What's It Going To Take...?

[pave]

Room for Both Content and Process

“What listeners really want is more information – more content!” This soon-to-be universal edict was, no doubt, uttered many decades ago by a fledgling PD whose former gig was that of a fair-weather lumberjack. This was shortly thereafter ensconced by the delightful “light, tight and bright” platitude – the bane of any performer with an imagination and a desire to communicate that on the radio. The follow-on to that was the insulting proviso of “If you can’t say it - play it.” This carried with it an understanding that most jocks had, indeed, nothing to say, no way to say it, most of the time. Conclusions were also drawn that information was also entertaining. Astute broadcasters are still standing in a pelting rain waiting for the evidence to arrive. So much for bogging everything down and gumming up the works.

These attitudes had quickly permeated the radio landscape, taken hold and decimated the medium. Dogma was thusly created, reinforced, and made to be holy.

Pure information or, as I like to refer to it – “content” – becomes very dry and very droll almost instantaneously. Like a dob of Crazy Glue, it oozes only momentarily and then transform into a brittle and inert pebble. It loses its impact and lustre almost as soon as it is applied.

Process words as opposed to content-based communications supply dynamic and fluid forms of the language – those delicious and imagination-driving elements that secure a listener’s attention and ongoing participation. These are the words that are descriptive, sensory-based and emotionally compelling. They are embedded in stories and supply multiple sensory-based representations of any given materials. They draw us in and challenge our imaginations to engage with what the speaker is delivering. Here is where the entertainment dynamics are actually kicking in.

Humor, while useful and always a desirable element, is not a required element Rich, succulent, visual and meaningfully strong and solid descriptions become the priorities, while going for the gag becomes an add-on and a fabulous bonus.

Foregoing process communication for pure content reminds me of the forlorn, frustrated, fearful, thirsty, and weary cowboy out on the trail a long way from town who laments how lonesome in the saddle he is since his horse died. The only option he has is to drop his saddle and continuing to mosey – or amble towards an empty horizon. The larger and more sinister varmints, meanwhile, are gathering for an impending smorgasbord.

The non-descriptive content-oriented report would read: A cowboy’s horse died many miles from town.

What makes PDs ape-snake nuts is the amount of time it takes to deliver the process-laden descriptive. They are holed up in their cubicles designing seriously punitive retribution for the presenters.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
[email protected]

[pave]

In Case No One Has Noticed

While leaving my family somewhat aghast, I find myself to be more a ponderer than a muser. So, I ought not be surprised whan I find myself pondering the extraordinary lapse demonstrated by radio when it ignores the many, varied and readily available techniques, methods and strategies for delivering the English language to a broadcast audience.

To be sure, radio deserves indictments for having spent the last forty years in the systematic deconstruction of any language approaches it once enjoyed. That very exercise brought with it the gradual but ongoing elimination of talent that could actually provide at least some modicum of skills in delivering aspects of the complexities of language.

As broadcast and electronic media were proliferating across the landscape, radio was and is going out of its way to trash the only advantages it had in delineating itself from other related media.

What makes this tragic is that a few more generations of younger providers of radio language have arrived on the scene with absolutely no memory or awareness that such concepts were, at one time, bandied about with vigour and glee.

No longer do purveyors of the craft duck outside with coffees and smokes to discuss the subtleties and nuances of presenting the English language in ever more complexities and trickery in order to be more appealing and more influential to their audiences.

Lest a few astute readers determine that I am putting the boots to a hardly recognizable and thoroughly dehydrated corpse of a well and truly dead horse, I openly confess that the prospects of regenerating an interest in the business of re-addressing the extraordinary advantages of re-developing the patterns of a serious and exceptional program of language improvements are, in fact – extremely grim.

Instead, we are saddled with the droning and boring recycled patter of what remains of the “live” presenters as they go about setting up the next “music marathon” having already usurped the delicious opportunities to make an impact on an already disinterested audience.

Meanwhile, as the body of knowledge about communications has expanded to an enormous, if not overwhelming, degree over the decades, radio commercials ran aground and are being dashed on rocky shoals. The spots that are being puked out today could be rendered unrecognizable from those being rolled out 50 years ago – no differences whatsoever. If there were ever clues for the need to re-address the matter available, this alone would suffice. But, apparently, nobody is willing to take the leap into the waters below – something about the pool being replete with crocodiles, sharks and tiny fish that go directly for the bodily orifices.

While those are serious considerations, what’s to stop anybody from throwing some convicted felons in – just to test the waters, so to speak.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
[email protected]