What's It Going To Take...?

General Radio News and Comments, Satellite & Internet Radio and LPFM

Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby Broadcast Babe » Tue Mar 23, 2021 11:58 am

OMG Ron, your column is not only hilarious but true! May I add the worn out phrase I hear much too often in the Vancouver market 'this is what everyone's talking about.' Really? Who is everyone? No one I know.
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Tue Mar 23, 2021 4:44 pm

Quite so, BB.
You might also agree that the premise makes for a heck of a hook on which to hang a dangling and pathetic programming principle.

Meanwhile, in the interests of continuity and to avoid the jumped page, I am reposting the original piece.

Make It So
A pundit of ill-repute, Mike McVay, the former (in)famous grand poobah of Cumulus in the States was waxing phonetic the other day. He was slathering on about radio’s need to generate FOMO in its audiences. Bringing on and introducing the Fear Of Missing Out in those audiences, according to Mike, is accomplished by providing loads of ginger-peachy content for the listeners.

Not only is this not a revelation, there is a strange irony included in his missive. This is the guy whose hands are still bloody from the outright slaughter of content and the wacking of (allegedly) talented presenters during his tenure at Cumulus.

Whatever talent wasn’t being jettisoned on a regular basis and being replaced by voice-tracking bots were otherwise being strangled by Draconian programming rules. That plus the closing of windows-of-opportunity to actually perform this whizzy, newly-manifested content was all taking place during his watch at the company.

Nevertheless, Mike prattles on about the need to produce more unique content and materials that are “specifically interesting to your audience”. This pronouncement continues to be the chicken bone that is liable to get stuck in my craw at any time, and facilitate an emergency 911 call. How that call could be placed might prove interesting:

(911 operator) 911. What is the nature of your emergency?
(Me) Accckkk!
(911 operator) Could you be more specific?
(Me) Gacck! Wheeze. Gaacckk!
(911 operator) Unless you can tell me what is wrong, I can’t direct your call.
(Me) Accckkk!
(911 operator) Please hold.

This assumption that anybody can determine what is interesting to any radio audience takes on the cloak of, if not a prayer request, then an extremely dangerous and murky form of voodoo. What part of what audience is included in these mysterious proclamations? Can this information be poofed into existence? Does it cover the psychographics and demographics of the station in general?

After a determination of some very generalized targets in a station’s audience, the concept of providing materials that are “specifically interesting to (your) audience” is a mug’s game – doomed to a very unsatisfying set of results. To be successful at this requires that the programmer be blessed with the capacity to read minds – lots of minds. Let’s just kill that idea before it takes root and mutates into something even more viral and dangerous. Nobody in radio has that skill. The really good mind readers are already ensconced in – no place else but Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, Mike encourages talent to work with “the hottest story of the day”. Well, okay. “Hot” according to whom? The talent? The audience members” The programmer? Does this hot story travel through all dayparts? What about taking this tack qualifies as “unique and interesting materials”?

Plus, there is the assumption - or hope - that providing this exemplary content will produce a FOMO experience in the audience, Sorry. Preparing pablum results in the skills to whip up pancake batter. Audiences, I suggest, are far more adept at getting all their FOMO needs met by sources other than commercial radio.

I get it. Producing multiple experiences of FOMO would be a boon to any talent or station. But, c’mon, man. What are the chances? Plus, what could be more terrifying to a talent than receiving the memo demanding that FOMO materials be produced right now? A Jean Luc Picardian “Make it so” is hardly going to cut it.

I fear Mike is working in an alternate reality that does not scue with the generalized reality that exists for most radio environments today.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Mon Apr 12, 2021 10:45 am

Visigoths Are Approaching

“We could get a monkey to do that.” Although insulting and demeaning to an extreme of the on-air talent-base, this has been the position of almost all of radio’s ownership and management. This has been case for almost 30 years.

Meanwhile, as the “live & local” discussions continue unabated – more like kicked down the road – there are other dynamics in play that nobody seems to want to discuss. As radio continues to purge itself of multiples of “live & local” performers, more formidable problems are being generated.

Since collapsing the talent-base has been an ongoing strategy, many of the last two generations of management would be completely unaware when the situation was any different. Lower wages and minimal hours without benefits have become the norm and not the exception.

So, were there to be a turnaround in the future of radio, owners will find they are girding their loins, once again, but will also discover they are painfully bereft of any swords, spears or shields. They’ll be confronting the Visigoths armed only with padded gotchies.

While “live & local” may be an ennobling and honourable position to extoll, the mere mechanics of delivering on that premise are, today, insurmountable.

The hurdles over which radio management are going to have to leap are significant. Going “live & local” will entail a number of radical changes on the part of management. These will include more time spent and more investments made than radio may be willing to shoulder. The current business model entails cutting talent-expenses – as much for maintaining survival as for demonstrating greater profitability.

A few of the challenges facing radio include:
• Locating the talent that will be replacing the ranks of those already jettisoned will be extraordinarily difficult. Some that have never been on the air before will be led to the microphone as lambs to the slaughter. Most of them will suffer from an overabundance of incompetence culminating in the cruel trashing of their egos – through no fault of their own.

• Any suppositions that somebody with a nice personality and maybe a quick wit will find themselves overwhelmed by the actual requirements of a broadcast communicator.

• Even though, over the years, the job description has been stultified and stupefied down to the reading of 3x5 cards, all other attributes of a true radio presenter will have been utterly ignored.

• It could be argued that many in management and ownership are simply unaware that the nuances to which I am referring are even part of the package. The values and benefits of a talent being able to deliver different tonalities, volumes, tempos, mic-distancing and most importantly, the skills in producing appropriate and effective linguistic patterns designed exclusively for on-air presenters will be completely lost and therefore ignored by managers - and talent alike.

All of this hardly bodes well for the more effective implementation of any “live & local” considerations that may come up. Truth be told: Given the attitudes and lack of pertinent knowledge of contemporary management, the chances of a greater implementation of a “live & local” - as a new and woefully needed strategy - remains dead in the water. No wind, no sails, no rudder and no set course. The Visigoths will have an easy time of it.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Wed Apr 28, 2021 12:21 pm

Scourge Of The Pundits

Based on what’s being put out lately, I must presume there are severely slim pickin’s for the cadre of coaches, consultants, and corporate programmers out here. Besides all the retreads of admonitions that are over 50 years old, there hasn’t been much in the way of newer, interesting, or more effective strategies being provided for on-air talent and copywriters.

The more recent offering from one of the better-known programming honchos has been about on-air etiquette. – as if that was a thing. Essentially, he droans on about the need for the on-air gang to respond – in the most pleasant of nine-nice ways to the comments coming in from listeners through the phones, social media or carrier pigeon.

Doing so, it is purported, will enhance the positive experience of the listeners – as if they remember they made a comment and are tuned in when the on-air response is eventually given,

Now, I don’t mind responding to listener input so long as it is semi-cogent and has some semblance of grammatical solidarity. Adjudicating the quality of listener feedback can be a tedious and frustrating chore. It also carries with it the danger of the talent becoming jaded right smartly and wondering, “Who are these slugs?”

Further, talent is encouraged to make nice with the other performers at the station, especially on the air. Whether they are engaged in dust-ups in the parking lot between shifts, everything between them, so far as a listener is concerned, is just peachy and going along swimmingly.

That a pundit would have to strangle this cat openly in the first place leaves me somewhat confused and perplexed. Am I to understand this little chat is necessary?

Further, and unless it was implied and I missed it, there were no references to ”couth”. For me, as it applies to performing on-air, couth has always been a subjective term, brimming over with nuances and vagaries. Those of us who toiled by “talkin’ dirty and playin’ the Hits were always operating at the abyss of crossing over and falling into raging poor form or abject nastiness, rudeness and callousness. It was a line many of us tap-danced around while some of us outright stomped on.

I am reminded of a chat I had with my PD.:
(PD) “Have you no couth?”
(Me) I have lots of f***in’ couth.”
(PD) “You get very rude on the air.”
(Me) “That’s part of the job. But I do have f***in’ couth - oozing from my pores and falling out of my ass.”
(PD) “But you are upsetting some listeners.”
(Me) So, are we running a Christian retreat and phustercluck?”
(PD) I am glad we could have this little chat.”

Meanwhile, talent is roaming the halls trying to avoid any eye contact with their PD’s while being utterly ill-prepared to take on a contemporary radio audience. They have yet to be educated on the basics, never mind the subtleties and nuances of broadcast communications. Then they are expected to produce meaningful verbalizations to an audience that is starving for anything with substance and worthwhile content.

Someday they might also learn the techniques of delivering those uncouth mutterings in ways that actually make them acceptable to their audiences. It can be done.

Today’s priority, however, is to make especially nice to the audience and to respond, without malice or sarcasm, to their highly valued and appreciated commentaries. Control rooms all over the country are going to have to start supplying complimentary barf bags.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Wed May 26, 2021 12:59 pm

Pundit Arrogance

Well, they’re at it again. Those pesky pundits that, by now, should know better, are yelping like frustrated jackals that have been unsuccessful in making a kill during a dark African night. Their plaintiff wails have been about the lack of radio content from the talent-base and the shoddy productions from the commercial departments.

These are not particularly new laments as the concepts of talent-content and effective commercial production have, essentially, left in the shadows as not being worthy of consideration or attention.

But now that they go into their bag of programming tricks, they find they are operating from empty sacks. The attention to formatic jiggery-pokery has been found to be lacking in impact on both audiences and advertisers.

They have become shameless in their rhetoric of demanding more and greater content and much better spots be added to programming mixes – as if nobody else had figured this out decades ago.

But, given they have little else to promote, all that is left is harkening back to the original premises that have been so callously tossed aside, lo those many moons ago.

Given how obvious this circumstance is to those who have been around or are still hanging around the radio business, the pundits can’t help themselves without jumping into the conversation by sporting full-dress arrogance and hubris.

They address the generation of jock-content and superior commercial production as being simply a matter of: Making decisions to implement the procedures, and to treat them as no more than plug-in and play elements.

Far from it. There is an extraordinary dearth of individuals who can supply that superior content and those exceptional commercials. To be candid, there are many in the business who are of the opinion that no more than tweaks be applied to these matters – a touch-up or a little polishing here and there should be more than enough to turn the whole thing around. They are, at least, confused and at worst – deluded.

The necessary talent to produce superior content and much better commercial content are, for the most part, missing in action. They have left the building.

But the challenges are much greater than just replacing people. Among those challenges are the matters of the missing educations necessary to produce such exemplary content and commercial product. Both new and used talent have yet to be educated in the required skills to both appropriately and effectively address a radio audience.

Again, plugging-in and playing other on-air participants will do nothing to assuage the problems facing the contemporary raft of broadcasters. The arbitrary replacement of individuals may, in practice do more harm than good.

New and used talent are still unaware of the concepts of radio being an indirect medium rather than a direct medium. They are still unaware of the pitfalls of going on the air and making demands for behaviour. Plus, they still don’t know about the influence that the manipulation of tonalities, tempo, separate volumes and nuanced mic-technique can have on an audience. Nor do they factor in the values of applying metaphors and analogies to their patterns of speech. Talent doesn’t know about any of these concepts because: There is no one around to teach them.

Audiences, while unlikely to articulate their concerns about a whole new raft of unskilled talent, may yet and still – vote with their ears and deny the stations of the participation the outlets so desperately want and need.

If only the easier route of plug-in and play were so effective. It won’t be.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Sat Jun 12, 2021 12:11 pm

Stagnating And Left In The Lurch

Too bad it is that radio has learned little from the chaotic experiences brought on by the pandemic. That is, unless “learning” can be construed as a huge opportunity to cut even more talent and more services from an already limited plate of goodies being provided.
“Hey! We got no choices here. Revenues have collapsed. These are things we gotta do. Some guys will have to be wacked. It’s business, you unnerstand?”

As radio crawls out of the chasm into which it was thrown by the onslaught of Covid, it claws its way back to the surface in worse shape than before. Any expectations that it might reclaim its (questionable) glory might be somewhat premature. Then again, it’s not as if the bar had been set all that high anyway.

Pundits, meanwhile, are falling all over each other to trot out the old, tired and tattered formatics that only maintained some of the status quo prior to the fiasco. And why would they not? These ancient premises are all they’ve ever had; all they’ve got and all they are likely to acquire. It’s about: More of the same – only the same.

I’m not reading much about the tremendous (alleged) advantages of taking a station through the “live & local” process. I am satisfied this is because owners and management have very little confidence that such a strategy would be particularly advantages, Plus the reality of driving up the expenses on a very “iffy” proposition are not lost on them, either.

Stations have committed themselves to running bare bones operations and they are unlikely to be deterred from that premise in the foreseeable future. Besides, there is the added benefit of having to deal with fewer wacked-out, ego-ridden members of the talent corps – a noticeable and welcome relief.

To their chagrin, they may realise, far too late, they are involved in Show Business – a business of shows. The argument can be made that they haven’t come to that realization at all – ever. To most, it’s all about flogging spot-time and anything else becomes severely peripheral. Indeed, sometimes a wolverine can be shoved up a drainpipe. But them critters ain’t happy and they do have memories.

The other matter is that while some of the more astute consultants are finally clamouring for more and better talent-content and for the writing and production of superior commercials, they are still at a loss as to who, specifically, is going to be delivering all these wonderful materials.

As an industry, we are still trapped in the jaws of that minimalist beast that accepts “For all your dining needs – eat at Joe’s.” These excuses for commercial content are beyond embarrassing – they are humiliating - and are worthy of spit and vitriol.

Again, were it not for the innate power of the medium to get inside audiences’ skullery regions and impact on a weird and twisted neurological level, we would have been sent to the backwaters where media stagnates and rots.

There is so much to learn about how to, specifically, communicate to a broadcast audience. Any endeavour to engage at that level is so unlikely to occur that the mere consideration of the matter is enough to send most owners and managers scurrying for the exits and back to their, at least, predictable, and familiar drainpipes.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Mon Jul 05, 2021 11:15 am

What Fills In The Gaps?

They have chomped down on the bone and they just won’t let go. I am referring to the professional pundits’ whining and mewling about the lack of of outstanding on-air talent. To get this factor out of the way quickly: Who was it that created this lack-of-talent scenario in the first place?

The easy answer is: Every owner, manager and consultant with a pulse and some influence that not only killed that goose – they cooked it up in such a way that not even the aroma remains. Talent was marched out of the stations to the rear parking lot and the bosses dispatched the poor devils with extreme prejudice. Then they hid the bodies under the tarmac.

Here is what is key to that particular situation: Not only was Talent wiped out, the knowledge, intuitions and traditions that were encapsulated by years of their being on the air were also destroyed. No complete records were compiled and what little that did make up part of that library was dragged to the burn barrels. What is left is a smouldering bin and a gaping hole of non-expertise.

Still, the pundits continue to insist that radio’s salvation lies in the context of getting fabulous on-air talent back on the radio and toute your suite while you’re at it.

Back in the day when “We could get a monkey to do that.” was being trotted out as an explanation and a justification for showing the higher-priced talent the door and dragging in lesser talent, owners and managers acted like they had just had an enormous “ah-ha” experience and had, because of their innate wisdom, tripped over the motherlode of increased profits.

“That’s fantastic!” they chortled over their supremely good fortunes. “We’ll hire the cheapos. The audience and the advertisers will hardly notice!” In fairness, audiences and advertisers hardly complained at all and ain’t it wonderful when a plan blows right through Customs.

In time, audiences and advertisers did start noticing the decrease in products and services. Partially because of the writers being slapped out the door and partially because of the dirge of talent available to perform on the spots. But it was a subtle process and eventually, owners and management couldn’t discern what it was that was causing the declines. Everything had become so maudlin and that had become and remains the status quo.

This situation hardly bodes well for me as I am the guy who has been insisting that unless radio practitioners are re-trained in both the basics and the nuances of radio communications, there is little likelihood that anybody’s fortunes will be turned around.

Two major factors have to be addressed even before any applications of my materials can take place.

1. Owners and management will have to, of their own volition, determine that massive upgrades in the number and quality of on-air talent has become absolutely necessary.
2. Acquiring such talent from where, specifically will be a yeoman’s chore – almost impossible. Will management know what they are looking for and will they recognise it when it comes before them? Plus who is going to re-train the newbies on even the traditional expectations and capacities of those talents that have come and gone before?

Only when those elements have been handled will there even be a prospect of getting them involved in up-grading their skills to the point where they can become serious communicators and on-air presenters.

There are extraordinarily huge gaps in this structure of radio as it is. The chances of any of them making the huge leaps necessary to re-engage audiences and advertisers are grim, indeed. Too bad, too, as it is all eminently doable.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Fri Aug 06, 2021 3:59 am

Ship Came In – And Left

Seems that radio audiences are more than willing to slobber back the same slop they were served during and before the pandemic. Revenues and, I presume, ratings are making a comeback and we can now settle in for a long winter’s night of droll programming and more innocuous creative.

Those stations that have been able to hang on to some semblance of order can now thank their lucky stars for being able to dodge the heat-seeking missiles that were aimed directly at them from unidentified sources.

It would be juvenile and silly of me to expect that several operators would be grateful for a return to some form of normal and gather together those with info and input to reconsider the strategies that have been in place for decades. If there ever was an opportune time, we’re in it. Right now.

Radio has been a lowest common denominator enterprise for so long tat very few can remember when it was anything different while more are willing to accept that the way it is now is the way it is supposed to be.

“Innovation” is just a concept that has no reasoned or rational basis for consideration. The questions, practically, become those of: Innovate how, specifically, in what ways, specifically, for what purposes, specifically and at what costs, specifically?

When owners and management have no reasoned responses to any of those queries, the prospect of innovation of any kind rolls over and plays dead. Has died. Is dead.

Any opportunities to regroup, reconsider and re-organize have come and gone. Now is the time to get into lock-step with the way things were because, after all, things weren’t absolutely horrible before the pandemic. As the society slowly claws its way back from the scourge, the need for any radical strategies begins to dwindle and disappear.

Operators have always been unwilling to risk the possibilities of failure under any circumstances, especially when their peers are resting on the same so-called laurels as they have for decades. Plus, the specter of them going over the cliff like so many lemmings has noticeably dissipated, so there is little danger in relaxing their somewhat spasmed sphincters and beginning to breathe again.

On surface, more programming is getting piped in from afar and voice-tracking shows no signs of slowing down, Sales and janitorial staff are charged with generating the commercial copy – with the help and input of the clients. This hardly bodes well for any upcoming onslaught of sophisticated communications coming out of Production.

Meanwhile, the pundits are clutching their shorts and moaning about the lack of on-air personalities that hold an audience with their solid content and witty repartee. Much of the Talent, although often of a questionable caliber, can hardly be held solely responsible as they get to crack the microphone but 4 or 5 times an hour. (I can jump into the car and wheel over to the grocery store. go get a loaf of bread, jump back into the car and motor back home without ever hearing some live talent. Building quarter-hours? I think not.

Radio stations getting back to some recognizable amount of income may be cause for some celebration after the chaos. The pizzas, however, will be the 5-dollar specials – no extra toppings. As for the beverages, it will be BYOB.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Fri Sep 17, 2021 9:29 am

Superficial Success

While a number of stations are staggering back to something resembling pre-Covid revenues, others are still mired in mud up to their axles. Their expectations, I presume, are that, given enough time, they, too will be recovering. This may turn out to be a sometimes/maybe and depends scenario.

The opportunities to reassess, re-design and re-deploy those programming and commercial-production elements that would have improved the position of a given radio station have all come and gone. They have, instead, been replaced by more of the same – only less.

Voice-tracking, increasing syndicated programming and the continued suppression of local talent are, once again, the norms and accepted status quo for the business. Of course, this strategy makes up the cheaper row to hoe, but the returns may prove to be less than encouraging.

I do maintain that radio is the poster-medium for superficiality. Presenters are droaning on like so many tsampa-engorged Tibetan monks – clanging their gongs and spinning their prayer wheels – while chanting the same old radio mantras.

Radio commercial producers are still forced to repeat and copy the same droll models of spots that were even questionable 50 years ago. This is particularly embarrassing and tragic when one considers the extraordinary leaps in commercial production styles and techniques that are festooning all the other examples of electronic media. Our efforts have joined the ranks of sandwich-boarding zealots with their thousand-yard stares and their assurances of imminent doom. Where that can be compared to commercial radio, they may have something going on there. But, it’s not all that likely and nobody expects utter chaos by next Tuesday.

Still, when almost the entire medium is running on superficiality, the mundane, the maudlin and the wholly unimpressive litany of (mostly) gibberish, the chances of a collapse-of-a-kind may yet still be in the cards.

American pundits, meanwhile, continue to polish their own shoes by reclaiming the aspects of story-telling, the deliveries of authentic personalities and the mind-reading of audience members to determine what it is they (the audience) wants – as if that was a service that could be delivered as a generality even for a moment. Still, pundit-loafers do come out highly buffed.

Of course, these alleged pundits fail to provide the sources of these exemplary presenters. Out of what pickle jar will they be plucked? Nor do they make available the necessary training to generate a higher quality of communicative on-air performer. As to the availability of skilled and nuanced copywriters, one could get a grip on an assessment of the environment.

For too long a time, I had presumed that, once the poo-bahs of radio were introduced to other, more effective means of communications, at least a few would leap at the opportunities to apply such newly-available materials. In the process they would also enjoy that vast numbers of new audiences and new advertisers would be clutching them to their bosoms and putting fresh rounds of cash dollars into their wallets.

Alas, such has not been the experience. To quote Bill Paxton playing the part of Private Hudson in the movie Aliens, “This ain’t happening man!”

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Mon Oct 11, 2021 8:14 am

Where Have All The Dollars Gone?

Pundits, those who know more about these matters than you or I ever could, have been laying out the sobering projections that radio is dropping from a 15 billion-dollar industry to a 9 billion-dollar enterprise.

These same pundits are, however, suspiciously wanting when it comes to providing suggestions for curtailing the slide and reaching for even greater potentials. When represented graphically, that one is an ugly and disheartening curve.

What is likely to happen is that sales staffs will be grasping at the lowest of the low-hanging fruit and will be ignoring the opportunities to supply exemplary services to audiences and advertisers. This would be in an effort to increase appeal and effectiveness. Radio will have no truck with any of those strategies. They aren’t “efficient”, mostly because to do so requires a greater investment – more than any station would even consider.

The updated, just in-the-nick-o'-time approaches, then, will include more voice-tracking, more syndication, trimming local talent down – again - and putting the gerbils that are powering the transmitters on even smaller, already meager rations. Let ‘em eat birdseed.

As architects of their own demise, radio’s management have few qualms about self-inflicting the wounds that may bring the industry down to becoming a peripheral medium. It is, after all, what they have been doing, systematically, for decades. More of the same – only the same. To be sure, some will manage to survive and stay afloat while others will find they are expending much of their energies in manning the pumps in a panic.

It has been my position that radio will be required to make significant adjustment to its programming and advertising approaches. This has been an almost universally accepted premise, but when it passes by, all it usually gets is a perfunctory pat on the fanny, just like in days of yore – well before women were packing harassment petitions and automatic weapons in the office.

The spectacular need for stations to address programming and advertising methodologies may not be on anyody’s back burner. Indeed, they may be squirrelled away in some deep freezer in the bowels of the station – if they exist at all. My belief is that they don’t exist – not in any freezer or in the awareness of ownership or management.

Any awareness of alternative approaches would bring with it the responsibility to become familiar with and make the investments necessary to implement the varied techniques. Between thee and me – what are the chances?

It has been awhile since I have laid out any number of these advanced methods of radio communications. While satisfying to me personally, the exercise has proven to be akin to and having the impact of farting in a windstorm.

I will admit: The exercise has been a relief from time to time, but that has become mostly a private and wholly a subjective matter.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Fri Nov 12, 2021 4:11 am

Radio’s C.A.N.E.R.

With all expected puffery and bluster, radio rattles its scabbards, does an about face and vigorously advances to the rear, leaving many of the troops – especially the too expensive and wounded ones – behind. They are all, of course, left memos wishing them well in their future endeavours.

As pundits and other sayers-of-doom are predicting, radio will be dropping from a 15 billion dollar to closer to nine billion dollars a year in revenues. This, as radio still demonstrates a greater reach than other media. But even that is waning.

I wonder if anybody else remembers the before-Covid times when radio was being admonished to get off its duff and to “tell the story”. Radio’s reach and influence is still an untold tale. Some declare it is only a yarn of mythology and unrealized fantasies -- wishful thinking of a kind.

I am reminded of the Israelites’ 40-year wandering in the Sinai during which it was impossible to set up shop and get some real enterprises established. This was while God was waiting for the earliest generation of freed slaves of the Egyptians, after a little convincing, to die off – presumably because they were not grateful enough to be getting a shot at the Promised Land. But then, trying to discern the mind of the Lord was a mugs game, at best.

With radio beating its own withdrawal or, at least, its own disorganized staggering around in the desert, it’s hard to find any attempts at improving the programming and advertising services that would allow the medium to take a stand and repulse the efforts of the other media – as if it could. Media that, by the way, are regularly enhancing their own positions in the mix.

As regular readers are undoubtably aware, I have been touting a full-blown reassessment and massive improvement of the basic communicative strategies and methodologies by which we reach the members of our audiences – for the benefit of our advertisers. This, ironically, would be a severely difficult task when the exact opposite of that is taking place. Stations are being slashed and martyred-up by the machinations of limiting and repressing consideration of the very techniques and approaches that would do the most for regaining audience appreciation and participation.

That maintaining a greater dependance of syndicated, off-site programming, voice-tracking and the suppression of any remaining live & local talent would be a boon to enhanced audience and advertiser participation may remain a mystery to the management of local and national operators.

Examples of the halcyon days of personality radio are lost on the purveyors of contemporary radio. It becomes a foolish and unproductive grasp at a foggy and distorted past. The current generations of management and on-air purveyors of the craft have no functional memories or appreciations for what have become only faint rumours and mythologies of days of yore – not consistent with current, insisted-upon realities.

These, I posit, are no more than convenient justifications and rationalizations that are supported with tremendous vigour. This position steadfastly supports radio’s C.A.N.E.R. – the constant and never-ending retreat.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
info@voicetalentguy.com
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby Willywood » Fri Nov 19, 2021 9:37 am

Back to the OP. Limit station purchases in a chain. It’s the only way. Way to many licenses for one organization. There is really no need to have 10 radio stations in a major market, or 4 stations in a smaller market. Sorry but there’s two major formats. Country and Rock.
I think this would generate more local dollars for more local people.
And speaking of local, get back to the days of real local information with at least two live anncs in station.
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Mon Dec 06, 2021 9:00 am

Radio’s Approach To Talking Good

Language: One of the most sophisticated and complex forms of communications ever developed by thousands of generations of, unless noted otherwise, significantly smart people. Unfortunately, language is also applied by everyone with gums, lips and a tongue.

Adding to any number of other challenges that might crop up with the ladling on of gobs of questionable language, the overwhelming load-out is being demonstrated by those with access to internet connections.

Language can also be described as a technology as it comes with rule-governed principles including actual classroom explanations, textbooks an’ everything.

Most of us, however, are amongst the intuitive speakers that wouldn’t appreciate or make the distinctions of a present-progressive tense verb, a dipthong, a malopropism or a ruby-throated thrush. We walk. We talk. We’re done.

Then, there are those of us who talk on the radio. We are tasked with lugging even heavier burdens as, frankly put, we are not even allowed to speak. The formatics of most station won’t support any meandering or experimenting with any speech patterns by anybody that is cracking a microphone open.

Of course this makes for a dull and numbing experience for the listeners. While other forms of media are often applying the nuances of language as if it were a sophisticated tool for entertaining and massaging the minds of listeners, radio treats language like it was a stick – useful only for bashing a rock.

The ironically ironic irony is that radio, with its auditory only means of communication, lays waste to the most important and singularly available modality – that of the spoken word.

Gone are those magic moments where a communicator blows up the skulls of unsuspecting listeners with a flourish of prepared or stream-of-consciousness delights – verbiage that is engaging, appealing and effective.

I remember, as a kid, reading the regular segments in The Reader’s Digest, “It Pays to Increase Your Word Power”. Those of us in radio appreciated some time ago that improving our vocabularies was a mug’s game – so far as it applied to our means of making almost a living.

It can be argued that a diligent approach to continuously improving our language skills is a formidable but still invaluable approach to take – under any circumstances. But to do so with any expectation that these new materials would be of any particular value to the on-air crowd.

This is a matter of particular consternation to me as I am champing at the bit in my zeal to take on-air language to the next level – a level that takes into account the newer discoveries, developments and mostly undisclosed properties and nuances of linguistics that are still available to anyone that demonstrates an interest.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
info@voicetalentguy.com
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Tue Dec 28, 2021 12:56 pm

Who’s There?

Imagine that an individual is being invited to do a 10-minute warmup set at a local comedy club. After gleefully accepting the opportunity, imagine the talent is then notified that their entire performance will consist of nothing but “knock-knock” jokes – none of which will contain any political, religious or sexual overtones or innuendos. Plus, all the material will be adjudicated and edited before the performer takes the stage.

Should the talent accept those stipulations, they will do so with the understanding that they will be publicly reduced to that of a fumbling, boring and drooling moron during their set – a prime target for heckling and the receptor of aged and gooey, pelted vegetables and severely spoiled luncheon meats. The idea of getting on stage and killing it will immediately be sucked into the muck of unrealised fantasies.

Such is the case for the majority of contemporary radio presenters. Any astute audience member will be able to pick up on the seething and fizzing of the talent’s cranial partitions as their minds endeavour to slog through a toxic bog of steaming, station-supplied effluent.

Even while every audience member has matters of consequence permeating their experience, radio’s talent-base will not be addressing anything of real significance related or unrelated to any audiences’ ongoing considerations.

So fearful is radio of perceived tune-out factors that nothing of any consequence at all is allowed to escape the confines of the control rooms. This would include any social commentary, any religious or political jabs or attempts at humour. If audiences cannot expect to have their imaginations tweaked, what possible, other justifiable rational for continued listening would there be?

The attraction of the music becomes more forlorn and categorized to the point where similar materials can be heard from any number of other stations or platform. Neither of these are matters under any serious considerations by owners and management.

Lacklustre performances from voice-tracked or “live” performers leave so very little of anything of quantity or quality to maintain listenership. There is no longer anything available to write home about anymore. Any gems that do fall out would have to be gleaned from a thorough examination of the camel dung that surrounds it. That’s hardly an appealing job. – certainly not something any casual listener would care to undertake.

Even as nationally known pundits have taken up the chant of: more and better content both in on-air presentations and the development of superior commercial content, the bosses keep blowing it all off as something else that will only increase costs, while any desired results are still written off as purely, and dangerously – speculative.

Owners and management (internally, I suspect) declare that in these territories – there be morons and dragons. Nobody wants to be carried off the field of battle on their own shield while taking on those, otherwise, easily avoided denizens, Besides, that activity requires the accumulation of warriors, weapons and supplies – hardly consistent with the protection of the bottom line.

So, it is hardly likely that even a series of knock-knock jokes would be tolerated as, after all, somebody out there might be offended. Plus, much of the current talent-base are still ill-equipped to deliver some of those easiest of simple gags. And that just won’t do. Nobody learns. Nobody improves – and nobody wins.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
info@voicetalentguy.com
pave
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Fri Jan 14, 2022 4:56 pm

Fairy Tales For Radio

There is an old adage that goes: Steady and slow is the way to go. The premise is illustrated by the well-known Aesop fable of the hare and the tortoise. Seems the hare was arrogantly taunting the other animals about how fast he was and how terribly slow were the rest of the group, particularly the tortoise.

The turtle, for no known good reason, challenged the rabbit to a cross-country race. The hare, knowing a sure thing when he heard it, immediately accepted. And that was his undoing – at least, according to the tale. In real life, however, the bunny smokes the turtle. By the time the tortoise crosses the finish line, the rabbit has been rutting like, well, a crazed hare, and has been in the process of producing whole new generation of bunnies.

Such is the nature of fables and fairy tales. They are designed as light entertainment for the credulous, the gullible and the delusional. In other words: for radio station ownership and management.

Meanwhile, Darwin never said that it was the strongest that survived. What he did say was that the most adaptable would survive.

Radio, as we know it, may be well on the way to an extinction of its own – swept away into the brief annals of media history. And only because of its unwillingness to adapt. To the contrary, what the medium calls adaptation has been no more than pulling in its head and trying to survive by going slower and laying lower.

Radio has been trespassing and waylaying itself into a bog of its own making. Radio has gone out of its way to making its products and services far less effective and extraordinarily less appealing. Even the pundits are hollering from the more solid ground for radio to improve its content and readdress its commercial output – along with the ridiculous format of gang banging the spot clusters.

Pundits are also warning of the sinister approach of predators that will, soon enough, be gorging themselves on the bones and entrails of what used to be a powerful medium.

Meanwhile, station owners and management have either rejected or otherwise disavowed the principle that emotionalism is a far more effective tool than is pure content in the business of influencing audiences. It’s still all yell & sell, price/product inanities. Presenters, furthermore, are encouraged to avoid any emotional processes in their deliveries. No attempts at funny and certainly no social commentary is allowed – not if they want to keep their phoney-baloney gigs.

“Besides”, as PDs have been intoning for decades, “nobody wants to know what you think! Sell the music and, otherwise, shut your hole.”

These are, by the way, the behaviours of a medium that is flailing and faltering towards the precipice of another lamentable extinction.

While this may be an overstatement or perhaps a somewhat premature conclusion, the evidence that it is neither continues stacking up. Meanwhile, lanterns are being held up while waiting for the turtle to stagger across the finish line. Further, the hare carries on with recklessly making more bunnies – unchecked and unchallenged.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
info@voicetalentguy.com
pave
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