American Top 40

Music and TV entrepreneur, Dick Clark passed away last week. He was 82 years old. I would imagine that just about everybody and his/her dog, has or will at one point or another write or report on his passing. I'd like to add my two cents.

Clark's role in popular music history, in my opinion, is firmly cemented. Most of us know of him from his annual salute to the end of each year, held in Times Square on New Year's Eve. But, Clark had a great love of music, and in 1956 he became the host of a local TV show in Philadelphia called Bandstand. On the show, Clark played records while a group of local teens danced. He asked about favorite songs, watched for the latest fashions and the latest dances. After two years, the show went national and became American Bandstand, airing on ABC.

Clark was always on the look out for all things new as they related to music. This often meant bringing on artists that may have been offensive to parents. In a compromise move, he would have those artists dress in suits and ties. In this way, the artists were listened to with less judgement and less resistance. In a way, even though he was criticized for it, he bridged the gap between teen viewers and their parents, by making these artist more palatable.

Clark was always in favor of and defended artistic freedom. He would present both the famous and the not so well know. He had an ear for talent. He was the first to allow Black artist on the show to perform the original versions of their songs, and he was the first to break the color barrier by integrating his dance crew. In a way, in my opinion, the case could be made that if it weren't for Dick Clark, there would not have a been a Don Cornelius and Soul Train.

In 1973,after the Grammys moved to CBS, Clark created, The American Music Awards. Award winners were chosen by a poll of 20,000 record buyers, as opposed to members of the Recording Academy. Music fans would often choose without regard for whether they had purchased the music and often went with their sentimental favorites. In the early 1990's, after complaints from some artists whose records had sold millions but were not nominated, the use of Sound Scan was instituted. This would be so until 2007, when falling ratings and declining record sales lead to allowing fans to once again choose their favorites.

Dick Clark's legacy lead to his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993. Today, at a time when there will soon be only three major record companies, in control of all of the major labels, on the face of the Earth, I don't see another Dick Clark or anyone like him coming along in the near future. While the Indie scene looks promising, and the internet offers many opportunities for getting the word out about whats new in music, it may not be as easy as you might think.

Who Needs Reality?

I have a degree in Mass Media Communications, often, things that relate to other media are on my mind. I majored in production and I learned a lot about how things are put together before they go out over the air. Most of my real world experience has come from the time that I spent in local broadcast TV.

Since the TV writer's strike of 07 and several month after the strike of 2011, I've noticed that Reality TV is continuing to proliferate. Cable networks are coming onto the air with lineups that feature nothing but reality TV shows. And, some networks that once featured some of the most informative and information filled programming such as TLC which used to be The Learning Channel and Court TV, which became TruTV, now show reality based programming almost exclusively.

I'm not a snob or a TV critic, but the deepening of the reality TV rut is a little more than disappointing. While it is true that watching fewer hours of television is preferred, what do you do when you have free time and none of your 200 channels is showing very much that's entertaining.

I talked about reality before in another post when I was discussing the lack of videos on MTV. Speaking of, it was MTV's The Real World that started the current state of affairs.
The show was supposed to be a take off on the soap opera format, but when there was very little budget it was decided to use real people instead of actors, directors, or scripts. The shows success lead to a variety of spinoffs including, Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race, and while you wouldn't think of it as being one, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? The latter is classified as a game show, but if you look a little closer you'll see why I include it.

The list of shows goes on, but I don't really want to name them all. There are just too many. The networks used to employ quality writing, expert direction, and superb acting to get people to watch their programming. But, with increased competition from cable, they've given up and resorted to whatever will get viewers' attention. And, reality fits the bill. There's low production cost because there are no actors, directors, or scripts. But where is the entertainment value in what is turning out to be nothing more than a lot of conflict and bad language?

Maybe what's needed is a redefining of what is considered to be entertainment with regard to TV programming. I think that it's a little more than troubling when reality shows resort to using celebrities to get people to watch. What does that tell you? Where is the reality in that? Where is the reality in a show that has to resort to staging events because the actual lives being filmed become boring at times? That sounds more like unreality to me. And if that's supposed to be real, then, who needs reality?

What The Flac.....?

I've been buying downloads for quite some time. I even remember when the best bit rate you could get was 128kbps. Those were the days, right?. But, with the rise of the online digital music stores has come the quest for better fidelity of Mp3s.

Most music downloads are encoded at at least 320kbps which yields a much better sound quality. I know that to many, Mp3s appear to sound just as good as CD or WAV files, but the compression process used to convert WAV files into Mp3s, does so by extracting or removing a portion of the audio in order to shrink the file's size. The result is, that some of the sound is then missing. While it is true the the missing sound is mostly in the higher frequencies, the discerning ear can still tell. This is what is known as a lossy conversion. What has been coming onto the digital music download scene in the past several years is the lossless conversion process. File formats include, Monkey's Audio or Ape, Wavepack, ATRAC, TTA, Apple Lossless, Windows Media Lossless and the one I think is the odds on favorite, FLAC.

FLAC stands for free lossless audio codec. I think that I like it because it works just like a Zip file, except that it is designed for audio. With FLAC, a WAV file can be reduced by 50 to 60% of it's original size, and when it's decoded, it yields the the exact amount of data that went into it. The bonus with FLAC is, that the file can also be played back just as it is. And, the sound is the same as the sound of the file it was made from.

I've talked about FLAC before, but technology is always moving forward, and since FLAC is an open source technology, more and more emusic stores and music software developers are sure to be adopting it, especially as word begins to spread about FLAC's attributes and demand for better sound quality continues to increase.

While losseless file technology may not be very sexy or exciting, it will mean some great changes that are good for music consumers. At some point, you'll be able to get the exact music files that the artist always intended to sell. You'll also be able to play your download immediately, or have the ability to convert it to the original while keeping the compressed file for your archives. Think of it, all of the great music that's been hard to find, not only discovered online, but downloaded and played back in your car or living room with the quality that was always intended.