The Grim Demise of Radio and Records

I grew up on radio.  I worked radio.  I listened to radio.  I was radio.  Our broadcasting Bible was a weekly newspaper called Radio and Records.  Each week, it would arrive at the station and every staff member would take turns reading.  You’d get national news on announcers changing stations.  You read about job opportunities.  You learned which records were getting airplay and why.  I was dismayed to discover all these years later that Radio and Records became an online only publication and, soon after that happened, Radio and Records shuttered itself as it was blended into Billboard.com to disappear — which meant losing all of its identity and uniqueness in the field.

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Billboard Blues and Jazz Charts

As an old radio guy in my youth, we watched the Billboard charts weekly to try to track the taste of mainstream listeners and then give them back precisely what they want singing in their ears.  Now, as a modern day Bluesman and a Jazz lover, I am dismayed that the Billboard charts barely celebrate those genres.  In the past, Billboard would sort of pretend to honor Jazz and the Blues, but today, there’s no real push to reason why those musical genres are so important to modern music, and so we’re left with middling chart coverage that feels stale and out-of-date.

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