I once asked John Gehron why he hadn’t done an aircheck session with me after I had been there for a long, long time. Without even blinking he said that he hired great talent and let them do their jobs. He also told us that the format was like a road map and once in a while it was OK to take a detour as long as you had a damned good reason to do it and could reasonably justify it.

The only thing that was locked in was the music and, even then, we could ask to deviate from that if we had a special bit we wanted to do around something not on the list. Trademark bits such as John Records Landecker’s “Americana Panorama” could not have been done without that freedom.

Note to anal-retentive PDs: Lighten the hell up. Take a lesson from program directors who aren’t trapped by insecurity... hire good people and trust them. At WLS, we were given a long leash and, unlike many personalities today, understood the implications of that responsibility.

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to do some air work on KRTH FM in Los Angeles. The program director at that time, who will remain nameless, had too many built-in formatics, such as making it mandatory to include two local “relating” intros and one of national significance each hour. When you tallied that up with the flip cards promoting station events, contests and cross-plugs there was no time to relate directly to the listener. Clutter, clutter, clutter.

I’ve always maintained that (and wonderful legendary personalities like Art Roberts were brilliant at it) people respond a lot more if you make them feel something. You won’t get that from reciting facts from a Whitburn book. There are some jocks that write down every-single-word before they crack the mic. Boring.

I went to the Radio Hall Of Fame Awards a couple of years ago and ran into some legendary personalities from a generation prior to mine. One of them lamented that people on the air now don’t know what it’s like to do radio the way we did. I added that the biggest tragedy is that they would never know how much fun it can be.

Most of us got into radio in the 60’s & 70’s because we were mesmerized by it, had a passion for it, and wanted to be on the radio more than anything else. I can remember getting off the air at 6 a.m. at WABB in Mobile and staying around all day because I loved the hell out of being there. There was comraderie and a sense of teamwork I’m not sure exists today in larger markets.

A lot has changed. A PD in a good Medium market called me not too long ago looking for a new jock to fill a spot on his station. “Surely you get a lot of airchecks from talent,” I said. He responded that he had a whole box of them but either they were awful or the first thing out of their mouths was “How much do I get paid?” When I was on WLS I got calls from jocks that claimed they would sweep the floors, anything, to work at The Big 89.

Program Directors such as John Rook, John Gehron and PDs in generations before them knew how to grow a carefully selected garden of talent and there were many in smaller markets who knew that, too. The smaller markets were like “farm teams,” a situation that, sadly, no longer exists in any significant quantity. There’s plenty of blame to go around but, suffice it to say, most problems in the business come from people who make what they believe to be sound financial decisions but don’t have a scintilla of knowledge when it comes to making great radio. Gone are the days of Gordon McLendon and Todd Storz.

When Mancow Muller found himself wearing street shoes last July he vowed to bring back personality radio. While I commend him for his spirit, “a one man band plays all alone,” to quote that old Ronnie Dyson song from 1973.

I would love to believe personality radio could come back as it is the only thing that differentiates Station A from all the others in the alphabet. They all play the same music. This is not the reminiscing of an “old” radio guy with no teeth whining, “In my day we used to...” as I am still quite young and beautiful.

Well, at least the young part is true. Anyway, “Radio” as business, would do well to understand personality radio and how to develop talent. It’s the only thing that will save the industry.

Jeff Davis
www.jeffdavis.com