"Randy and Ron"
(When giants clash and collide)

by Larry Shannon
* Note ... This essay contains links to other sites.  Click them as you read.  

Few events have stirred the explosive passions and emotions than the news of Randy Michaels' move from the Radio to the New Technologies Division of Clear Channel on Tuesday.

I don't know Randy Michaels personally.  I've never met Randy.  Never worked with Randy.  I know many who do, have and did.  Each has a different opinion of him, I'm sure.  My views were formed from a dispassionate distance.

Since RadioDailyNews.com posted the Guest Viewpoint, "Proclamation," by Ron Jacobs on Wednesday morning, the RDN e-mailbox has overflowed with passionate comments, both supporting Randy and damning him.  There is no in-between it seems.  You either love him and respect him or you hate him and do not hold him in very high regard, to say the least.

These are not sentiments that just originated overnight.  You can't relate them to the current "Let's Stone a CEO Today" movement that is underway in the hallways at Enron, WorldCom and AOL-Time Warner.  No, these love or hate sentiments for Randy have lingered in the paragraphs and conversations of e-mails and chat rooms, in media publications and telephone calls for at least the last couple of years.

Randy Michaels is a major figure in the history of this broadcasting business. Ron Jacobs  (bio) is a giant name in broadcasting history as well.  

Thirty years ago, Ron Jacobs shook up the broadcasting world with 93 KHJ.  Mention the name Ron Jacobs today and many of us hear the "93 KHJ" jingle playing in our heads.  Think of 93 KHJ and some of us see mental photographs of Robert W. Morgan, Frank Terry, Tom Rounds, Betty Breneman, Gary Mack, Casey Kasem, Sam Riddle, Charlie Tuna, Bill Drake, Scotty Brink, Dave Diamond, Humble Harve, the Real Don Steele, Bill Wade, the 20/20 News Team, The Big Kahuna, Tina Delgado and the others who made history in Hollywood during those halcyon days of Boss Radio.

If you're under 40, you might not know about it.  But there was a radio revolution long before Clear Channel was ever imagined.  In those days, radio people's passions flowed and emotions stirred, too.  

Ron's recently published a book about those days at KHJ and across America.  If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.  The immortal Claude Hall chronicled our radio lives during those times for Billboard magazine.  He recently had some good things to say about the book (click here to read the review).  

Love Randy and Ron or hate them, you have to agree that they both have stirred and shaken up the radio world in their own times, each in their own ways. 

When giants clash and collide it makes a big noise.  That noise and the aftershocks were heard and felt in the many e-mailed comments that RadioDailyNews.com has received during the past two days. If you haven't read them, click here to read them. 

After contributing to and reading the posted comments, one person declared this outpouring of emotion to be a worthwhile, cathartic exercise that's getting rid of a lot of pent up frustration for a lot of folks.

The mixed reviews are in.  Now, with 36 hours behind us, it's time to contemplate. 

Some will call this event Randy's fall from grace.  Others will opine that he did great things with Clear Channel.  There are those who are dancing on his grave.  Many of the celebrants are those who have lost jobs over the past couple of years.  One media analyst compared Randy's move from Clear Channel's Radio to the New Technologies Division to being sent to Siberia. 

From all of the comments that I have read, I may be the only one who was never fired, hired or retired by Randy Michaels or Clear Channel.  However, over the years and in the different worlds in which I have lived -- radio, real estate, politics, PR, investor relations, the Internet, farming and, now, owner/publisher of RadioDailyNews.com -- I've been on the receiving and giving ends of hiring and firing many times -- and I've survived to tell about it!

Coincidentally, about the time that the Clear Channel news release about Randy's move hit the wires on Monday evening, a lady friend, her husband and I were discussing how it is that some people always seem to blame others for their setbacks in lives and careers.  The blame is almost like an invisible barrier that they put up to intentionally stumble over before they even get out the door.  They are so busy looking for people to blame that they don't realize if they took the same blame energy and applied it to succeeding, they wouldn't have to blame others for their own failures.  

How many times have you blamed someone for making you succeed? Not many, I'll bet.

You can slap my face with a wet chamois for saying this, but I believe that this great commotion has been good for the hearts and souls of radio and radio people alike.  These family arguments and agonies will make the business a better place to work. Out of this exercise and through the episodes of the past few years will spring new faces, new names, new companies and fresh ideas.  Are you ready for it?

When I was fired from a radio job, my first reaction was to hold in contempt those who had done the dirty deed.  Then, after I got over the initial shock of my world being turned upside down unexpectedly, I'd suck it in, put on a courageous face and head out the door to find another job.  For me, each new job always turned out to be better than the one from which I'd just been booted or left of my own free will.  Amazingly, some of the folks who fired me later became friends and associates.  Or, like I mentioned in an earlier piece I wrote, "We fired and hired each other at a half dozen different radio stations -- one day we were enemies, the next day, best friends and boss jocks."

I knew it was time to get out of radio when a real estate developer grew tired of listening to my bitching about radio -- the insecurity of it, the new programming geniuses who had just arrived -- and asked me, "How long are you going to let yourself just hang there like a piece of meat?"  His question startled me.  But it made me think.  About a year later, I joined him in the real estate development business.

I took with me to that first new career away from broadcasting all of the communications, marketing and promotion skills that I had learned during the previous 14 years of radio.  They've served me well.  I could not have done all the things that I have done, traveled to the places that I have traveled or been lucky enough to sit at the desks and dinner tables that I've sat without those radio skills.  Don't take them for granted or think that they are useless.  They are priceless!

Frankly, I am amazed that more corporations don't turn to radio stations to hire their corporate communications people.  Radio people are perfect for those jobs.  However, I've observed that most corporations hire folks who have a lot of degrees and titles, look suave in a business suit, but are poor communicators.  Radio teaches one to acquire a great deal of corporate common sense -- and survival skills, too! 

I've come full circle and have been applying to what I do now the numerous skills that I've learned during life's journey away from broadcasting.  Now, I'm back in the broadcasting and online publishing business, among other things.  I have a greater appreciation of the broadcasting business because I have viewed it from a dispassionate distance.  

With all these things in mind, I am going to keep an eye on Randy Michaels and Ron Jacobs. 

Randy has a splendid opportunity to use his creativity and organizational skills with the New Technologies Division that's been given to him to lead.  Once he gets his foot in the door, kicks the tires, tampers with this and that, studies the state of the division and acquires a good overview of it, I think he will welcome the challenge and will have a hand in shaking up things in it too.  I wish him well.  

You should keep your eyes on both Randy and Ron, too.  After all, you can't introduce songs, do a talk show or read the news for the rest of your life.  You might want to get into this "new technologies" world yourself one day.

In a way, I envy Randy for the challenge that he's been given.  I love technology.  I am intrigued with what technology can do to make our lives easier, more enjoyable and take us to places we've never been before.  

Years ago, a radio engineer listened to the problem that I was having at the station and said, "Don't worry, technology will take care of it."  And, it did -- many times, on many avenues.

The new technology of the Internet brought this viewpoint to your computer screen.  Who knows what will happen in the future with the convergence of all these marvelous technologies that we use now with those that will be invented and molded to fit our lifestyles?  The world moves faster now and you have to think and act more quickly to keep up with it.

Just as Gordon McLendon, Todd Storz and their associates in their time organized all those disorganized radio frequencies into Top 40 formats, perhaps it's time to tame and make these new technologies "user friendly" with the help of some radio people with wrenches in their hands.

Sure, Randy's got his own style -- his own way of doing things.  But, don't we all?

If you were the one selected to be the next CEO of Clear Channel's Radio Division, what would you do differently?  And, more important, would it work?

Ron Jacobs lives in Hawaii.  New Technologies like e-mail and the Internet, Satellite TV and radio, and wireless devices have brought Hawaii closer to the mainland.  Who's to say that Ron Jacobs' future doesn't lie in the world of new technologies, too?  Is Tina Delgado really alive and well and living in Silicon Valley?  She could lend him a hand.

It's an interesting contemplation to ponder the not-so-impossible chance of either a competition between these two giants or a possible collaboration of these two somewhere along the way in this wide open world of new technologies that's all around us. It's a clash and collision that I'd like to hear.  It would damned sure put a face on this new technologies thing.  Can you imagine the sparks and electricity this would create?  

In this tough, often tainted, real life business world there is a saying, "Lead, follow or get out of the way!"  Which one will you do?  Will you watch, complain and toss out boos and blame from the sidelines -- or you will get in there and be a hands-on player in whatever you do?  Will you be one of the new leaders in this media convergence of broadband, satellites, wireless gadgets and gizmos?  

When I was sitting in a 10 by 10 room, jocking records, I never imagined that I would one day work for the Congress of the United States or do the other things that I've done in my lifetime. Life takes you down some mighty interesting roads  -- if you are willing to put on your traveling clothes and put yourself in "the right place at the right time."

Earlier, I mentioned the comment from the media analyst about Randy being sent to "Siberia."

The fellow, reaching for a clever cliché, probably doesn't know that Siberia is the home of the world's largest diamond mines.  These mines contain some of the world's clearest, choicest diamonds.  If Randy can mine "diamonds" from the New Technology Division to which he's been handed the keys, he'll probably get the last laugh by showing that he can succeed twice in two different arenas. 

Hmmmm ...Suddenly, maybe "Siberia" doesn't look so bad after all for the brave and adventuresome ones who still have a few breaths of creativity left within them.

Larry Shannon

e-mail comments to editor@radiodailynews.com