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The saying goes "if it ain't
one thing it's another". My life pretty
much follows that pattern. I am sure that sometimes you must feel
that way too.
You know when you love
something so much but it begins
to smother and consume you? That is what was happening at XM. It's
like that addiction you can't shake. Four other PD's left within a
month of my departure.
Most of them took other good
terrestrial jobs.
Me, I just made the decision
to pay a little more attention to my family
and my other life outside radio. The hours and pressure is totaling.
The exhilaration of creating the new frontier medium is equalized by
the work load and deficient staff. Yet even now, with nothing but
free time, it is still hard for me to relax. I get up (albeit, more
rested) feeling anxious to head into work and confront the mounds of
stuff before me that day and dive in. There doesn't seem to be any in
between. I admit that I am a hopeless romantic radio revolutionary.
XM is the liberation that frees the mind and spirit of radio addicts
and it's mission is the same for audiences. Go where no radio has
gone before. Do it all. Do it better. Do it right. JUST DO IT. Be
original.
Be real. Stop the hype. Blow
off the commercials. Inform, educate.
Connect fans to the artists. Deliver it live as much as you can. It
is as radio utopia as will ever be - both internally and on the air.
I feel privileged and honored to have been among the first twelve on
a the start up team of programmers we called "the Dirty Dozen".
During the first year at XM, there were no studios, no satellites, no
music, no system, no formats no subscribers and one by one, those who
had a vision, built it all from scratch. How many of us will ever
have the opportunity to participate in such an exciting project of
these proportions?
Now, I spend most of my days with my dogs who are fascinated by
everything I say and love all my ideas as long as they are encouraged
by milk bones. Unwinding is difficult after something as intense and
challenging as XM. These days, I cruise with no flight plan just for
an excuse to turn on the radio with the top down. I am happy to be
back in Tampa but it is painful to listen to local radio.
Radio is mediocre here as it is most places in America right now..
There is little passion in the voices I hear.. Very few people sound
like they are genuinely having fun. It is hard to know whether anyone
is live. Spoken content is all so generic that most everything could
be voice tracked in advance.
Each element is predictable.
Too many
commercials are justflow-disruptive noise and barking. More than
half the morning shows are syndicated. Tampa sounds like a big
Valdosta Georgia. A non-radio friend told me. Radio stations sound
like they are entertaining themselves "like they could care less
about what people really want to hear? When I listen, the first
thing that comes to mind besides "same old imaging ... same old
rotation, over researched, under-performed, is that there is a
corporate-wide attitude to "Just put it on and get the time sold."
In Tampa, frequencies trade and shift, call letters move and change.
Only the owners and operators know what they are listening to and
salespeople must all be on steady regimens of Prozac trying to sell
something different with their familiar but new face .. I wonder how
difficult it is to exude fresh confidence in an unproven product to
the same clients every three months? In many cases, the research to
make the shift from one format to another and the music to enforce
the new identity takes longer to prepare than the formats actually
stays on the air.
Is there any wonder that ADHT is a wide spread American affliction?
People travel at the break speed of video games and the information
highway, blink through changes in styles trends, fads, fashion
technology, cars, culture, politics, the economy and jobs. As quickly
as a new star is born, ten die and disappear. Commercial Radio is the
media reflection of the indecisive, rambling, unfocused attention
span of a gnat. Dissected into narrow lifestyle niches, radio formats
super-serve micro targets with the musical and content equivalent
of a Whitman's sampler. Programmers and executives seem to be
content to keep throwing something new out there until something
sticks. Let's face it, in most markets the results beyond the Top
three rated stations, positions are tenths of a point difference like
zero lot lines in a dense subdivision. So what is really working?
I can only be a severe critic out of love and concern. We can only do
something positive if more operators become receptive to new ideas
about the architecture and delivery of the product. But old habits
die hard.
As long as radio is a closed shop, largely controlled by a society of
consultants, statisticians and owners, whose primary objective is to
collect real estate, maintain status quo and control the media, the
art form and the product will suffer.
The most recognizable and fatal deconstruction of today's radio
entertainment business is that there is no intention to build
tradition. Even the most committed radio performers I know are
reluctant to even call what they do for a living and career anymore
because they realize their increasing expendability and the
disposable
dispositions of the consolidated corporate environment.
Saturday evening my mother, my fiancé, the dogs, the cat and the bird
all spent the evening having dinner and wine by the light of the
moon. My lanai is wired for sound. Neither my mother or my fiancé had
ever heard the Prairie Home Companion.
I turned it on and let it play in the background as it became the bed
over which our conversations ensued. It took almost an hour until
that pregnant pause awaiting the redirection of the subject gave way
to an attention of what was on the radio. A choir had finished
singing and Garrison Keillor spoke of music's place in the home
before the days of the birth of radio. He crated pictures of the
past when Friends would gather at the houses of each other and all
sing the popular songs of the time. A song called the Road to Mandalay
written by Rudyard Kipling was performed live in as much contrast to the
previously
performed song by the choir As radio playing Shania Twain to Green
Day.
My thought, "Wow, the first original music format."
What the people want to hear? Instantaneously and still absorbed
in that profound thought, my fiancé said, "What is this? Is this on
the radio? How entertaining! My mother agreed because she had
experienced music's place in life before radio and how radio changed the
world.
She began to recount her childhood experiences at her grandmother's
house where Saturday nights were regular musical house parties. Some
brought fiddles -- others brought guitars ... everyone had a voice. Then
came live radio and not everyone had one. Radio programs were the
events that assembled whole families, neighbors and friends.
Imagine what radio could be if it didn't know it all already
What next for me? I have no idea really. There are a few passion
projects I entertain in moments of daydreaming.. Like resurrecting a
few old classic AM's in the way of SAI and KBW. Then there are a
half dozen concepts that haven't been done or there is commercial
radio reform that, sooner or later, all operators will have to face
in some form in order to have any listeners at all. But I guess I
look around and don't see anyone who will take the risk to be the
next standard bearer. I don't have the faith that I used to that
somewhere there are players with the adventurous spirit to take the
leap.
Broadcasters are caught up in protecting, homogenizing, justifying,
reducing, centralizing, acquiring, and cloning. It is pretty obvious
that more of them need to spend time paying attention to what people
are willing to pay dearly for in order to get what they want. XM,
IPOD, RHAPSODY and media center CPU's that interconnect with audio
components and TV to play back downloaded music or play streaming
iternet radio. To insure my well-being and future health, if I were a
radio broadcaster, I would be interviewing and researching the
audience that abandoned radio and find out what would it would take
to bring them back.
Radio is losing listeners because it is no longer compelling and
because many operators are in denial that audience departure to
satisfying technology, superior quality, complete and commercial free
continental delivery could render them extinct. If there is any
doubt of this and if you are old enough to recall, history documents
the AM music giants vanishing into thin air (pun intended) as
audiences moved to stereo, no static FM.
Do you remember some of the
embarrassing
"that will never happen" statements made by reputable broadcast owners
who paid no attention to the ch-ch-ch-changes. "why, it would cost a
fortune to retrofit all the cars with FM radios! No auto manufacturer
will ever do that." "People will never buy all that new, expensive
special equipment just to listen to FM. It's a wasteland band and
always will be."
Cleveland Wheeler
e-mail Cleve at
skysurf6@mailaka.net
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