More than half of my 40 working years were spent in and around small/medium market radio. It is with some confidence I say titles were important. Program Director, News Director, Music Director, even PSA (Public Service Announcement) Director! As with a lot of businesses, titles were often handed out instead of compensation.

We had other duties, of course. In addition to choosing which songs the station played, the Music Director also pulled an air shift and probably recorded commercials. Might even have written some. But these somewhat arbitrary divisions of responsibilities — and the titles that came with them — were important.

In the early 1980’s, the station I was working at was sold to a man named Jerrell A. Shepherd, a very successful operator of a group of small market stations in Missouri. Shepherd didn’t run his stations the way most small market stations did, in ways too numerous to mention here. But he did have a different approach to titles.

As the story goes, when Shepherd bought a station he would call the employees into his office, one at a time, and say something along the lines of:

“I’m afraid we are eliminating the position of News Director (or whatever your title happened to be).”

What?! How can he eliminate the position of News Director?! Shepherd would give this a minute or two to sink in before explaining, “I do have another position available if you’re interested.” You’re thinking: New baby on the way, car payments, buying a house…

“Uh, yeah, I’m interested. What is the job?”

“On the programming side of our stations there is only one position and that is Programmer. Would you like to hear about it?”

“Yes I would.”

“A Programmer does anything and everything necessary to put programming on the station. He (very few women in those days) pulls an air-shift, writes and records commercials, covers news stories, reports farm markets, does sponsored remote broadcasts from our advertisers locations, records the 8th Grade Spring Concert from one of the small towns in our listening area (assuming it has been sold).”

No more fiefdoms. No more specialists. No more “directors.” From a management standpoint you can see how much flexibility this added. All by the simple device of eliminating titles. Some people chose not to make this transition and moved on. Mr. Shepherd was fine with that.

This story came back to me as I listened to people talking about reorganizing police departments. Fire everyone and only hire back the “good” ones. Stop using cops for traffic law enforcement. And so forth.

I don’t know the answer but if Mr. Shepherd were still alive, I’ll bet he’d have some ideas.