Comments on: Salem Shakeup

By: lynn

lynn — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:58:46 +0000

anyone visit Salems SG site - http://www.southerngospel.com/ for videos ? pretty good stuff

By: Derek Frerichs

Derek Frerichs — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:27:55 +0000

Lynn, thank you for the links! I got to hear Greg for the first time in a long, long time. The stations in my area that carried the network no longer do so I’ve been a good bit out of the loop, it was nice to hear my old friend Greg again.

#31 Nashville Ear, I’ll throw no stones but I would like to defend them a bit. Our old clock forced quarter hour breaks so the affiliate stations could make a clean break away for programs, this created a fill problem that hampered rotation a bit among other things. We also had to blah blah between every song which I thought was more talk than we needed. Mr. Cumbee made some good changes there.

Now, since Lynn enlightened me to the link, I have only been able to listen to a little bit of the format, but in these four hours I have not heard any flat notes, and for what it’s worth I really like Gold City’s version of Casting Bread.

Being out of the business for fifteen years now I don’t feel too qualified to be critical of what these guys are doing, especially after only listening for four hours but I think they could loosen up a tad, it just seemed a little stiff and busy if that makes any sense. The Beach Bum, Stoner spot reeks, sorry but that is absolutely the worst I have heard. That’s as bad as I am going to get here. With all that said, take it easy on the PD, we don’t know (at least I don’t) what he or she is up against. I got into a situation once as a GM/PD/MD where I had eight bosses with eight different ideas of how I should format, everyone of them had my office, pager, and home number, only two of them really believed in letting me do my thing so that left me with just six stress points to add to the listeners. My wife say’s this is what happened to my hair, I think it was our kids myself but I digress. I’m going to keep this one in my prayers.

By: wondering2nfro

wondering2nfro — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:58:14 +0000

#32, I may be the new kid on the block *blog* but I caught your point. I agree!

By: CVH

CVH — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:18:07 +0000

Obeserver,

The Salem properties are designed to do two things - maintain the company’s core values (which are conservative, not exclusively Christian), and turn a profit, not an easy thing to do in this economy. The quality of their products varies; their news service, SRN News, is one of the most poorly produced services on the air today. Parts of the company are bleeding profusely; others are holding their own, relatively speaking. Profits are down and that means one thing - cutbacks and spinning off marginal assets. I have several friends in the business who have recently been ‘downsized’ by media companies larger than Salem. It will happen there too as they streamline and reposition themselves, both in broadcast and non-broadcast operations.

As far as your rather limp critique of President-elect Obama, what in your mind is the connection between his values and the “almighty $”?

By: Obeserver

Obeserver — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:31:48 +0000

For what it is worth: Some of the stations owned by Salem play good ole SG music and the commercials are awful. Everything from Vodka to Birth Control. Anything to make a buck. I understand that they need $$$ to operate, but come on, do we give up all of our values for the almighty $? Oh yes that’s right, I guess we do, look who our president elect is.

By: nashville ear

nashville ear — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:51:35 +0000

now I may get some stones hurled at me for this one, but: I am not impressed with the programming on Solid Gospel radio. The song rotation is not good, the DJ’s sound amateurish, the bumpers and music beds dont sound professional, etc.
Were it not for their vast network and affordability to the local station owners they would not be able to stay on.
If a good professional program director could get a hold of them and do a total revamp where it didn’t sound like it was coming out of your neighbors garage studio then maybe the ratings would go up and the listenership would grow, so they could attract better national advertisers. I don’t listen to it much anymore. I can’t take any more flat singing soloists who bought their way on the air.

By: Old Gator

Old Gator — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:26:52 +0000

That one is simple Kyles Dad. The professionals are the ones that have been taken by someone in the industry at least a few times. The amatuers are the ones that will get taken for a ride by someone, it just hasn’t happened yet.

By: wondering2nfro

wondering2nfro — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:25:06 +0000

Isn’t there a new magazine out, that covers quiet a bit of SGM. It seems that I saw it on someone’s table recently. Maybe called the Voice or the Christian or something along that line. I would have bought one, but couldn’t get close enough to the product table. I believe that Greater Vision was on the cover. I intend to buy it next time I see it. Who publishes this, or rather who is behind it? Do you think it will take over the SN? In my opinion the SN has gone down hill in recent years. It’s not as good as it once was. Just my opinion.

By: Kyles Dad

Kyles Dad — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:53:03 +0000

Let us all realize that SG Music is but a small sliver of the Christian Music pie. However as long as people continue to spend money to be heard on radio or to be seen in a publication the SN and SG Radio Network will continue to take it. Not that there is anything wrong with this concept, I doubt that either could survive if they depended on real sponsors. This business model has been successful throughout the industry with custom record companies, radio promoters, industry web sites etc. but where do we seperate amatuer from professional anymore?

By: Old Gator

Old Gator — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:09:02 +0000

Agreed Lynn. I was speaking more to if the SN (as a stand-alone) is profitable. Salem has all the right pieces, but you are exactly right, you can only keep throwing good money after bad for so long.

By: Derek Frerichs

Derek Frerichs — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:34:52 +0000

MityCats bless your heart, you are cracking me up and have made my day. Chris just so happened to hit me on Face Book just a bit ago and has inspired me to once again look for an old tape that we got Champ with on the Cats.
We used to lay down vo’s in digital files and Champ had one that he came out of the song and tagged “It’s the Cathedrals and there number one song Wedding Music”. When we heard it playback on air, the cadence sounded like it was the same as the old Woody Woodpecker show theme, being that it was a file, Oliver and I went back and scarfed the file off the computer and sure enough it matched the song. So we popped him on the multi-track and ended up with Woody’s Wedding Music” performed by Chris Champion. Chris by the way did the baritone and tenor on “I’m In For Some Pain” which was our parody of Perfect Heart’s “I Wish It Would Rain”

Those were some happening days! Thanks for the fun you brought guys like Chris and I. Look us guys up on Face Book, Chris has a nice page, mine however…..

Long live Solid Gospel, Long Live Salem and certainly Long live the Singing News that brought us Mark Bishop’s “You call it moon walking, we call it back sliding”.

End of the rabbit

By: Lynn

Lynn — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:12:26 +0000

MityCats and everyone else you can listen to Salem’s Southern Gospel on their online radio stations either at crosswalkradio.com or christianityradio.com. There’s a Southern Gospel channel - it’s free but you do have to register.

By: MityCats

MityCats — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:40:42 +0000

I’m only afforded minimal opportunity to listen to Solid Gospel now as it’s not played locally here except an AM station that I can only pick up occasionally. But I, too, think the Singing News will be ok. There’s too many folks who still love this music too much to see it fall through the cracks.

Warning … rabbit trail ahead …

Hey #18 … that can’t the famous Derek Frerichs I see, can it? Wondered where you went - you were ALWAYS my favorite Solid Gospel DJ. I still call the Cathedrals “The Mity Cats” (hence the name) to this day because of you. Just wish you were somewhere local to me now so I could listen in again.

And Chris - you wouldn’t happen to be Champion, would you?

If these two guys were still at Solid Gospel, it would be the best radio station on the planet. You guys are legends in my book.

Derek - if you are still on the air, do you still do the “Songs You Sing in the Shower” contest?

By: Lynn

Lynn — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:10:55 +0000

Ole Gator - they’re also not profitable if they keep on poor performing stations, which is why they are selling off the stations dragging them down and just using up revenue without bringing any money in.

By: Lynn

Lynn — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:08:54 +0000

No Mo Power 4 You! - completely agree that it’s apples to oranges - that’s why i wasn’t comparing the two. I was saying that there IS a profitable branch of salem. As the advertising industry is heading online and away form radio and broadcast - this is where they need to focus on growth to ONE day rise about the broadcast revenue.