
    I couldn't agree with you more...I worked in radio from 1968-1998 and watched it go through numerous changes. It really started declining when the FCC relaxed ownership rules and large corps started dominating. The quality and creativity of pop music did also. I didn't include anything past the 90's because I even quit listening at that point.
     
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  9. Greenalishi

    Greenalishi Birds Aren’t Real

    Location:
    San Francisco
  10. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I didn't get to hear it in the '30s or '40s, but live broadcasts of Ellington from the Cotton Club and Goodman on Let's Dance, radio shows by the Carter Family and Bob Wills and Hank Williams; radio mysteries and sitcoms; Metropolitan Opera broadcasts and Toscanini and the NBC Orchestra; the birth of the Opry; and all the comedy shows like Jack Benny and Abbot & Costello; I'm gonna guess that they call it the Golden Age of Radio for a reason and say, although I've only heard tell of it and recordings of airchecks and some stuff that use broadcast from transcription disks, the '20s, '30s and into WWII, when radio was basically the entire universe of electronic media and almost everything was live, had to have been the most enjoyable era for radio.
     
  11. GillyT

    GillyT Forum Resident

    Location:
    Wellies, N.Z
  12. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    I'm fascinated by the way some words go in and out of fashion, and sometimes come back in again. One such word is "transistor", A transistor is, of course, an electronic component, but when they were incorporated into the design of radios, making radios small enough to be portable. we had "transistor radio", which very quickly became shortened to "transistor" or "tranny" (the latter word, of course, now means something quite different). For many years I was unaware of the actual meaning of the word - I thought a transistor was a type of radio. Then, within about ten years, the term "transistor" dropped out of use; people simply called them radios, because you rarely saw any other kind of radio.

    I see the same thing happening with phones. Many people no longer refer to their "mobile phone" or "cell phone", it's simply their phone, because what other kind of phone is there?

    Another one is "wireless". My parents and their parents used to call the radio "the wireless". It was never an accurate term, of course, but I suppose it referred to the fact that transmission occurred through the air, as opposed to through a line such as a telephone line. The word pretty much disappeared from use during the 1960s... and now, hey presto, it's back again.
     
  13. gd0

    gd0 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies

    Location:
    Golden Gate
  14. Jimmy B.

    Jimmy B. .

    Location:
    .
    although I'm sure what was played in the '60s on the radio was way better than what I heard, I was born in '67 so I chose the '70s.

    It was better to be a kid.

    The '80s there were some stations I listened to at times still...
     
  15. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    "Internet radio" is one of the more amusing misnomers of the modern age. Internet radio stations do not actually make use of radio waves for transmission.
     
  16. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Well there are plenty of internet simulcasts of terrestrial stations.
     
  17. bob_32_116

    bob_32_116 Forum Flaneur

    Location:
    Perth Australia
    I know that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm referring to so-called "internet radio stations" that are only accessible if you have internet connection.
     
  18. dprokopy

    dprokopy Senior Member

    Location:
    Near Seattle, WA
    This poll should just be called "In Which Decade Were You a Teenager?"
     
    audiomixer, andrewskyDE and mindgames like this.
  19. Danby Delight

    Danby Delight Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston
  20. Bingo Bongo

    Bingo Bongo Music gives me Eargasms

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    70's & 80's as I was growing up.

    P.S. I still haven't grown up!
     
  21. Folknik

    Folknik Forum Resident

    For me, the '70s because that's when I discovered a great eclectic AOR station (before the format degenerated into "classic rock") with the '60s coming in a very close second simply for having the most diversity and the most groundbreaking music.
     
  22. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    i don't really remember seventies radio ...
    In the eighties when i was still wet behind the ears musically, there was a station in Perth, West Australia (96FM) and they had the rock archives and the Live Concert Hour, the rest of the time was a mix of new and classics, but those two shows were where I got my first taste outside the top 40.
    Rock Archives was (I think) a 90 minute run down on 1 band. I found Led Zeppelin for the first time, The Doors and a ton of 60's and 70's bands that you generally hear 2, maybe 3 songs from. They would go through their albums and play deep cuts and it was great.
    The Live concert hour was exactly what it says (except sometimes it was an hour and a half). Each week One band spotlighted in a show. Often a recently taped show, for example U2 live in Boston on the War tour in 1983 and stuff like that.
    Can't handle radio much these days, but in the early 80's 96fm performed a public service for me :)
     
  23. andrewskyDE

    andrewskyDE Island Owner

    Location:
    Europe
    I wasn't there at that time but I'm very sure radio stations between the 1960s and 1980s were the coolest.
     
  24. Dr. Mudd

    Dr. Mudd Audient

    70’s no question. Free form FM was at its peak.
     
  25. gd0

    gd0 Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies

    Location:
    Golden Gate
    "Where's the Creedence? I don't hear any Creedence!" :magoo:
     
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