1-4-2013
The Roman Empire provided an extremely efficient and destructive strategy when it, as radio is demonstrating today, stopped paying attention to their defining principles, stopped providing essential services, looted their own treasury, pleaded for a supernatural rescue, and stampeded itself? right into The Dark Ages. The Justinian Plague only put an undignified period to the?uhhh? period.
It is time for an immediate intervention! Radio leadership has been deluding each other and us for too long. They are so quick to blame anything and everything in the environment rather than taking some personal responsibility. Some critics could be thinking along the lines of the TV show ?Bar Rescue.? Engaged readers who have seen the program will appreciate how it is the management that needs the most immediate and most drastic attention. Staffs are usually eager to be engaged and assist in any way they can.
Meanwhile, there is another cloud of locusts on the horizon in the form of radio (possibly) being forced to pay performance fees on the music they play. When they scramble for precedents of jurisdictions that do not pay these fees, they come up with? North Korea. This may be a good thing. The added expenses may be the instigation to cull the herds to the degree that actual broadcasters ? those who understand we are in ?show business? and the ?advertising business? ? will be required to husband this industry back to a prominent place in the media landscape. The exploiters could then be invited to skulk back into the hills to plot the ruination of some other industry ? likely again on borrowed money.
As an aside: The psychology industry may have already published its fifth update to the list of maladies and issues that people experience and which might qualify for billable hours of therapy and/or the administering of psychotropic drugs. It is called The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V). I don?t know if ?the aberrant behaviors consistent with participating in modern radio management? is on the revised list. But, it could be. Some who have suffered under these regimes might claim, ?Absolutely! Therapize them! Medicate them!? The more sincere critics ? those whose careers have been destroyed by these exploiters might go so far as to demand that they ?get the needle?! Personally, when I am wearing my H/R hat, I prefer a model that includes: awareness, understanding, and the implementation of more efficient strategies through training and installation.
Those of radio?s leadership, meanwhile, who are willing to get serious and who realize their days are numbered unless immediate, significant, and appropriate actions are taken, can be hopeful about, if not secure in, the knowledge that help is available. Those with an interest can come see me after the show or call my office for an appointment.
Meanwhile, here is what is more important than making more of those harder, faster, meaner sale calls or, as what the weasel-worders like to call: ?Solution-providing service meetings.? Here, then, is what is more important than finding, generating, buying, or "prestidigitizing" high-quality numbers that demonstrate ROI for advertisers. Here is what is more important than more rock and fewer jocks. Here is what is more important than telling the audience how really great the station is ? all in the hope that such a statement will go unchallenged and that management escapes the building before a demonstration is organized. Here is what is more important than all the time, money, and human resources that are being poured into online presentations and social media.
Radio, music radio especially, is so horrible, so incompetent at, and so unaware of the consequences of its model of communication, that all the other factors mentioned above have taken over in some hierarchy of values. In on-air presentation and spot generation, we absolutely stink. Those who still don?t know what I am talking about can take that position as evidence that there really is something about radio they don?t know.
Good for me that I?m not an in-car screamer. Nor am I a steering wheel pounder. Otherwise, I?d be hoarse and casted in plaster. When I?m driving around and hearing so-called professional broadcasters addressing their audiences in such maudlin, superficial, patronizing, and still authoritarian terms, I will allow myself to mutter viciously under my breath. For me, it?s a mental health release. And it doesn?t always work, either.
Even when the day comes that radio can provide some useful corroborating evidence that the medium can work, the results will still be nebulous unless we correct our own modes of communication first. Plus, I don?t know anybody in radio who is holding their breath until that desired data arrives.
If there was a therapeutic 911-emergency button on radio?s dialer, now would be the time to push it. Immediate therapy is required. The drugs we are taking are not working ? other than to mask the symptoms. Plus, the well-known side effects of the medications include experiencing delusions of invincibility, grandeur, and authority. And those are as degrading and embarrassing as any slobbering drunk at the party. Togas optional.
Ronald T. Robinson has been involved in Canadian Radio since the '60s as a performer, writer and coach and has trained and certified as a personal counsellor. Ron makes the assertion that the most important communicative aspects of broadcasting, as they relate to Talent and Creative, have yet to be addressed. Check out his website www.voicetalentguy.com
(1/4/2013 6:32:14 AM)
Advice for the New Year;
Be leery of those who use big words when small ones will do nicely.
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