Tag Archives: Radio

Steve Safran on RTDNA@NAB 2010

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“The future of broadcasting” is the title or subtitle or subtext of nearly every panel here. But I’m not seeing a lot of the future. I’m seeing and hearing people who want to keep a hold onto the past. They want to do it in some futuristic ways, sure, but using a template that has passed its expiration date.”

“…as the RTDNA winds down its relationship with NAB, I’m a little sad. When I first started coming to this convention in the early 2000s, the discussions were about “the future.” The discussions are still about “the future” except it’s all Back to the Future. 3D. Protecting journalism from the hoards of camera-toting iPhoners. Broadcasting television in a slightly different way. Fundamentally, the discussion may be about the future, but it’s not nearly futuristic enough.” — Full post here.

How Adam Carolla Became a Podcast Superstar

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This article at Fast Company is more about Adam Corolla and podcasting than radio but this bit sort of jumps out at you:

“Radio has a lot of rules that are set up to protect the foibles and weaknesses of the host.” He names names: “Mark and Brian, Opie and Anthony are, like all radio guys, comedically second tier. I’m not putting these guys down; I’m in that group.” But you’re not going to find a Jon Stewart, a Stephen Colbert, or even a Jimmy Kimmel telling anybody the time during your morning commute. The rules enforce a sameness that eliminates any chance of something original happening. “Radio’s about guys with subpar intellects killing four goddamn hours…

As a former radio guy, I also enjoyed this:

“I’d rather have 10 smart people than a billion retards listening to me.”

I thought we couldn’t say retard.

I enjoyed Carolla when he and Jimmy Kimmel hosted The Man Show. (I think that was what it was called) I’ll sample his podcast and report back.

What does “Being Local” mean, anyway?

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“I think the term “local” dates to a time when communities could only be served by media which originated within them – the local newspaper, TV, or radio. Today, communities continue to have local pride, interest, and concern, but their means of expressing and sharing in those things are no longer limited to the media which so happen to be around the corner.”

“There is no longer any such thing as “local” as we traditionally use the term. The definition of “local” is both expanding (interests are broader than geographies) and shrinking (I am the ultimate “local”) at the same time.”

“If the Internet makes the world “local,” then what’s is your (radio) advantage?”

— Mark Ramsey at Hear 2.0

The Tower of Power

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This week I ran into a long-time broadcaster I called on back in my affiliate relations days. We chatted for a few minutes and the subject of towers came up (I have no idea). He mentioned that he had tried to sell his AM tower but got no takers. Then he tried to give it away. Nope. Now he’s paying someone to take it down and haul it off. As far as I know, that is nothing unusual. But it struck me as somehow… foreboding?

A radio station tower is …iconic. Usually the tallest structure in small towns throughout America. You didn’t need much of a studio but you had to have that transmitter and a tower. The bigger the better.

Every radio guy I know has at least one tower story.

Like the DJ who pulled his UHaul truck into the parking lot of the station where he was to start working the next day. In the downpour, he didn’t realize he’d snagged the truck’s trailer hitch on a guy wire and pulled the tower down. And he didn’t get fired.

Or a story about the insane guys who did tower maintenance, climbing four or five-hundred feet to paint or change a bulb.

[Momentary aside: If someone drops a wrench from 400 feet above you, is it better to remain still or to run? Discuss]

What once took studios filled with control boards and tape decks and cart machines… can now be done with a couple of laptops.

The equation once was:

Good programming (content) + big transmitter + big tower + good frequency = big audience

Now it’s:

Good programming (content) + big transmitter + big tower + good frequency = big audience

I’m sorry I never interviewed one of those tower guys.

Mel Karmazin interview: “Fucking with the magic”

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Mel Karmazin is the CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio. Before that he was head of CBS Radio. For most of his career he has been known as a “Wall Street darling” for his ability to drive up the price of his various companies’ stock. Don Imus frequently referred to him as the Zen Master. Let’s just say he knows a lot about radio and advertising. I was struck by his description of advertising and frank assessment that Google was “fucking with the magic.”

“I loved the model that I had then. At that point I had… I was the CEO of  CBS and I had a model where you buy a commercial… if you’re an advertiser you buy a commercial in the Super Bowl and, at that time, you paid two-and-a-half million dollars for a spot and had no idea if it worked. I mean, you had no idea if it sold product… did any good… I loved that model! That was a great model! And why …if I can get away with that model… if I’m in the business where I can sell advertising that way, why wouldn’t I want to do it?

No return on investment. And you know how everybody looks for return on investment? We had a a business model that didn’t worry about return on investment and then here comes Google. They screwed it up. They went to all these advertisers and said, we’ll let you know exactly what it is.”

Oooh. Reminds me of the old saw, “I know that only half of my advertising works, I just don’t know which half.” The full interview is worth a watch and confirmed my feeling that a real sea change (in advertising) is taking place.

“Radio Days: the celluloid afterlife of real radio”

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“In the movies, radio is a mythic force: local, rebellious, life-changing. This hardly describes the reality at commercial radio stations today, but it does tell us something about how radio was—and about how we want it to be.

The Clear Channel consolidations of the 1990s and the streaming revolutions of the last decade have given us change and innovation, but they haven’t forged the kind of cultural radio that thrilled and united 20th-century audiences. Sure, we’ve got talkers who excel at dividing us. And we’ve got little machines that let us become our own DJs. But we haven’t replicated the “real people” kind of radio that speaks and sings to us better than we can speak and sing to ourselves. Our new broadband-powered landscape hasn’t empowered that level of talent—yet. But don’t worry. It will. Until then, see you at the movies.

I stumbled across this piece by Matthew Lasar on ars technica. It brought back many fond memories from my days at KBOA (’70s). We said pretty much anything within reason and the same went for the music we played (on turn-tables). And I loved movies about DJ’s and radio stations. I’ll be forever grateful I didn’t miss “real radio.”

“Taking a break from the news”

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The following anecdote won’t mean much to anyone who has never worked at a small town radio station covering local news stories. And I don’t share this to embarrass or disparage anyone still doing so. It’s just a sign of the times.

One of our network reporters called an affiliate in a small town, asking for a feed of a story about a bank robbery and the capture (and tasing) of the stickup guy. Our reporter was informed the station news person was on vacation and since they couldn’t find anyone to do the news in his absence, “they’re taking a break from the news this week.” Our reporter’s reaction?

“The bridge is too far away for me to walk to it and jump.  Our bluffs are not high enough to guarantee a fatal descent if I were hurl myself off one of them and I do not want to spend years as a paraplegic watching for more of these signs.   My Norelco razor will not cut through any arteries and the only scissors I am allowed to have are the school scissors my children left behind when they grew up.

My only recourse is to continue working in this industry until it reduces me to complete incoherence, upon which time I can be placed in a padded room where I shall be safe from the apocalypse.”

Philosopher and poet-journo Bob Priddy:

“Radio began to lose its soul when stations became “properties,” when communities became “markets,” and when staff became “human resources.”