I also had "The Missing Link." Remember that one? What about the pyramid-shaped thingamabob? There were others, and I owned every one of 'em.

I never solved these puzzles, mind you. I only bought them because they were fun.

Dominoes were another all time favorite of mine during childhood. My father owned a pool table which he rarely used, so I had plenty of space to set those little buggers up and knock 'em down.

I must have had thousands of dominoes.

It got to the point where I had a domino taped to string which was taped to the ceiling. When knocked down, that domino would fall off the table and swing across the room to trigger another set of dominos.

It's like a favorite toy, except this time - when I'm done - I want people to touch my stuff rather than leave it the hell alone.

...hang on. Something about that last sentence doesn't sound quite right. Ahh well. You know what I meant.

As you read this, I am updating the site design of This Is The Box to version 3, with this entirely new look. It should be done within a day or two. DONE!

This is technically version three and a half since I scrapped an entire 'new' design due to the fact that Internet Explorer is a bug riddled piece of web feces. If you're using Safari or FireFox, you can see what that design was going to look like had I finished it.

In case you're curious, here are the designs I've used for this website over the past few years:

• The original design ("big text").

• Version 2 ("stick figure").

• The "stripe" design I created but didn't use due to the fact that Internet Explorer refuses to adhere to web standards (gripe!).

• And finally - again - the new design:
  This Is The Box, V3.

Soon, the rest of this website will match the new look. In the meantime, I have more code to wrangle. I'll have it all finished within a day or two (he says to give himself a deadline).

Cheers!

All of it is 100% A-OK. I checked.

Sure, the medium has more challenges and challengers today than it has ever had before, but the fundamentals of radio are sound. Sure, listeners may be less passionate about radio today, but that's happening because we're giving them less to be passionate about. We can fix that. Any problems facing the content side of radio are easily solved through creativity, passion and hard work, and I don't see any lack of that.

I'll say it again: There is absolutely nothing wrong with the medium that is radio.

What's broken is the business of radio.

Once upon a time not so long ago, your typical radio station was a balancing act: a seesaw of programming and Sales. Programming created entertainment that captured an audience. Sales used that audience to generate revenue. Want more money? Create better programming. Build a bigger audience.

It doesn't work that way anymore because the business of radio is broken. There is no balance of programing and sales when there's a pig on the seesaw.

While we're in Dallas, let's consider the fate of another major player in the market: CBS Radio. They own six stations, four of which are were in the one shares this past fall, yet CBS did Jack squat about it.

The most offensive of these embarrassments to broadcasting is the ironically named "Movin' 107.5", where a successful heritage smooth jazz station was signed off in favor of the latest flavor of radio snake oil. Ranked in 24th place overall, this station is actually out-performing some of the Movin' stations in other markets. You can't even look up 12+ Arbitron ratings for some Movin' stations online because they've literally fallen off the page. Try to find Movin' in Los Angeles on allaccess.com. I dare you.

The decision to put Movin' on the air in Dallas and Los Angeles had nothing to do with entertainment. It was a get rich quick scheme and it failed. The way to fix either of these stations is simple: go into the market, find an under-served sellable demographic and entertain them. These are major markets! Hire talented PDs, compelling air talent and build a winning team, one station at a time. But the days of doing radio that way are quickly coming to a close because large corporations don't view individual properties individually, and that's a key reason why they're not willing to do more to get more.

Years ago, you'd blow out an underperforming jock. Today, you blow out the entire shift and track it regardless of how well the jock is doing.

Years ago, you'd low out an underperforming PD. Today, you blow out the entire station and replace it with a gimmick. Worry about it again in '09, eh?

The old way: Grow the budget. Make more money.
The new way: Slash the budget. Take more money.

And the worst part is, the business of radio was destroyed while the economy was strong. Imagine the pressure to slash budgets further when this recession really takes hold.

The business of radio is broken.

The downfall of radio can be blamed on:

#1. Freaking Flanking.

Remember the LMA? The Local Marketing Agreement was never about marketing. It was about turning frequencies into pawns, and it was the beginning of the end.

Imagine if car companies started running other car companies as shells to produce cars NOT for consumers but instead to HURT other car companies.

That's what the LMA was all about. Station A more or less owned Station B and used it NOT to entertain, but instead, the primary goal was to take audience away from Station C. If they couldn't beat 'em, they got a flanker to hurt 'em.

In the days of the LMA, I lived in a small market where the local rock station LMA'ed another frequency and flipped it Hot AC to take audience away from the adult-leaning CHR that owned the market. They used the flanker to take out the market leader, but not by better programming. The Hot AC never had to be any good. It just had to hurt the CHR as much as possible on as little budget as possible.

It all sounds like harmless strategy until you consider that it meant a lowering of the standard of quality for radio stations, which was bad for radio as a whole.

When Mix couldn't play certain songs because they'd take audience away from B107, the real loser was the Mix listener who couldn't hear her favorite song on her favorite station.

Sounds trivial, eh? Well, it might have been trivial if it had been the exception to the rule of radio. Instead, it become the norm thanks to deregulation. Deregulation was really the LMA times a thousand. It's hard to win in a market when you first have to fight within your own building. Then again, winning isn't even about listeners anymore, is it? It's about stock.

The downfall of radio can also be blamed on:

#2. The FCC.

When did the FCC become a government version of a take out window? "You want how many stations? That'll be XXX dollars. Please pull up to the next window to receive your order."

Far too many stations were added to the dial, not to mention how many were shuffled from city to city - which, by the way, completely contradicted the reason those licenses were granted in the first place!

And then there's the sheer comedy that is FCC fines.

Opie And Anthony held an on-air contest where people had to fuck in St. Patrick's Cathedral to win a prize. When that stunt didn't cost WNEW its license it became pretty obvious that the FCC was a joke without a punchline. Oh, sure, people were fired, blah blah, but owner didn't lose the license. In fact, they were fined less than half a million dollars, which is what to a company the size of CBS?

...please...

The FCC is a joke.

And speaking of initials we can blame for the downfall of radio...

#3. The NAB.

Broadcasters have no advocate in the legal or regulatory process. If the FCC is a joke, the NAB is a face-painted clown. The NAB is the National Association Of Broadcasters - yes, BROADCASTERS - yet their organization does little but harm broadcasters and harm broadcasting. Instead, their ambition is to benefit owners at the expense of broadcasting.

"Hang on" you say. "Aren't owners also broadcasters?"

No.

Most of today's broadcasting owners are no more broadcasters than plantation owners were farmers. Let's talk about the man busting his back in the fields during the early 1800s. He deserves the recognition because he was a farmer, and probably a damn good one. He knew the land. He knew the crop. He tilled the soil. The guy sitting in his mansion drinking wine was just a farm owner.

There is a difference.

Even in the days of 7 AMs and 7 FMs in 7 markets, many of the station owners weren't really broadcasters. Not really. But they were so closely connected to the point where sales and programming met that they understood the symbiotic relationship required for each to prosper. Also, there were so many owners back then that you at least had the opportunity to use your talents to find a better station with better ownership. It's true that there were plenty of bad owners back then, but there were exceptional owners too. Don't like Wilkes? OK, that's fair. How about a gig with Nationwide? Or Secret. Or Susquehanna, or Chancellor... or the noise you can't ignore, if it suited your personality. Grin.

Today's Clear Channel and Cumulus are about as different as Republicans and Democrats. The differences may seem vast on paper, but politics is still politics.

And that brings me to the fourth thing the downfall of radio can be blamed on.

Grade School Math.

Let me see if I've got this right... some genius thought it was a good idea to buy radio stations at ten or twenty times what each frequency was worth while also dropping the price of ads being run on said frequencies so he could undercut the competition... and then a whole bunch of other geniuses - seeing the brilliance of such a strategy - decided to do the same.

They increased cumulative debt while decreasing individual revenue.
"BRILLIANT!!!"

...no. Not so brilliant, as it turns out.

"OK THEN! Let's cut costs."
You mean fire people?
"Yeah. That."

...but those people create the product that IS your radio station. They give your listeners a reason to listen.

"Well they're not doing a good job, are they? Ratings are down!"

...that's because you took away their tools in your last few rounds of cost cutting. Remember the research they used? You slashed that part of the budget already. Oh, and remember the songs you wouldn't let them play because you were trying to protect your other stations? And remember the guests you wouldn't let the morning show book for the same reason? Oh, and remember the air talent you already fired during the last round of cost cutting... when you replaced live shows with voicetracking? Oh yeah... and remember when you...

Which brings me to the fifth thing the downfall of radio can be blamed on.

Your Local Planetarium.

Let's talk about time and space.

First, there were carvings in stone. Eventually there was ink and paper. And then the telegraph. And then AM radio. Then TV. Then FM radio. And Satellite. Etc.

It's just change.

Been to Amazon.com lately? They're selling digital books. Kindle, they call it. Hell, the very website we're on now is really just an evolution of magazines like R&R, FMQB and Gavin, not to mention those daily fax reports.

It's change - and it's an example of various forms of expanded media eventually collapsing into a singular form.

Radio has two options.

Radio will either be wiped out by the internet, or it will eventually merge into it. The determining factor will be the strength of each individual radio station at the time when AM and FM radio listenership truly collapses.

That bit is important.

Radio today is swirling in a sea of cost cutting chaos. If our stations are stripped to the bone, to the point where they aren't the most entertaining option when listeners seek something to listen to, radio is doomed as of the moment something equally convenient comes along. Will some other form of entertainment become the thing to listen to while driving to work once the internet reaches the car? Already we are seeing other forms of media taking over so much of the listening radio had in the home.

I would think corporations that have invested so much money into radio ownership would protect their investments by making sure the product that *IS* their radio stations is compelling enough to survive these hard times. But I would be wrong because greed trumps common sense.

I've always thought of radio not as a medium, but instead as individual brands. We're in a time of great change, and many of our individual brands - our stations - won't survive when the internet surpasses the airwaves.

"Oh, who are you kidding... that's so far into the future."

Hardly.

If you thought FM changed the face of AM, wait until a simplified interface is created to bring the internet into your car. And remember this: it's already been done once.

Did you surf the internet in 1985? I doubt it, but I bet you were starting to by 1995.

The change in your habits was born out of a change in the internet's interface. It's too hard to remember a number like 64.236.29.120 so a system of domain names was created to simplify the process of taking us somewhere like cnn.com.

In other words:
http://64.236.29.120 = http://www.cnn.com

Similarly, a system will eventually be created to take us from some crazy set of numbers to an online stream of what we now know as 95.7 FM in Houston.

Again, the question is, how many of our AM and FM signals will be worth a damn when that time comes? It's not as far off as you may think, and there's only so much budgetary stripping to the bone that can be done before the entertainment bone is broken entirely.

I'm not a doom and gloom guy. I've always believed that one person can change a radio station and one station can change a market, and one market can change the medium. It's happened before. We all know who the legends are in terms of stations and talent. But will there be future legends for radio when the medium becomes too constrictive for talent to develop?

With each passing year, my doubts grow.

The downfall of radio is the downfall of man: It's greed.

It's worth looking into how the Japanese treat their auto factory workers, and how their actions from decades past are still shaking the U.S. auto industry today.

They paid their workers ten cents a day and forced them into submission, right?

No.

The Japanese empowered their workers and created a business culture that was (and all too often still is) the opposite of ours.

It's a long story, but the short version is this - and it directly applies to radio:

The Japanese wanted a piece of the worldwide auto market, and their initial attempt was typical. They tried to win on cost. They implemented a system of "lean production" where they stripped the cost of production to the bone. Gee, doesn't that sound familiar?

What they got for their effort was a very affordable car that wasn't worth the metal it was made of. Garbage. But, let's be honest... cheap sells. And their cars did sell. And they broke down. As George Bush once said, "Fool me once, shame.... shame on you. Fool me twice, I won't get fooled again." (...Grin)

The Japanese realized the strategy of cheap would lose in the end as competitors built more reliable cars.

This is one area where I believe radio is dead wrong today. Cutting costs to the bone is a short term strategy that will lead to long term failure as competing forms of media become either more entertaining, or equally entertaining with fewer commercials.

Radio can't win by cost cutting. But radio can win by outperforming... and that's exactly what the Japanese auto industry realized they needed to do to compete with the U.S.

Optimum-lean didn't mean even more cost cutting. Instead, it meant running appropriately lean and investing in their workers. It meant doing a better job of hiring the best people to work in all areas of a factory from management all the way down to the worker on the line. It also meant teaching their workers and above all - this is the most important part - it meant empowering them.

In a Japanese factory, a lot more is expected of a worker than to just make the product. The worker is expected to become an expert at their job to the point where he or she can find and implement better ways of making the product, be it through eliminating waste or through innovation. I'm talking about individual creativity, and, even more importantly, empowerment.

To this very day, Japanese auto workers are expected to literally stop production of the line if quality is threatened.

The Japanese approach was the exact opposite of ours, and by the 1990s as their cars overtook ours in terms of quality, style and reliability, it was pretty clear whose approach was superior. Even today, for American workers right here in the U.S. of A., there's a difference between how it's done at the auto factory making American cars in Detroit and the auto factory making Japanese cars in Kentucky.

Obviously, the auto industry is far more complicated than that, and there were plenty of other advantages and disadvantages on each side. My post is only intending to address how workers are treated, what is expected of them, and how the two approaches had a direct effect on he level of creativity, and thus, quality.

I'm not saying the Japanese are better. I'm saying a system of top-down management is worse. And that is exactly what deregulation brought to radio.

Deregulation brought us huge radio corporate structures that govern their properties like a factory, and the approach isn't working.

Deregulation brought us a system where a jock in Baltimore can come up with ideas for a better show that won't air because they don't fit the Clear Channel operating procedure. Deregulation brought us a system where a program director in San Francisco can't change the course of his or her station to fit the market because it's not what CBS deems appropriate.

Deregulation is turning a creative medium into a factory with an outdated business model. Might as well be building Pintos, eh? Or maybe you're at more of a Chevy Nova kind of station.

Detroit isn't the only place where we're learning the hard way that strategy doesn't work.

TV viewership on the major networks is down, but that doesn't stop American Idol from grabbing an average of 30 million pair of eyeballs before the contest even heats up.

These are tough times for radio, but I wonder what Seacrest's numbers are like on Kiss in LA, or Kraddick's on Kiss in Dallas. Look what happened to K-Rock when Stern left.

Content is king, but since people can get music anywhere, radio needs its content to be about a lot more than just playing the hits.

The suits controlling radio have been allowing the quality of its content to plummet thanks to cost-cutting, piss-poor sales strategy, corporate dictated programming and lazy gimmickry. All of that garbage needs to stop, but I doubt it will since the business of radio has been so wrecked that it can hardly afford to create the content needed for its own survival.

I had a friend who made his entire career through ballsy job interviews and delivering results. He'd drive into a market for the interview, assess the competitive situation and then, when interviewing for the PD gig, he'd say something like "Hire me and I'll double your 25-54s in 2 books. If I don't, fire me." He'd usually get the gig and then turn the so-so station into a market leader through a combination of focusing the playlist and empowering his jocks.

I used to help him build clocks from time to time and we'd look at Bs as if they were a problem. Bs are solid and safe, but they're not where the passion is. You can use that mentality to assess everything else going on during an airshift, from what the jock is talking about to how you promote your own promotions.

Passion records.
Passionate jocks.
Passion programming.

The idea of turning around a station that way isn't possible these days because everything from song adds to how long a jock's break can be is dictated by some clown in a different state.

The funny thing is, I'm not anti-corporate.
I'm anti-crap.

By the way - speaking of "Build it and they will come" - I always thought that would be a great slogan for a company that makes vibrators.

It's time to enter into a new age of superstar air talent, where program directors are creative geniuses rather than fixtures in board room meetings. It's time for radio to become fun again, before it's too late.

Personally, I think satellite radio is doomed. And I think HD radio as a compelling medium is doomed.

Terrestrial radio, on the other hand, has a relatively easy fix for it's problems. No, really.

Put the keys back in the hands of the person driving the car. Then demand, and reward, results.

I'll use Movin' in Dallas as an example. The gimmick landed with a thud in the fall, and the rest of the market kicked it in the winter. This makes sense, being that the format is radio's version of a poor man's get rich quick scheme. I'm sure glad they didn't wipe out a heritage station to put that thing on the air!

Still, the solution is simple. Throw out the gimmick. Lose the cheezy imaging. Kill that embarrassment of a website. In its place, launch a unique Dallas radio station, targeting the same 25-44 women in Dallas that Movin' is failing to reach. Unless aliens came down from outer space and abducted every woman in the metroplex, I think there's plenty of room for a 25-44 female station to succeed there.

Hire superstar quality air talent. Staff it 24/7 with air talent who have something to say. Air talent who will live, eat and breathe Dallas. Create fun viral marketing type promotions that get listeners talking - and enjoying radio again. Hire someone who creates imaging that has intelligence and wit. Inspire people. And for the music? To hell with formats. Research those 25-44 women and play their favorites, regardless of format. Hire an MD who longs for the old days when music was king, and have that person build playlists by demographic, not by industry expectations. I remember working with an MD who nit-picked every aspect of his logs. It was his art.

Most importantly of all, corporate needs to empower people at the station level. If those people fail, fire them. If they succeed, reward them with even more freedom.

I don't envy the position record labels find themselves in as music becomes increasingly disposable. These days, consumers treat music like cheap beer whereas previous generations treated it like fine wine. Then again, corporate radio is treating it's talent like cheap beer rather than fine wine.

It needed: Must. Have. Content.

Ah, but that's precisely what satellite radio didn't have.

Using cable TV as an example: in the old days, fuzzy TV via UHF/VHF was good enough. Sure, it was annoying to adjust the rabbit ears to catch an episode of Three's Company, but whatever. It worked.

Then, one day, MTV came along, and the only place to get it was on cable. Hello subscribers!

Remember the first commercials for MTV? They were advertising something brand new - a channel of non-stop music videos. I bet you still remember the ad's slogan over a quarter century later ("I want my MTV!", as if I even had to remind you).

For far too long, satellite radio was like cable before the birth of MTV. There wasn't a compelling reason to pay for it.

Do you even remember any of the early commercials for satellite radio? The commercials were about as compelling as the product itself. The only commercial I remember talked about a guy driving coast to coast without ever losing the signal. Great, so satellite radio is cool to have once every few years. True, satellite radio is mostly commercial free, but a lack of commercials does not equate to compelling content. It just means less interruption of the same old content people were already getting for free.

Until Sirius and XM started picking up programming like Stern and O&A, there wasn't really any must-have content to justify buying special equipment and then paying a monthly fee. And now, the geniuses at the satellites are allowing some of the only unique content they have (Opie and Anthony, for example), to be broadcast on terrestrial radio as well.

INSANITY!

The sad thing is, terrestrial radio is walking the same path of lackluster content with HD. I realize that, unlike satellite radio, HD is free once you buy a new radio, but so what? Where's the must-have content that makes a listener's current radio not good enough?

Oh god, some bozo is going to mention a music mix again.

I can't believe that in this age of instant gratification we still have broadcasters stupid enough to believe that waiting to hear a song you like on a playlist is a form of compelling entertainment. Honestly, I find that mentality shocking and downright sad.

A mix of music is no more compelling than borrowing someone's iPod. In fact, it's less compelling. At least, on someone else's iPod, a listener can search for songs he or she prefers.

Satellite radio did not fail.
The programming on satellite radio failed.
That's a big difference.

The programming on satellite radio wasn't compelling. This makes me wonder how any broadcaster with even half a clue would think the future of HD radio will be any different.

In fact, with the direction terrestrial radio is headed (Jack, Movin', seven-second talk breaks, every piece of imaging sounding like a production library demo), it's future isn't much brighter.

For satellite radio to be successful, it needs...
For HD radio to be successful, it needs...
For terrestrial radio to remain successful, it needs...

...compelling content that is unique to it.

Music isn't enough.

Does it still happen? Yes.
Do people still get jobs that way? Yes.
Is it the best way? Absolutely not. In fact, I'd consider it a last resort.

If you'd like to put yourself at the back of the line when it comes to finding a gig and hope that your demo is so out of the ballpark awesome that the station hires you instead of someone who they were already aware of, your results will speak for themselves, but let's be honest here... even if your demo is that awesome, wouldn't you rather be the person the PD got a tip about? "Hey, you need to check out this guy's stuff."

We all gripe and moan about the need for radio to change - myself included. It's easy to point out the changes corporate needs to make. But what about the changes *we* need to make?

Change has also got to start with us. You, and me.

There are expenses that come with any career, and radio is no different. How many of us have given a friend $100 when he got blown out of a gig so he could afford to buy a spindle of CDs, a ream of good paper and mailing supplies. Or hell, how many of us have been on the receiving end of such a gift? I remember getting blown out due to management changes and the production director offered to order me a box of clamshells for mailing CDs. We all KNOW the expenses that come with finding a gig.

What about the expenses that come with HAVING a gig? You need headphones, right? You need CDs to save your airchecks, right? (please tell me you do this).

You need a real website. Come on now, it's 2007, not 1997. You need to start using your online presence as a way to get other people to market your work for you. You need a link at the bottom of every email you send that leads to your site. How can someone who works in the media not understand the power of advertising? Or of grass roots marketing?

A domain name costs NINE dollars a year. Decent webhosting costs $10 a month or less.

Also, get a myspace page and link it to and from your real website. Myspace is cool, and it can be a superb tool, but it's important to have a real 'thisisme.com' type domain to pass around. It looks professional, and it's great for using on the phone. Let's say you sent a demo the old fashioned way, and the PD liked it. If you're on the phone with the PD, you can say "oh, and by the way, I've posted samples of spots I've written on my site." It's a great way to show far more versatility than you ever could on a demo.

Think of the things you want radio to do differently. You want content, right? You want personality, right? You want resources. So, why are you denying yourself those very same things when it comes to marketing yourself? Why limit your personality to what they hear on a demo?

A great jock is more than what we hear on the air. A great jock is prep, and captivating public appearances. A great jock is people skills and a superb communicator. A great jock is marketing savvy, even if the jock doesn't realize it.

Is an air check the 'only' way to show that you are those things? Part of the reason I started This Is The Box is because I wanted to show that I had programming smarts far beyond what was on my demos.

Last, but absolutely not least, if you're a jock or prod person on the beach, you really should learn at least the basics of web design. It's a bitch at first, but it gets easier as you grasp the concepts of html, css and such. Then, it becomes another reason for a PD to hire you rather than someone else.

Are you into photography? Use your site as a reason to become a better photographer. A jock with a camera is a valuable thing, in my opinion. Good pics on a station website...? That's content - even if the pics are just from a station event.

Or maybe you're a writer? Use your site as an excuse to write more, and to become a better writer. Again, we're talking versatility here. Maybe you could be the person who helps write promos.

Today is a new day, and we've got to live it a new way, or the blame for continued misdirection will be ours.

Change starts with you. (and me)

Listeners don't give a rats ass about HD, but they sure do love to talk about Britney's big bald head. Why? That's easy. People love people, and people love to hate people too.

I could write a book about the ways radio isn't doing its part in terms of investment in the future - but that won't do you any good, so instead, I'll talk about you.

YOUR career is your obligation and no one else's. Invest in yourself. Do whatever it takes to excel, even if it means spending your own money on equipment or cutting voicework for free for a small market station so you can build a portfolio.

I've seen jocks buy their own mics and portable recorders so they could interview people on the streets for bits for their shows. I've also seen other jocks say "WTF? Why should *I* have to pay for that shit?" You shouldn't. But if you don't have access to the tools you need and your station won't provide them, you can either send mp3 demos with a note saying "this is what I'd do if I had access to what I need" or you can invest in yourself and send demos that show why you are a future superstar.

You've got to invest in yourself.

Speaking of investing in yourself... this past January, I intended to write a series of posts called "The Year Of The Demo," but sadly, life got in the way and I never got around to it. The Year Of The Demo was going to be an approach to building the best possible demo while you have a gig, and then putting the pieces in place for marketing it - and thus, marketing yourself. Hopefully, I'll eventually get around to writing all of that out. In the meantime, here's a thought:

Do you have a website yet? Get one while you have a gig so that when the day comes that you unexpectedly find yourself out of work, you've got everything in place. This is especially important if you're working your way up the ladder. The website should be a place to show off what you're doing on the air. Not for the sake of finding a job (in other words, you don't want to make your current PD think you're looking)... instead, build your site for the sake of having an online portfolio. Post airchecks, post bits... post whatever it is you do that makes you special. And by all means, do it when you're not looking for a gig, because looking for a new gig can be a full time job unto itself.

Yes indeed... invest in yourself. You're not only the best you you've got... you're the only you you've got. And you're worth it.

Commercials are what commercials are, eh?

Clear Channel has a trading network set up where the staffers swap voices, scripts, workparts, and ideas.

That equals better sounding spots.

For the staffers, this trading network also equals exposure. Sure, one could argue it's only exposure within the company, but we all know that a new gig often means working for another company.

The lowering of quality and standards is reversible. But reversing that trend takes a lot of hard work, and that hard work begins with bringing hard working people together.

I'm not saying CC is some kind of hero. They led the charge toward so much of what caused the woes radio faces today. Lower standards, fewer staffers, slashed budgets. I'm not arguing that. But change happens, and change doesn't always have to be for the worse. The question is - are you treating the CC of today is if it's the CC of years' past?

As an example of why you'd be a fool to do that, take a look at CBS Radio.

The further down the Arbitron page you scroll, the greater the odds of finding CBS stations. They're struggling in more and more markets with more and more stations, and they will most likely continue to do so until someone with enough power to instill real change says enough is enough.

The reason I mention this "one step forward" (the sharing of production talent within Clear Channel) is because I see it as a potential step towards bringing even more talent together. What CC needs to do next (if they haven't already), is set up the same sort of networks for their air talent, especially their morning shows, night shows, and dare I say afternoon shows?

Actually, it should be a two step process:

Step 1: Turn the company into a place where broadcasters want to work by bringing more to the table than money. Bring opportunity for growth and advancement. Turn the company into a place where creativity is rewarded rather than shunned. Easier said than done? Maybe. But the upside is huge, and with CBS struggling so much and Susquehanna in flux, the time couldn't be better.

Step 2: Create a talent scout position to find talent and get them in the company. I got blown out of a CC gig years ago and there wasn't any way for me to stay in the company even if I'd wanted to (which, at the time, I didn't).

If I wanted to land a gig at Clear Channel today (or CBS, or Citadel, or just about any other company), there isn't a centralized place for me to send my package.

I'm not saying the hiring process should be in anyone's hands but the local station. However, it sure would help if there was a national talent scout who tried to connect available talent with company openings.

To borrow a famous phrase, bringing talent together is one small step for broadcasters that could lead to one great step for broadcasting as a whole. Let's just hope it's one small step among many.

Well, that's just crap. Research and vision are two entirely different things, though each, combined with talent, is essential to long term success.

Research is nothing more than finding out what people like/want/need/hate/etc.

Research doesn't provide answers. It only guides, based on the reader's understanding of the answers given to questions asked.

In other words, research tells you "what," but wisdom tells you the "why."

Research can be your worst nightmare if the person analyzing it doesn't understand the reasons the research came back the way it did.

By contrast, our competition had a library of over 200 songs.

One tidbit from the research amazed me. For the question "Which station plays the same songs over and over again?" people said it was our competition, not us, by at least a 6 to 1 margin.

Why?

The answer is sex. And happiness. And money.

When was the last time you heard someone complain about making too much money? Or getting too much sex? Or being too happy?

If someone turns on the radio and hears their favorite song, life is good. If they turn on the radio and hear that ultra-safe gold again for the billionth time, they're going to be bored. Do we really need research to confirm this? Apparently, we do.

By the way, it's worth noting that, if memory serves correct, the first thing our consultant did after going over the research was force us to expand our playlist. I'm not bashing consultants - just stupid ones who've lost touch with real listeners. Real people.

Research is only as good as the person asking the questions and their ability to understand the answers given.

Research gets a bad name because, all too often, it's really research with an agenda. Instead of trying to find out what listeners want, we often see research done to justify what management wants to do. And, worse, we often see research ignored when it doesn't accomplish that goal.

Research will never replace vision and talent. Howard Stern didn't become a legend through research. Neither did Rick Dees. But you can bet your ass they had research on their side.

Radio cannot clone success. It must be built.

One radio station at a time.
One daypart at a time.
One entertainer at a time.
One record at a time.

Passion needs to earned, one listener at a time.

To accomplish this:
Know your core.
Enthrall them.

That's what radio people have always wanted to do from day one. It wasn't the guy behind the mic who said "let's save money by firing people." The guy behind the mic said "I'm gonna effing OWN this town. Then let the sales people raise rates."

In the old days, the market's 500 pound gorilla wasn't just a ratings monster, it was a sales monster too. I remember a PD who used to bitch about his fax-machine sales staff. He'd built an arbitron juggernaut through hard work, sweat, creativity and love for the medium. Meanwhile, too many of his salespeople weren't even going out to make sales. They'd sit at their desks and wait for the orders to get faxed in. Today, that radio station is still a market monster - but you can bet your ass their budget is a fraction of what it was 15 years ago.

Look at an example from last week: KRBE. Cumulus bought a special station. The first thing they did upon taking over was fire a talented engineer and push out a successful G.M.

And. That's. Crap.

Cumulus should be ashamed for firing people who more than got the job done.

The saddest day of my radio career was the day I held in my hand research that proved my radio station was on the right track. It was the same day corporate announced the 'new direction' for my station because our current direction made no sense to suits fifteen hundred milesaway who wanted us to be a clone of a station over a thousand miles away from both them and us.

It's not often in this business you find yourself in a position to build something truly special.

What can I say? They broke my heart.

I keep hoping someone will come along and start prioritizing individual success again. I suppose the problem there is that these companies own too many stations, which lead to seeking simple solutions for complex problems.

Don't cut expenses.
Don't clone properties.
Build greatness, one station at a time, because, for the listener, it's the same as it always was:

If Station X rocks, they listen.
If Station X sucks, they don't.

Until owners understand and even embrace that basic truth about radio, radio will be stagnant at best.

The answer is individuality.

No. They haven't exited.

These people have no more exited their radio stations than a shot down airplane exited the sky. Their lives have been disrupted because the bean counters don't understand the value of what was bought.

What exactly was Cumulus paying for? Were they purchasing Susquehanna's signals, or Susquehanna's stations? They're not one in the same.

Susquehanna's radio stations are the result of the hard work, talent and creativity of Susquehanna's people. Dismantling the stations Cumulus paid so much for makes no sense to me.

This had all the markings of a damn fine day. I won't bother giving a date because, though this is my story, it's the sort of thing that's probably happened to you too - probably a few times.

...I arrived at work with a smile on my face, partaking in casual chit-chat and greetings while walking along the gauntlet of desks and offices that led towards the kitchen. Yes, this was looking like a fantastic day indeed. But then, in an instant, everything changed.

A multi-million dollar broadcast property ground to a halt due to the lack of an item that costs a dollar fifty nine.

"What do you mean we're out of sugar?" The squeaky voice of my G.M. was booming through the building with a tremble of honest-to-god panic. "How did this HAPPEN?" ...OK, the 'how it happened' part is pretty obvious... but still...

"Drink it BLACK?" Bad suggestion...

And with that, sales meetings became irrelevant. Marketing took a back seat. The conference call was forgotten. All that mattered was finding an intern - or a promotions person - even somebody from sales would do... anybody! "Jesus Christ! Who're we gonna send to the store?" he pleaded. "Our midday numbers suck! Send HIM. It's not like anybody's listening."

Ouch. Low blow.

I learned a lesson that day. Keep a secret stash of essentials for your coffee? Sugar, creamer, filters?

No. (but our crafty commercial production director did precisely that)

So, I guess my question to you would be, what's happening today on your radio station that will make a listener stop what they're doing and listen... because they want to, or almost even 'have to'? What situation are you creating that warrants it?

The trick is that the urgency has to be genuine. Hype only goes so far. No missing salt packets were going to make my G.M. lose his cool in front of the hot new saleswoman he'd been flirting with.

But a man has needs.

So does a listener.

Just in case you didn't quite get the title to this post:

click here.

Grin.

Shake it!

Here's some relatively simple do-it-yourself advice for recording your own shows - or rolling tape on someone else's.

The Low-Tech Trusty Timer Skimmer:

Buy a good VCR and connect it to your receiver. Buy 30 blank tapes. You can get everything but the tapes at a thrift shop if need be (don't forget the head cleaner!)

The beauty of doing it this way is that you can program the VCR to turn on when you're on the air. Just remember to leave your receiver on (volume won't matter since the VCR gets signal from line-out jacks)

Here's the trick: Set the timer to turn on at exactly the top of the hour, that way, it's easy to shuttle through the tape to find exact breaks. Great bit going into spots at 7:35? Shuttle one hour and thirty five minutes into the tape. Get the break - dub it - save it for later.

The Hi-Tech Home-Studio Skimmer:

This is your career we're talking about here. Invest in yourself. You're worth it.

Buy a radio with a line-out jack.

If you add timer software, you can set your computer to turn itself on, record, and turn itself off. I do this with software called Audio Hijack (link below) in order to roll tape on morning shows in different time zones that stream on the web. By the time I wake at 7am west coast, I have an entire 6 to 10am east coast morning show recorded and waiting for me. This was surprisingly simple to set up.

The Geeked-Out Portable Skimmer:

Buy a laptop. I'll recommend a Mac because I'm a Mac kind of guy.

Buy a Radio Shark by Griffin for PC or Mac. (info at griffintechnology.com)

Buy a piece of software called Audio Hijack (by Rogue Amoeba)

Here's how it works: The Radio Shark is a relatively small radio that plugs into your computer via a USB port. It comes with software that puts a tuner on your screen. Audio Hijack is software that can grab sound from any application or input on a Mac and record it as a sound file - mp3, AIFF, WAV, etc. Audio Hijack also has many great features built in, like a timer. Let's say you're on the air from 6 to 10am. Set Audio Hijack to start recording the Radio Shark at 6am. Set it to start a new file each hour. When you get home, pitch the files if you don't want em, or burn the individual hours to CD.

And finally, The In-Studio Headset Jack Skimmer:

If you've got a laptop, a minidisk recorder, or some other form of a recorder, you could always go to Radio Shack and buy a cable to run from an extra headset jack in the air studio into your recorder, and tape your shows that way.

The cable you'll need will be a quarter-inch OUT to either an 8th inch miniplug IN, or a quarter-inch OUT to a pair of RCA INS (left and right). The quarter-inch out is for the headset jack, and the eight inch or RCA in depends on what your recorder has for input jacks.

Test this out ahead of time to learn the appropriate volume to set the headset volume to so your airchecks will always sound good, not to mention consistent.

Bottom line: Don't rely on your employer for airchecks. Take ownership of your career.

Here's a bonus tip for archiving braks: Set up a series of folders on your computer where you save demo-worthy breaks.

Call one "Personality breaks" maybe. Another could be for breaks that sell the station, or the current promotion. Have another for great phoners... etc.

Do this over time and you'll never find yourself screwed when you get blown out of a gig, or when an opportunity comes your way. You'll have a stash of great material to make custom demos to match the gig you hope to land.