KNX 1070 Jingle: RIP

The experience of tuning into the KNX news hasn't changed in over 15 years. A few minutes before the hour, I'll be driving along, notice what time it is, and tune to 1070 on the AM dial.

Often I'll catch the last traffic report before the commercials play after which finally the hourly CBS network news comes on. The KNX traffic reports are actually always interesting: seems every time I hear the L.A. traffic report, there's something crazy going on, like M&M's all over inteterstate 5, a big rig overturned spilling nails all over the freeway on I-10, or an alert that there's not just a couch in the fast lane of the Long Beach Freeway, but a couch that is on fire in the fast lane of the Long Beach Freeway.

So then there are the commercials leading up to the end of the hour, a quick blurb from a KNX announcer about what local news headlines will be reported right after the CBS news, and then comes the signature KNX-1070 news jingle that leads in the bing sound as the top of the hour is reached, followed by the start of the CBS news feed.

This blog posting is about the KNX-1070 news jingle, of which I wish there were an mp3 file, somewhere Out There on the net. I say I wish, because starting very recently, KNX is not playing their jingle anymore. Seems like it's been dumped. It's been changed to something menacing, downright sinister, right out of Terminator or something.

The old jingle, which I've heard for years and years, consists of a corny right-out-of-the-50s chorus of cheery men's and women's voices singing:

Theirs were the voices of innocence. Of high school and college pep rallies. Theirs were the voices saying, no matter how bad the news is that you're about to hear, hey, it's another beautiful day, and we love L.A.! We love it!

Even at the most bleak times, for example in the days and weeks after 9/11, the hourly pep rally of KNX's cheerleaders were there to remind listeners that it's not all bad.

I knew something was wrong, the other day, when I tuned into 1070 to hear the news, and I didn't hear the cheerleaders. No, what I heard is something I couldn't believe.

First, there's a moment of silence. Then a strange voice mumbling something, quickly followed by another voice mumbling something, followed by another, and another, and yet others. All in the span of three or four seconds, the cacophony builds until it reaches a crescendo, at which point a mechanical sound, something right out of Terminator 2, a mix of white noise and something hard to place, like a robot or machine, shushes the voices, after which there's silence for a moment. And then, a new voice. A single, man's voice.

Followed by another pause, and then:

Followed by yet another pause, and then:

At which point the bing chimes, the hour is reached, and the national CBS radio news begins.

What the hell is up with this new jingle? Well, wait. First of all, let's agree on something. This new "thing" is not a jingle. What exactly it is, I don't know.

Actually, I do. Obviously it is a message. A message to listeners that the company that runs KNX-1070 has changed. My immediate thought was, uh-oh, new product manager, trying to make a name for himself, gotta hire some new creative agency to come up with a new identity, and here ya go, let's try this. It's new, it's bold, we don't know what the hell it is. Well, we do. It is everything the old cheerleading squad wasn't.

Turns out, there was indeed a corporate shake-up, with the firing of KNX-1070 general manager George Nicholaw (who's been there 36 years), his job position eliminated. Here's a story on the KNX shake-up from some website called "WAG-net". And here is mention of it at a site called LAObserved. By the way, KNX is owned by Infinity Broadcasting, which in turn is owned by Viacom.

Answers. KNX. Los Angeles.

Nope. Questions. Lots of questions.

Michael: Your Minutes Are Up, All 15 of Them

A recent Michael's Minute at his software company website decried CNET's plan to shut down the MP3.com music servers and erase the files on there on December 3rd.

On the "Pho" mailing list this past week, Michael's been defending his article and decision to sell MP3.com in the first place (a deal netting him over $100 million). He claims he had to sell, that MP3 was a public company and he had a fiduciary duty to make a decision that was in the best interest of shareholders.

Let's see.

First of all, Michael's expression of support for "saving" all the indie music at MP3.com is touching, but I'm not buying it. A handy way of getting his name (and his companys' names) in the news, though. And his comparing the recent San Diego fires to the "scheduled" "fire" "to take place on December 3rd" by CNET is downright grotesque and trivializes the real loss of lives, livelihoods, and property that San Diego experienced a month ago.

As for why Robertson sold MP3.com: First, was it really his decision, or was he forced to by the board and the bankers? One would love to know. Let's say for argument's sake that it was his decision. Ok. If he hadn't sold, wouldn't the company have gone bankrupt pretty much immediately? That would be a good question for the media to ask him. Seems to me that Vivendi Universal had MP3.com right where it wanted it, at the edge of a precipice, and the decision to sell, at a fire-sale price, was the only way out of a very dire situation. Would MP3.com have been able to continue as a going concern even 30 days later, had the sale not taken place?

As for the music: How much of the "most popular" music on MP3.com was genuinely popular? In the sense of real people at their own computers really downloading and listening to it? Versus, how much of that "popularity" and download activity was faked, typically by the artists themselves, using bots or other schemes to generate tons of downloads (and pay for plays)? Only the data would tell us for sure. Trust the data. Wouldn't it be something if the data told us that in reality, MP3.com was to music as Enron was to energy?

Rather than the music, I would much rather see all of MP3.com's historical downloading and pay-for-play data be stored at Archive.org, so that an independent study could be made of what was real and what was not at MP3.com.