2-26-2014
A pilot friend of mine did a stretch flying mail for the U.S. Postal Service some years ago. He flew a Twin Beech C-45H ? made in the late ?40s ? popular, but notoriously underpowered. When any of the pilots was questioned as to the single-engine performance of the aircraft, the tradition was to nonchalantly respond with: ?The scene of the crash moves further downrange.?
Such could be an apt description of the state of modern, music radio. While radio is still running on both engines, the oil pressures are dropping, engine heat is rising, and there are some strange vibrations and noises in the cabin. Plus, maintaining altitude has only been as a result of fire-walling the throttles and throwing out anything in the cabin that isn?t nailed down. This includes cargo, passengers, and designated ?non-essential? crew.
The, so far, unchallenged criticism of music radio has been that in more than 30 years there have been no worthwhile improvements made in programming or commercial production. My contention has always been that, in fact, music radio has backtracked and become even less appealing and effective over this same time period.
Meanwhile, on factory floors, in workshops and garages all over the world, massive improvements are being made in the design and construction of all types of aircraft. Any owners of the venerated Twin Beech keep their planes airworthy for the sake of nostalgia and fun ? not utility. Pilots today can choose from any number of exotic aircraft including home-built, pressurized, 4-place turbine powered, personal missiles that cruise 1200 nm at 300 knots at FL 260.
That new media are flying circles around us and strafing our squadrons ? just for fun ? is a fact that also goes unchallenged. They can do this because they have better equipment and better-trained aircrew. Actually, music radio?s talented pilot corps continues to either bail, or get pushed out the cargo doors. It comes as little surprise that those being dumped suffer their fate as a result of decisions made by some bureaucrat who is flying a desk!
Further, as to training: I can think of few other professional enterprises that require less formal training than music radio. People can get involved in flying without a formal license, but they can?t enter restricted airspace or present themselves for hire. Nobody questions that there might be a little more to the safe operation of an aircraft beyond a desire to ?yank it and bank it.? Radio, however, makes it a point to hire mostly those who can be suppressed and manipulated. I accept the argument that 80 percent of the on-air staff of modern radio is made up of some combination of people who are uneducated, inexperienced, and unqualified, but who are willing to work in a demeaning environment.
In order to bash the analogy into an even mushier pulp, it would be no great stretch to propose that music radio has been flying on ?automatic pilot? for decades. There was a time when this was considered a viable strategy that would lead to greater profits. If it did, it didn?t last long. Today, the words ?radio? and ?growth? don?t belong in the same sentence, or the same county. Now, if somebody wants to include the desperate clawing back from these last years of horrendous losses as a form of growth, they are welcome to do so. Some of the more credulous might find that acceptable.
Flying on ?automatic pilot? may have had some advantages for a while. It was this decision that allowed ownerships everywhere to jettison numbers of pilots, co-pilots, and cabin attendants. As it turned out, potential shippers and passengers were unimpressed by the machinations radio was applying, and continues to apply, and have found other ways of moving goods and people. People, apparently, still respond to the ?personal? (in the case of radio, the ?personality?) touch and are unimpressed by the cold, impersonal, and mechanical.
As a slight aside, I do much of my grocery shopping at a national chain store that is closest to where I live. Every time I walk in, I break the laser counter at the entrance threshold and an annoying, electronically generated voice ?welcomes? me to the store. Thus, my shopping experience begins with an internal, audio experience of ?What a line of impersonal bullbleep!? Radio has taken this ability to raise the hackles of listeners by communicating to them in subtle, but still demeaning, manners to extraordinary levels. So adept is radio at this strategy ? because of having unconsciously applied it for decades ? that it has lost all recognition that it is even doing so. To be more candid: I am completely satisfied that radio?s ownership and leadership have never had any idea they were committing these communicative felonies. They do, however, continue to deny they are guilty ? as charged. They are sincere, too, because they just don?t know.
As a result of music radio?s refusal to pursue any modernization in its communicative models, it finds itself sputtering along at dangerously low altitudes, without the reserve power to recover from even the mildest of stalls. Another strong headwind (possibly supplied by other, competing media) could be enough to bring a number of our aircraft down.
Ownership and management have been presuming that new technologies will provide the long-awaited answers to what has been ailing music radio. They would be mistaken. Any real and lasting improvements will come about only as a result of radio improving its audience services and its production of commercial content. Neither of those can be provided by any technology.
Unlike the entrepreneurs, experimenters, and even lay hobbyists who have been driving innovation in aviation forever, radio embraces no such dedicated gang of enthusiasts. To the contrary, radio?s ownership and management consider such individuals as irritants ? totally unwelcome, annoying, and of no real use anyway. ?Increase hangar security!? they say.
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
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