Record Report with Robert W. Morgan – for week of August 20, 1979.
Much as we’d like to think when Punk hit the airwaves, everything else melted away until New Wave arrived. But the 70s were, just like every other decade before or since, still a stew of mainstream Pop Music. Disco was still huge – singer-songwriters still held sway – rock was still as hard as ever and Heavy Metal carved out a niche and wasn’t going anywhere. Soul, R&B and Funk were mainstays in what the Radio industry referred to as Urban Radio.
But Radio was the thing that was changing – AM radio losing audiences and FM was gaining those audiences while losing its former edge as the place you got a musical education. Instead, FM adopted a lot of syndicated programming, like this one – Record Report, hosted by perennial Top-40 mainstay Robert W. Morgan. Like all Syndicated Radio programming, it offered pre-digested bits of information, laid out in a way that coaxed a listener to keep listening, no matter how trivial the subject matter was.
Syndicated radio also included concerts – some, like King Biscuit Flour hour offered an hour’s worth of a concert recorded anywhere in the country, usually by artists who were being heavily promoted by major labels and had a vested interest in album as well as ticket sales. Other syndicated concert shows offered snippets – jamming as much dialogue and ads in between one of two songs.
All in all, the 70s represented something of a speed bump in the music business in general. By 1979, cracks were beginning to appear, particularly in area of sales (whether real or imagined) and the bloated budgets and lavish spending would soon go the way of Top-40.
But during this week of Music Business goings-on in 1979, no hint of dark clouds gathering on the horizon – it was still party time, for the most part. And mainstream Pop was loud and clear and Robert W. Morgan was one of those voices maintaining the status quo.
Have a listen.
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