Station Break

Today's Pop Culture

If it's on the dial, over the air, on the cable, or just plain Out There, it's fair game for 'Station Break with Paul Farhi.' Bring your comments to the conversation on America's Fastest Growing Pop Culture Chat. And be sure to check out his blog.

Exhausted from the rigors of watching the Olympics, Farhi has moved on to the rigors of watching the Democratic National Convention. Bring your rants and raves about both. Plus, why the Nationals stink on radio and sundry other topics. Join him online Tuesday, Aug. 26, at 1 p.m. ET.

A transcript follows.

Farhi is a reporter in The Post's Style section, writing about media and popular culture. He's been watching TV and listening to the radio since "The Monkees" were in first run and Adam West was a star. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Los Angeles, Farhi had brief stints in the movie business (as an usher at the Picwood Theater), and in the auto industry (rental-car lot guy) before devoting himself full time to word processing. His car has 15 radio pre-sets and his cable system has 500 channels. He vows to use all of them for good instead of evil.

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Paul Farhi: Greetings, all, and welcome to our Back to School Chat and Rummage Sale...So I was all Olympics-ed out and here comes the Democratic Convention, with the Republican Convention waiting to strike like Michael Phelps in that 100-meter butterfly race. Maybe I've scrubbed the memory, but I don't remember going back-to-back-to-back with mega-events like this before. I'm not complaining, I'm just sayin'. Anyway, lots of TV right now for what otherwise would be THE dreariest TV time of the year.

Well, let's go to the phones...

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What was NBC's line on gold medal basketball: being on USA Network? I can think of several excuses, but none are very compelling, given the emphasis they gave to the Redeem Team at the beginning of the Olympics: - promoting USA Network - it was a rerun anyway - there was better stuff live on Sunday (really?) - we didn't think the game would be any good - ??

Paul Farhi: Well, for starters, NBC itself carried the gold-medal game live...at 2:30 in the very-early-Sunday morning. I watched it then (sue me; I love the Olympics) but couldn't understand why NBC didn't use its clout (i.e., $894 million in TV rights fees paid to the Intl Olympic Committee for Beijing) to get that event moved into prime time. It did so with beach volleyball, for heaven's sake. And you'd have thought NBC (not USA) would have run big hunks o' highlights of the game on its Sunday Closing Ceremonies show. You would be wrong if you thought that, however.

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Washington, D.C.: Has anyone formed a chapter of Washington Nationals Anonymous? I must admit that I would be receptive to joining a support group to help me rid of my addiction to the worst team in the Majors. Any suggestions?

Paul Farhi: I know you're funnin' me, but it's actually a good idea. The Nationals should find some way to embrace their terribleness. I don't know how you engineer a Loveable Loser image, but they might want to try until/if things turn around. Your idea could be a start...

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McLean, Va.: For some reason whenever I listen to certain songs on 105.9FM, it sounds as though there's either an additional instrument that isn't there in the traditional radio version of the song or more pumping up of the background singers in certain parts of the song. Since I assume most radio stations get their libraries from the same place, how does 105.9 accomplish this and why do you think did they chose to do this?

Paul Farhi: Interesting conspiracy theory! I've listened to 105.9 and Big 100.3 and occasionally noticed that an element (bass or drums or something) was more prominent in a song than I had previously realized. But I always thought that was a result of my car radio's treble/bass/speakers/volume. Never thought that anyone was tinkering with the music long after it was recorded. I don't know; maybe they do.

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Bethesda, Md.: One thing I've never understood about advertising is when the say things like the most watched news or the #1 movie in the world. Really, then I must watch that news or run out to see the #1 movie. Does such advertising really work?

Paul Farhi: I guess it's an attempt to create some kind of "in-group" mentality. I.e., you wouldn't want to miss something that everyone is watching. Me, I think it's counter-productive. I'm never all that impressed with mass popularity.

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Fairfax, Va.: What did you think about last week's run-up to the announcement of Sen. Obama's VP selection -- did the media outlets get overplayed by the Obama campaign?

Paul Farhi: Yes. Entirely. And we're overplaying the conventions, too. The conventions are basically weeklong infomercials for the candidates. Nothing wrong with that, but we should treat them accordingly.

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Extra Sound: Some of the stations still use reverb behind their announcers (how 80's), and they could probably process the music as well to give it some extra punch...mostly the stations that still feature car dealers shouting at you.

Paul Farhi: Possibly, but this goes beyond re-verb, I think. You sometimes hear instruments that you've never heard before. Frankly, I kind of like it. Yes, I know it may be messing with a masterpiece, but it's like the recent Beatles "Love" album--you hear the music in a somewhat different and fresher way.

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Mt. Vernon, Va.: Interesting article on the Nats radio today. It's a shame, too, I genuinely like the Slowes/Jaegler teaming, much better than the O's broadcasts. Do you have a sense of how the miserable numbers for the Nats compare to either the O's local numbers here, or to the Redskins/Wizards/Caps radio broadcasts. Frankly, with Washington radio being as bad as it is, I'm surprised anyone is listening to anything!

washingtonpost.com: From the Basement, It's No Wonder Radio Reception Is Poor ( Post, Aug. 26)

Paul Farhi: I went looking for Orioles-on-WTEM numbers but couldn't get them by deadline. My guess--totally random stab here--is that the Orioles may actually do better than the Nationals on Washington radio because a) the Nationals' numbers are so utterly dismal; b) the Orioles are a better team; and c) the Orioles still have a loyal Washington-area fan base.

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Laguna Hills, Calif.: In Europe thirty years ago the radio stations' name (not numbers) were exhibited on the digital display. The U.S. still does not have this technology. Why?

Paul Farhi: We have had it, for several years. It's available on many new cars. I've enjoyed it on rented cars for some time. Downside: I'm gonna kill someone if I don't stop looking at the little digital display readout while driving.

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Extra Instruments: I think a lot of labels re-mix singles for certain station demographics. You'll hear a song on "rock" station where the guitar is prominent, and on an easy-listening station strings are added. Two songs where I really noticed this were "Who Knew" by Pink and "Arms Wide Open" by Creed, and I'm sure there are others.

Paul Farhi: Interesting. Personally, I would like more cowbell.

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Extra Music: Two possible explanations: first, the original recording got remastered. Or you have better equipment than you used to. Car sound systems are much better than they used to be.

Paul Farhi: Very true. I noticed a feature on my wife's car radio that allows you to set stations to some kind of pre-set audio quality, like "rock," "country," "news," etc. I guess maybe that helps bring out whatever the anonymous re-mixers want you to hear.

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What's Up with HBO: I liked Generation Kill, though that's already over. When are they gonna come up with another Sopranos or The Wire (or even Deadwood)? So much highfalutin crap lately.

Paul Farhi: I liked "Generation Kill," too, especially how all the underlying political questions surrounding the war were subtly and honestly woven into the story. But point taken: HBO is in a very dry phase. And I'm not sure the heavily promoted vampire series from Alan "Six Feet Under" Ball is going to save them.

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Silver Spring, Md.: Paul, could it be that NBC downplayed basketball at the Olympics because ABC/ESPN has the NBA contract and Universal/GE/NBC didn't want to give a rival network, what would essentially be, free promos for its upcoming coverage?

Paul Farhi: That occurred to me, too. But that's kinda cutting-off-nose-to-spite-face time. Why not milk a marquee event when you have it? As is, the NBA season doesn't start for another two months (and no one cares about the early season, anyway)...

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Columbia, Md,: So what's up with taking Steve Szaben off the morning radio on ESPN 980 and replacing with Mike and Mike? Now we get nothing but Mike and Mike on two separate stations (AM 980 and 92.7)! I liked being able to flip back and forth so if one commentary became too tiring I could listen to the less annoying commentary. But I guess that's where people like me should invest in XM.

Paul Farhi: That's a result of Dan Snyder's outfit, Red Zebra Broadcasting, buying WTEM and adding the ESPN affiliate to the station. Steve Czaben's show is syndicated by Fox Sports, and Fox is syndicator non grata around WTEM nowadays.

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RE: HBO vampire show: I'm so sick of brooding, sexy, misunderstood vampires. I want scary evil vampires!

Paul Farhi: I think you'll have to go back to Bela Lugosi for that. But even then, I bet people found Bela's Drac brooding, sexy and misunderstood, too.

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I Would Like More Cowbell: Har-har. I was driving recently when "Don't Fear the Reaper" by BOC came on the radio -- thank goodness I was at a light, or I might have plowed into somebody due to my laughter --

" I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!"

Paul Farhi: Depending on your perspective, the famed SNL "cowbell" skit has either ruined "DFTR" or elevated it to sublime status. I'll go with the latter. And, having interviewed the Blue Oyster Cult guys a few years ago on this subject, I can say with authority that they were amused by the whole thing, too.

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Olympic Basketball: Paul, how were the ratings of the pre-final games for the U.S. team? With Phelps-mania, gymnastics and "Thunder" Bolt taking up most of the oxygen, I didn't get the impression there was much excitement about the Redeem Team. Maybe that is why NBC didn't get the game time moved up.

Paul Farhi: The ratings for the second week of the Olympics slipped relative to the first. But that always happens. The first week has swimming, diving, beach vball and gymnastics. Particularly gymnastics. Chicks dig gymnastics, and that's why Week One always beat Week Two, which is more of a he-man thing(track, team sports finals, etc.)

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washingtonpost.com: Cowbell-The original Full Skit on SNL

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Arlington, Va.: Hey Paul. I was in hotel room with limited TV channels on Saturday night so I turned on NBC for the Olympics final ceremony. Holy cow, it was awful. Are they always that bad? And I'm really glad to see that Jimmy Page made it through the drug years and all, but he looked kind of silly up there.

Paul Farhi: The Opening and Closing Ceremonies were visually pretty amazing, but absolutely ripe for parody in their extreme over-the-topness. The most unintentionally hilarious thing was to hear the NBC announcers ooohing and aaahing over everything. Apparently, none of them thought 2,008 drummers and guys climbing around on something called a "Memory Tower" was something other than a Cirque du Soleil act on drugs.

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Anonymous: The lyrics from DFTR are so so bad. 40,000 men and women everyday? It doesn't even follow the beat/meter/rhyme scheme. How could something so awful be ruined? Clearly, SNL made it sublime.

Paul Farhi: I with you. Silly song. Great parody.

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Over to You, Chet: Charlie Gibson of ABC News, in starting a blog, worries that "these things can tend to be a little self-serving and self- aggrandizing." Is he talking about blogs? Or network news anchors? Discuss.

Paul Farhi: A two-fer, maybe? And why is this even necessary? Because Charlie Gibson has such deep thoughts to share about the nightly news? Shouldn't he be spending his time actually covering the news (yeah, well, I guess anchors don't really do that). Somehow, I just can't imagine Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow doing this (but maybe Eric Severeid would)...

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Alexandria, Va.: RE: NBC and Olympic Basketball. I would think that China said NO WAY to NBC moving basketball to primetime in the states as Basketball is the #1 sport in China and wanted to showcase its team as well as the sport to their public. Kobe and Yao are pretty much living GODS over there and they didn't want to mess with that.

Paul Farhi: Hard to imagine that. Schedule the game for 10 am China time. The whole country would watch on a Sunday morning. And since that would be 10 pm EST/7 p.m. PDT, the whole country would watch here, too. Everyone--China, the U.S, NBC, the IOC, basketball fans--wins.

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More Cowbell: One of the coolest iPhone applications: A little More Cowbell app that lets you bang along to DFTR or whatever your heart desires. Bruce Dickinson lives!

Paul Farhi: It took 5,000 years of civilization and technological advancement to create this application. And I would say it was worth the wait.

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Alexandria, Va.: Have you caught Burn Notice on USA? We rented disk 1 of the first season to give it a shot and ended up watching the whole season in a weekend. I don't know what it is, but Bruce Campbell has a way of delivering his lines that is funny whether he's carving up zombies or doing some part-time espionage.

Paul Farhi: Looked like a generic spy thing from the promos. But worth a look-see maybe. Thanks for the recommendation.

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Wow, DFTR: Haven't heard it in years, but wasn't it a pro-suicide song? And if so, did it start the whole metalheads-killing-themselves fad?

Paul Farhi: Not aware of this aspect of DFTR lore. But I guess that makes sense. Funny how you (by which I mean "me") never really think to hard about the lyrics to certain songs.

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Potomac, Md.:"Don't Fear the Reaper" is a great song -- don't over-analyze it, for gawd's sake, it's a rock song with a great guitar riff, a great moving rhythm and a cool gothic/horror/death vibe that was part of the Blue Oyster Cult thing. "GodZilla" and "Burnin' For You" were among the group's other hits. "Agents of Fortune" is one of the band's better albums, and it stands the test of time. Kudos to those lucky fans who saw the famed "Black and Blue" tour of the late '70s that featured Black Sabbath and Blue Oyster Cult touring together!

Paul Farhi: BOC was never really goth or dark at all. "Godzilla" is quite a fun song, and "Burnin' for You" could be Hall & Oates.

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Paul Farhi: Interesting. Personally, I would like more cowbell. : I believe you'll want to stay tuned for an unidentified but low-rated AM station that once featured Washington Post staffers (appearing for no additional compensation) flipping to an innovative All-Hugh-Masekela-Playing-'Grazing-in-the-Grass'-All-The-Time format. As a bonus, all vehicle dealer ads will feature cowbells.

Paul Farhi: Haha!...And just for the record: I like the Friends of Distinction's lyrical "Grazin' the Grass" every bit as much as the Hugh Masekela instrumental version. So there.

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Silver Spring. Md.:"Schedule the game for 10 a.m. China time. The whole country would watch on a Sunday morning. And since that would be 10 pm EST/7 p.m. PDT, the whole country would watch here, too. Everyone -- China, the U.S, NBC, the IOC, basketball fans -- wins."

You're forgetting the Euro audience. I'm sure the final game had bigger ratings Sunday morning there than it would have if it was shown primetime on a Saturday night here.

Paul Farhi: NBC doesn't care about the Euro audience. And if I paid $894 million to the IOC to cover the games, I would have the right to order the IOC to change the weather, not just the start time of a basketball game.

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NPR: Paul, I've discovered the only thing that puts my baby to sleep for her afternoon nap -- Kojo Nnamdi! Her pacifier just fell out and she didn't scream, it's amazing. That Kojo lulls her into a deep, deep sleep. What a lifesaver. I wish I'd discovered this earlier. I got to each lunch today!

Paul Farhi: Kojo has an amazing voice. The diction, the lilt. Beautiful and very relaxingggggg...

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Re: Funny how you (by which I mean "me") never really think to hard about the lyrics to certain songs. : I know. Except now that I'm singing along with songs to amuse my daughter, I'm paying attention. We were playing some Pink Floyd the other day, and I decided I couldn't sing "and the worms ate into his brain" for her. She's not talking yet and isn't old enough to understand the words, but still, it feels funny. So I'm discovering that all these songs I like have some creepy and disturbing lyrics when you really pay attention.

Paul Farhi: I've experienced the same thing around my kids. I usually just mumble incoherently when the sex and drug references come up.

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Washington, D.C.: People -- come on. "Don't Fear the Reaper" is literally NOT a "pro-suicide" song. It is about death - -which is a part of life. It is NOT "pro-suicide." Come on. And by the way, "Suicide Solution" by Ozzy Osbourne is NOT a "pro-suicide" song. Neither are any songs by Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Judas Priest, Alice Cooper, WASP, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, The Who, the Stones, Black Oak Arkansas, Skynyrd and about 1,000 other bands who have had this insulting, offensive, ridiculous label thrown at them. They are not "pro-suicide" songs, once and for all! Geez.

Paul Farhi: You would have to think not, if only because encouraging your fans to do that would ultimately be very bad for business.

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Conventions: Why even have them? We already know who the nominee is. And I'm getting tired of hearing about how the Democratic party is all unified now, and how great it was for the party and for the country that Hillary dragged it out for so long. They won't solve any issues by pretending they don't exist. It's just as bad as listening to the Republicans say how much safer we are now because we invaded Iraq. You can tell me that all you want, but I will believe what I see.

Paul Farhi: Well, let's take the on-the-other-hand approach. There are some folks who don't pay much attention to politics until the conventions come around. So they're getting the message for the first time. And the message itself is interesting. It's worth knowing what the Dems/Repubs are officially trying to sell you, even if you ain't buying.

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Lovable Loser image: Hmmm, it's worked for the Chicago Cubs for nearly a century.

Paul Farhi: Exactly. Though outside of the early N.Y. Mets, I can't think of a SECOND L.L. team.

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Washington, D.C.: If you're looking for fun TV, Psych on USA is pretty good. It's totally light fare, but the writers and actors know it and have fun with it. It's in its third season now.

Paul Farhi: Yep. Psych is part of USA's renaissance. It has gone from being the absolute worst (and often most popular) cable network to actually being pretty good at times (and still popular).

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In Europe thirty years ago the radio stations' name (not numbers) were exhibited on the digital display: Oooh, this brings back childhood memories in the San Francisco Bay Area, of my parents' 1930s era Gilfillan brand AM radio in a wood case, with a dial (literally) and a knob to turn the needle to the desired station name (all the local station call letters were printed on the dial-face). By the 1950s San Francisco's NBC affiliate KPO had become KNBC (later KNBR), which was confusing for small child just learning to read.

Paul Farhi: Love those old radios! Works of art, some of them were. TVs, too. A few years ago, I stumbled across the web site of a guy who restored old TV consoles, turning them into old TV consoles with new TVs in 'em. I was tempted to give up a year of college payments for my kids for one of these gorgeous creations.

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One thing I've never understood about advertising....: is why do I care if some star promotes a particular product? I couldn't care less if Britney Spears drinks Pepsi. All I think when I see those types of ads is that the star is making a lot of money to pretend they like it.

Paul Farhi: It's the oldest advertising technique ever. It's called "borrowed interest." You hire a celebrity who embodies certain qualities (beauty, sexiness, the ability to dunk a basketball with one step from half court) and those qualities will rub off on your product. So: Britney = young, dynamic, famous, blond, crazy. Except for the crazy part, Pepsi is buying those associations.

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Silver Spring, Md.:"NBC doesn't care about the Euro audience. And if I paid $894 million to the IOC to cover the games, I would have the right to order the IOC to change the weather, not just the start time of a basketball game."

Get out of your vacuum. The IOC cares about the Euro audience. (Rogge you might have noticed is not American.) Other nations pay for the rights to air the games too, not just NBC, and most of that non-NBC revenue (of roughly $870 million) is from Europe. The IOC did not change the timing of the opening and closing ceremony either!

Paul Farhi: NBC supplied 60 percent of the IOC's TV income for Beijing. It recently paid $2.3 billion for the rights to Vancouver in 2010 and London in 2012. America is by far the most important market for all the "worldwide" sponsors of the Olympics. I think Jacques Rogge will take NBC's phone call on this one.

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What I hate about the Olympics: I can never figure out when the stuff I want to watch is going to be on. NBC gave me a 4-hour window listing general categories of sports. I had to watch for a while every day to figure out that the swimming I wanted to watch was on at 10:00 p.m. And some sports they don't even show. I wanted to watch shotput because I work with the father of one of the U.S. team members. They can show hours and hours of beach volleyball, and hours and hours of semi finals, why not finals of all events?

Paul Farhi: As a track geek, I'm totally with you. But since there are about 75,000 of us worldwide, our opinion probably doesn't carry a whole lot of weight. NBC would say that everything--finals, prelims, probably warmups--were carried online.

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Smoking in Silver Spring, Md.: On the flip side of mass popularity, Mad Men is being touted as a very popular show when less than 2 million people out of the 53 million homes with premium cable (more homes if AMC is considered basic cable) watched the premiere. I thought the first couple of episodes of Mad Men were pretty good but tired quickly of the wink, wink when depictions of some out of date behavior was portrayed. If you count the number of people who own televisions in the U.S., no one's watching Mad Men. Breaking Bad is a far better show. I hope it gets the same illusion of success that Mad Men is being given.

Paul Farhi: Not sure it's ever been touted as a "popular" show because the ratings stink and have actually gotten stinkier. But has been touted as "one of the best shows on television," which to my eyeballs it is. AMC--which got "Mad Men" when other networks unwisely took a pass on it--can't be faulted for bragging about its critical notices.

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Alexandria, Va.: My thoughts on your Nats radio article: (1) The Nationals' ratings have to be hurt by being on such awful stations as WTWP and WWWT -- no one even knows/knew these stations exist. (2) Any chance the Nats will pull a "Danny" and just by a station to feature their games and baseball programming? They must be hampered that no one on local sports talk radio discusses the Nationals or baseball in general. (3) A question: You say the cumulative audience is 26K per week, or about 4K per game. Does that mean listening to the full game, or to just a portion of it?

Paul Farhi:1) Hard to believe baseball fans can't find the games on 1500 AM or 107.7 FM. If they can't, they're not baseball fans. 2) Buying a station, a la Dan Snyder, would be a disaster for the Nationals. Better they should save their money for a power hitter; 3) Glad you asked about this. The 26,500 figure is the "cume," essentially the total number of "unique listeners" over the course of a week (or in this case, five days). It doesn't mean there are 4,000 people listening per game, though that's probably not far off. It means that if you listen to one game a week, you're counted once, even if you listen several more times during the rest of the week. In any case, a cume of 26,500 is, statistically speaking, godawful.

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The most watched news or the #1 movie in the world: Y'all are overthinking this. They're just trying to imply it's evidence that their product is the best in its field.

Paul Farhi: Yes. If popular acceptance means "best," I guess.

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Alexandria, Va.: As a Pirates fan, I'm sick of all the whining from thin-skinned Nats fans. Boo-hoo, a new team is having a bad year -- big shocker. You folks have nothing to complain about yet -- the last time the Bucs had a winning season, DVDs and the Colorado Rockies hadn't been invented yet.

Paul Farhi: Ah, the Pirates. They're losers, but they haven't really been very loveable over the years, have they? (Btw, PNC Park may be the nicest stadium in all of baseball).

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Alexandria, Va.: Any idea when Sirius/XM will be rolling out their new pricing/a la carte menus?

Paul Farhi: No specific word, but they've said all along that it would take a few months, after the merger was approved.

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Paul Farhi: Folks, thanks for all the comments and questions. We went long on penalty time this time out, and so I'd better scoot now. But not too worry: We're at it again in two weeks. Please tune in. In the meantime, regards to all!...Paul.

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