Hit Bound! The Simulation Game

I just ran across some debris from a game I developed back in the early 1980s, a simulation experience I called “Hit Bound!” I’m afraid that the details that would make this a fascinating read are lost, so all we are left with is enough generality to make this merely an interesting read. (And even that is doubtful, but here I am, and for a moment at least, there you are.)

When “Celebration Rock” was in its prime, and I was invited to speak about the values in rock music at church venues from Norfolk to Kansas City, simulation games were still teaching life lessons through fun experiences. As I played the hits for those youth groups and conferences and added my commentary on the often overlooked “meaning” of the songs, I realized that my live audiences had no concept of how the music they listened to on radio or bought in the record stores had become legitimate hits. (I use that word “legitimate” advisedly; the scandal of illegitimate hits has been well-documented since the 1950s.)

If the kids in these groups listened to “Top 40” radio, they had probably seen the charts of best-sellers printed by the local stations listing the songs in the order of popularity, with usually minor changes from week-to-week. Each week’s chart would show that three or four records had dropped off the list to be replaced by new songs just entering the sacred forty. At the bottom of the chart, there would be another three or four songs that showed promise, and the stations would add those to their “rotation” eventually if national and local sales and phone requests merited more airplay.

Many of those songs would become million sellers, moving up the charts quickly. Some would drop off without any mention, lost forever. What the listeners didn’t know was that hundreds of records released each month would never make it onto any chart, much less be played on the air even once.

With a modestly syndicated rock show, I was on the mailing list of several labels, and received other 45s from a couple of local radio stations. I read Billboard, paid attention to the play lists of the local stations I was on, and had a good idea of what hits were on the horizon, and which were fading fast. So, to make my presentations at those churches, camps, and conference centers more participatory (= fun and competitive), I developed a game that took about 90 minutes to play.

The goal: to listen to newly-released 45 rpm records, choose the potential hits, and “sell” them as hits to “radio stations” to get airplay.  The week prior to the game, I would collect from a local station several new records. Station personnel would identify probable hits and several records we knew would “stiff” (or never sell). Then, for the game, we broke into three groups: the “A&R” people (artists and repertoire), the record promoters, and the radio music directors.

“Hit Bound” began with small groups listening to each unfamiliar record and selecting the one from their stack that they “liked” best and thought might become a hit. Gut feelings, yes, but in some instances kids had already heard the song on the radio. We had also covered how A&R worked, as well as what might contribute to one song rising above others: previous hits by the same artist, a sound, a hook, connection with a hit movie or dance style, etc. The kids assigned points, decided on their picks, and moved on to convince the promoters to “sell” their record to the radio music directors.

As part of the promotion segment, the kids had to devise a campaign that included artwork for an album cover or advertisement. We might have five records (out of the 25-30)  that made it this far. Then presentations were made and the radio music directors would assign points again, rank the songs, and by the time the game ended, one particular record would be proclaimed “Hit Bound!” Naturally, the game continued over the new few weeks at home as kids listened to see if the song the game had picked actually hit the charts and rose into the Top 10.

I think the participants learned each time how the “business” of rock music worked, and how the songs they heard over and over had become hits. They also learned that there were countless and nameless musicians whose dreams of stardom would never be realised. Radio stations were tossing hundreds of “demonstration”  records into dumpsters every week.

I wish I had written down somewhere the “winners” of this now antiquated game. I do know that some of the songs chosen by the teenagers did become hits, and that a few, though winning lots of points in the game, wound up as stiffs. Of course, the whole process is different now. I put the game together in the age of 45 rpm vinyls and audio cassette tapes. Even radio is radically different now. And there’s the Internet.

But the whole thing was fun while it lasted! And, of course, I got to promote “Celebration Rock.”

 

A Smiling Remembrance of a Big Fat Waste of Time

I listened this morning to a radio station that struggled to find its way into my bathroom. Ordinarily by 8 a.m., the AM station had moved to “full power” (5000 watts) after its sunset to sunrise slumber at —  what?  — 500 watts? Or, maybe 1000. Either the computer had failed to prompt the transmitter, or an actual human being was asleep at the board. The signal should have been clear as an AM bell gets, but it was still crowded out by the signals of stations much further away.

For some reason that was all it took to return me to the days when many radio stations signed off the air every night, to return the following morning with a formal FCC-mandated sign-on (call letters, frequency, power, and ownership, broadcast hours, among other variables), along with (probably) the playing of the same National Anthem with which the station had left the air the night before.

Then came the almost obligatory, or at least very traditional, morning meditation. As a good-will gesture toward the clergy of the neighborhood, be it grand metropolis or rural countryside, the station invited the ministerial association to rotate the privilege of being the first real content of the broadcast day: what might best be characterized as a “sermonette.”

Many ministers and priests (but rarely a rabbi and never an imam) would announce to their congregations that they would be on the radio for a week of five-minute meditations. I’m sure some clergy were more thrilled than others at the bit of extra workload these little meditations would require. Some might be very creative, but many would snip short pieces from old sermons to fill the time. The intro would go something like this: And now W – – – (fill in your local call letters) presents “A Thought for the Day” in cooperation with our County Council of Churches.This week’s minister is Rev. Homer R. Bushberry of the Cobble Hill Methodist Church.”

“Good Morning, radio friends. Yesterday I told you the story of Jesus and the woman at the well. Today I’d like to follow up with some insights into what Jesus meant by ‘living water.'” [In other words, the second point of the previous Sunday’s four point sermon, recycled now as a “sermonette.”]

Here’s why that daily exercise was a big fat waste of time. Because no one was listening to the station at the moment it signed on. They couldn’t have found it on the dial at sign on, because it wasn’t there until sign on! How does one’s congregation find a station that is not on the air? Let’s say the sign-on time is 6:15 a.m. Your parishioners’ alarm clocks all go off at 6:14, since they are so very excited to hear their preacher on the radio! “Maude, turn on the radio.”

“Claude, what station is he on?”

“It’s the one at 1540.”

“Well, I’m tuning back and forth and there’s nothing there.”

“Maude, just leave it on for a couple of minutes, and then we’ll try again.”

“Claude, it’s nothing but static!”

A few minutes later, Maude tunes around the upper part of the dial and there’s the voice of her pastor…inviting would-be, hoped-for listeners to tune in once again tomorrow.

“Maude, I think we just missed it.”

I was asked a couple of times to record “meditations” for sign-on. But I knew better. “I’d rather have something on one side or the other of Paul Harvey,” I’d tell the station program director. Then we’d both have a good laugh.