FM

This is one of my favorite "Radio" themed films, mainly because I work in radio. The characters in this movie remind me of many of my fellow co-works, on many levels.

The film's plot centers on Station Manager and Morning Man Jeff Dugan. Dugan has the right idea, in keeping the station "Q-Sky" as uncommercial as possible. He LOVES playing GOOD music and so dislikes the idea of selling too much airtime to advertisers. Especially when it is the Army that wants to buy airtime, with high spot rotation in prime time hours.

That doesn't sit well with Dugan, and he tries his best to avoid "cashing in" on the deal. Wow, imagine that, a Station Manager who refuses good money! Dugan even attempts to ignore his corporate boss' desire to accept this package. Dugan finally gets so tired of saying "no, no, no!" to the Army and his boss, that he quits.

The rest of the on-air and support staff like Dugan a lot, and they dislike the fact that he quit. So they plot revenge against the same people Dugan was fighting with. Their idea of revenge is to go on strike, on the air. They dump all the commercials and go wall-to-wall music.

If you tried something like this in corporate radio today, kiss your job goodbye. So many radio stations today have taken the approach that Dugan so willingly and unselfishly fought against.

So if you like films about radio, or if you want to get a glimpse of how radio really "should be" today, you might find this film worth watching. This movie includes a good musical soundtrack, with bits of songs that were big in the 70's

As someone who works in "the business", I did notice that FM has its share of inaccuracies and things that don't quite work...big whoop...do not let those deter you from enjoying a movie that has been underrated and under-appreciated...with a cast that works well together and a killer soundtrack, FM tracks the musings of a station in LA that takes its music and its audience seriously...without commercial interruption...Michael Brandon is superb as the hero, Jeff Dugan... Martin Mull is great as an over-the-top DJ, Eric Swan...Eileen Brennan as Mother, the late Cleavon Little as the Prince of Darkness, and Cassie Yates as Laura Coe make up an air staff that I would love to work with...the bad guys are Albert Driscoll, a company exec who doesn't understand anything beyond the bottom line, Regis Lamar, a "flunky" salesman who is doing what he's being told- even though he tries to understand what the radio people are doing, and Michael J Carlyle, a greasy radio exec not unlike a few in radio...and all through the movie, the fact that it is fun to work in radio is very evident...one note...Alex Karras as the Cowboy is a little bit of miscasting...not sure why he was put in there other than his character was in the book...but overall the quality and flow is excellent...and, as its catchphrase goes, "no static at all"...for those of you who are historians of radio, you will love the dual mikes they use at QSKY...brings back the memories...you're probably going to have to find the movie online somewhere, since it's unusual to locate it in a rental store, but it is a nice addition to a library...and try to find a brand new copy...WITH the poster!

This movie was very popular in 1978, largely on the strength of it's soundtrack. FM radio itself was just busting out in many smaller towns and the idea of this whole new spectrum of radio sound was a very new thing. This movie is the story of one LA FM station, they play cool music, promote cool concerts and take over the station when things go wrong for them. The story is largely forgettable, but in all actuality, it was all a promotion for the double-LP soundtrack ( now to be found in almost any thrift shop in the US ). Steely Dan make a good showing as does Linda Ronstadt. Jimmy Buffett does well also, this was just before he started becoming just a parody of himself as he began catering more to an audience of drunken yuppie "parrotheads". It's hard to want to recommend this movie, if you are interested in the time and the music back then, definately go see this. If you are a fan of "WKRP in Cincinatti", and heard that that TV show was based on this one, don't go in expecting a movie version of WKRP.

FM is kind of silly and broad... the characters are two-dimensional weirdos out of a TV sitcom, and the plot feels paint-by-numbers. Despite this, the movie is quite charming and for me, poignant, because it manages to capture something about the now-departed era when rock music and FM radio were a cultural force to be reckoned with. In a time when music listeners are far more likely to be isolated in their iPod headphones, it's somewhat painful to realize what has been lost in music in terms of the communal listening experience that a locally-run, idiosyncratic radio station provided. When the plot briefly passes through the Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard --- now as lost to the ages as the library at Alexandria --- you are confronted with the fact that the entire culture of rock n' roll that many of us grew up with at the center of our lives -- radio, record stores, and arena concerts -- is essentially a thing of the past. Even though this isn't a great movie, it does a great job of taking you back in time to that era.

The soundtrack is pretty middle of the road, but it's good to hear songs that the years have ground into mush briefly re-contextualized into their natural habitat. I can't think of a better way to hear a lot of late 70's radio fodder ("Baby Come Back"; Billy Joel) than within the confines of this movie.

It may not be a cinematic masterpiece, but the 1978 movie FM has something going for it as, admittedly in its dated late 1970s way, it somehow foresaw the corporate turn that the radio media would take in years to come. And it does so with a wall-to-wall soundtrack of late 70s Top 40 memories that now fall under the rubric of Classic Rock. In essence, this is the classic rock response to the disco onslaught of Saturday NIGHT FEVER.

Michael Brandon is Jeff Dugan, the program director at QSKY radio in Los Angeles who oversees an on-air staff of wild and crazy disc jockeys (Alex Karras; Cleavon Little; Eileen Brennan; Cassie Yates; Martin Mull) that, through playing what the L.A. populace wants to hear and with limited commercial interruptions, has made the radio station Number One in the second largest media market in the nation. Things seem to be looking up, until "the boys upstairs" decide how much better things could be if more commercials were aired between blasts of Steely Dan, Queen, and Boston. Naturally, this doesn't sit well with Dugan and his merry band, but the top brass envision QSKY just becoming one big infomercial. This, however, leads to an insane backlash from the QSKY staff and, eventually, a takeover of the station that nearly results in rioting on the streets.

This is definitely pretty thin stuff for a film that was allegedly the inspiration for CBS-TV's fine sitcom "WKRP In Cincinnati" (though the pilot of that series was being filmed at the same time FM was being filmed, so the resemblance is only coincidental). But while this film is no NETWORK, in terms of films that attack the decay of the media, FM still works in getting its situations across. Maybe the idea that a radio station's staff would rail against corporate interference sounds a bit daft, but the notion that a big conglomerate (Clear Channel, for example) would turn a radio station into one big box in which the music is only the filler between attempts to part listeners from their hard-earned money isn't so easy to laugh at anymore.

FM has a lot going for it. For one, it was the only feature film directed by John A. Alonzo, one of Hollywood's premiere cinematographers; his credits include CHINATOWN, BLACK Sunday, SCARFACE, and parts of Steven Spielberg's CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. And for another, that wall-to-wall soundtrack of what we now call classic rock is enhanced by actual concert footage of Jimmy Buffett and Linda Ronstadt. Buffett's performance of "Livingston Saturday Night" reminds one of what he was decades before his Margaritaville was hijacked by Nashville pretenders like Kenny Chesney and Toby Keith. And Linda, normally a very stage-shy performer, asserts herself boldly on searing renditions of "Tumbling Dice" and "Poor, Poor, Pitiful Me", then pays a heartfelt tribute to Elvis by doing the King's 1956 classic "Love Me Tender."

I can't help but give FM a rating of "7" because it reminds one of what the radio was like before corporate interference and MTV began to slowly corrupt and destroy it, and because it is an interesting time capsule of life in Los Angeles at the end of the 1970s.