Listening changes
Thursday, November 17, 2005
am New York
For radio listeners, the point has truly passed where choice meant simply AM or FM.
Streaming audio and podcasting are radically transforming the medium. But possibly even more significant in the marketplace is the forceful advance of satellite radio. Conventional radio recently revealed its rattled nerves when Viacom’s group of Infinity stations silenced their own star, Howard Stern, reportedly because he was touting his imminent defection to the Sirius satellite service.
Rival satellite broadcaster, XM Radio, has grown faster than Sirius, with 5 million subscribers now, and has forged crucial deals with General Motors, major Japanese car-makers and Volkswagen-Audi, so that 130 different 2006 models will now carry now XM in their sound systems.
But technology aside, it’s in program content that XM passes a mile-marker next week, when several of its 150 digital channels will start airing a major industry "get".
It’s a Paul McCartney concert performance (pictured above). To the exclusive recording XM has added personal reflections from the be-knighted ex-Beatle on his creative process, tellingly illustrated with acoustic guitar accompaniment.
MY OWN LONGEST-CHERISHED piece of McCartney trivia is: "Scrambled Eggs". The composer sang that humble tri-syllabic phrase in place of "Yesterday", before the slushy song’s eventual title and lyrics gelled for him. Now this detail, and many more, are included in the exhaustive 980 pages of "The Beatles: The Biography" by Bob Spitz, from Little, Brown & Co.
More Beatles books have now been published than Beatles songs, but Spitz does earn a worthy place in the canon.
He presents much new material – including an intricate account of McCartney’s efforts at wresting control of the publishing deal he had with John Lennon.
THE BOOK WORLD CLEARLY LOVES catering to musical nostalgia among our leaders’ generation of baby-boomers. Next up, from HarperCollins, is "Time Won’t Let Me" by Bill Scheft, who’s a Sports Illustrated contributor, and for years was David Letterman’s top writer. His novel portrays a sixties garage band whose one vanity recording becomes a cult success four decades later.
Ex-presidential hopeful John Kerry provides a commendatory blurb, fantasizing that he could solve his fundraising problems if the band he once played in were to go platinum retrospectively. The name of this un-electrifying candidate’s former group? – "The Electras".
Tony Blair once belonged to a band, too, which amuses some British media. It was the former lead singer of "Ugly Rumors" who later disseminated the infamous, spuriously-sourced "Downing Street Dossier", alleging that Saddam Hussein could deploy WMDs within 45 minutes.
OFTEN DURING THE PAST year in the MEDIA BEAT I've suggested that the now-removed Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Chairman, Kenneth Tomlinson, who schemed to control PBS’s political coloring, was both an ideologue and a fool.
We should revise, or at least add to that opinion. This week the Corporation’s Inspector General has officially declared him a law-breaker.