So far as I can tell, Jesus didn't do anything but get a cult named after him. But, that's a rant for another time... and, no doubt, another place. Woo-Hoo!
As to Radio: Sure, some people still enjoy it and some even can make a living out of it. Not my concern.
For what it's worth, I absolutely loved my decades in Radio - made a hell of a buck in it, too and I cherish the experiences and friends that also came along.
My eyes are set on the potential of the medium!
Further, there is nothing "anonymous" about my postings as I have identified myself a number of times.
Nor do I long for Radio to be "like it used to be". Actually, I do, but only in the part that sustained "live" personalities.
My rants have an Outcome in mind: making Radio a profession... that attracts professionals. That is, people with actual skills and attributes.
I have little time for "posers".
Why, I'd crap myself silly if I ever heard a couple of cogent sentences being uttered with some alacrity - back-to-back on the radio - that contained a couple of adjectives, adverbs or tense-changes.
Imagine, for a moment, a jock who came into some 'disposable' income and decided he would use said income on say, neuro linguistic programming. Let's assume for the sake of this excercise, he went quite a distance with it. Then, got an opportunity to deliver his new talents on air. He gets A GOOD BOOK (Singular). Only to have his boss inquire how a talent did so well after such a short time. After refusing to bow to such an indignant power, the student is abruptly dismissed from position and begins his tirade and belittling of the very industry he claims he has a passion for. Most of the time, corporate radio and jocks who don't overthink 'WHY' they're on between songs, if they're on a music intensive station. (Different for talk radio, obviously). Anyone who knows Pave realizes he had, or, still has access to some excellent tools the average radio personality will NEVER be able to afford because of the simple fact, the big dollars and thus, disposable incomes, have gone the way of the dinosaur. As for endlessly perusing the internet for free Neuro linguistic training? Try finding the time to study effectively while telling your boss you can't 'volunteer' your only available time because you're trying to be the best communicator the station has. Guess where you'll end up? Dismissed as well. Oh, and it's highly unlikely the average listener of terrestrial radio has even the slightest understanding of this Pave guy's learnings. Basically, the average listener will choose something pleasing to his/her life, personality, character, etc and they will never be thinking about which adjective the jock used or the John Deere :30 second advertisement touched on. The only true way to 'grab' someone's attention these days is to give 'em something that is truly shocking. That word again, is, shocking. Not romantic. Not Sad. And definately not another friggin' sales pitch done on the radio after they had to go home and hang up on ten different telemarketers (which is exactly what a radio ad has become, in a brilliant disguise). The listener will choose a talk radio station if they want to hear.....ready for it?.....TALK. If a listener wants to hear rock, they will turn to.....ready for it?.....a rock station. This is unbelievably obvious in a market where all these genres are accessible. Please get off your pedestals. This is radio. The average listener has no idea of the sinister workings behind that radio dial. Talk radio is TALK RADIO. A Rock station is a ROCK STATION. And a country fan will FIND A COUNTRY STATION and no doubt will turn it off if a big headed jock tries to push his/her ego on their already busy life. I wonder if Pave is on Psychology Boards, too. I would take a look, but I have to flip fries at Mcdonald's because my boss told me to volunteer on McHappy Day. Ringing Salvation Army Kettles, Spaying my neighbor's cat, and working on the MS Walk wasn't good enough for her.
Audiences don't "think". They respond. This, btw, is the reason Radio and Television commercials work at all.
As to "ONE GOOD BOOK (singular)": Let's not forget the dozens of books previous and what followed. In fairness, though, it was that experience that reinforced for me where Radio was going and how there was no place in it for the likes of me. (I'm fairly tall and bending over that often would have been quite painful.)
As to NLP. That came much later. I wasn't certified to do training or work with people until 1994.
What I was studying during my broadcast years was Transformational Grammar and The Milton-Model of linguistics. That was the extra skill-set that brought those multiple, great books and that process started in 1980.
Meanwhile, if one were to accept the "way it is" as proposed by NoMonotony, one might as well close up shop and just... go with the flow. And please appreciate: this is not a knock against NoMonotony as he/she has, indeed, aptly described the status-quo.
Nevertheless, "shock" is only one possible element; is not used by any adult-oriented station anywhere; wears thin after awhile; is a dangerous gamble in these more recent PC times; has limited appeal for almost all but can be profitable for one and is a last attempt at an audience-grab by the truley desperate.
What an amazing business this is! So much passion, feeling and deep down love for that unique opportunity to reach out and touch someone out there...and no other medium can quite do it.
I had my moments...and even though they're now many years old, I remember them with a fondness I fear too many people in the business now don't get a chance to experience. One human, privileged to control a channel in the spectrum, in touch with another, playing all of the elements through the board like a musical instrument...a score intended to entertain, inform, enrage, engage and create a relationship that is unmatched by any other medium.
Damned hard to distill something like that into a science or a formula...and a waste of energy and opportunity to try in my opinion. So, Pave, Flamethower, Ronrob, Scotty, and others, keep those posts coming. You are all pretty damned smart, but I don't like your changes of figuring everything out...and, strange as it seems your sage attempts to try and the inability to nail it are precisely one of the three things I continue to love about the business.
The third thing is that relationship with the person on the other end of the wave...one that I know I was so incredibly lucky to have.
We and radio will survive the corporations and the beancounters.
Call out the corporations all you want, of course they're in it to make a buck. But really, how is that different from the indies of a generation ago? Because last I checked, no one who has sold out in the last few years split their sale proceeds with the staff who helped them build it.
This was an interesting comment and really made me wonder why I feel the way I do about yesterday vs. today when you make this accurate observation that the business of radio has always been .... a business!!
As I thought about it, I think it was the loss of participation and involvement that, for me, made today's corporations more evil than those of yesterday! Yesterday, we didn't have as much influence from the "chain" suits laying out the ludicrous guidelines of what bland, sterile entertainment should be. A program director got the exercise the director in his (rarely her) title ... by giving the team some guidelines but also some freedom to move a little bit. We felt like we were contributing to a cool operation that literally made an impact on each community. No one freaked (or spent that much time worrying) about the "bottom line" because we had enough other stuff on our plate to keep us pleasantly distracted!
But take away our chance to be creative ... to (pardon the over-dramatization) push our "art" in between (and on top of!) records; and MAKE us focus on the bottom line (if through no other means than to keep cutting expenses) and suddenly the "business" is all that's left! And along the way, the audience lost the "art" and the "connection" that made it all work so well in the first place. And it seems to be we lost all that because the people who jumped in these intervening years to make the rules and run the asylum are scared to death to actually LET the creative types have any part of that.
It might, after all, screw up the whole thing for everyone!
Guess that's why I think folks like pave and myself (at the risk of putting the wrong words in his mouth on his behalf) maybe recognize the business is still there; but in a very self-destructive way from an era when things were fun AND kept the owners and audiences happy all at the same time....
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