6-30-2014
Anybody who has ever discovered a long-ignored cantaloupe under the green, scummy bacon in the fridge drawer, already knows the reality. While maintaining a surface visage of ripeness and goodness, the interior has been rotting away. When that internal mass of gloop eventually gets transported to the trash, it is fit only as a smorgasbord for a new generation of maggots.
For some years now, audiences and advertisers have been considering radio in a similar fashion ? they don?t particularly like cantaloupes anyway. Besides, the ?best before? date has come and gone. Plus, hidden away as it so often is, radio, like fruit at the bottom of the tray, is easy to ignore. Further, radio enjoys a dubious benefit: As it goes bad, it doesn?t immediately generate that nausea-producing, odiferous experience sometimes referred to as ?stinkin? to high heaven.? That takes more time.
This might yet develop into an interesting analogy. But then, I am likely to expand it out to include select vegetables and maybe even livestock. No. It ends here. In the meantime, the direct phone line (?The Bat Phone?) between the P.D.?s office and the control room is melting and I?m going to have to talk her down ? again.
I was going to get around to this point eventually anyway. The irony that is companion to what I am about to insist upon would be hilarious, were the ramifications not so terribly tragic. Since I say it, I will put it in quotes. ?Radio people ? managers, programmers, consultants, sales execs, creative, and on-air performers ? have no idea of how to listen to the radio!? Now, I realize I just made an all-encompassing, non-verifiable statement. But then, I also pay some attention to the rumors about those that do know how to listen to the radio having been quietly squirreled away to very pleasant rest and retirement hospices in extremely tranquil locations. Places where the services are exemplary and where thoroughly tasty and nourishing menus are being enhanced with powerful pharmaceuticals, t rendering the already-addled inhabitants, content but impotent.
Why, an otherwise healthy conspiracy theorist might wonder, would, say, a cartel of corporate radio interests go to the trouble of clearing the decks, so to speak, of a group of people who have some exceptional skills and extraordinary intuitions? Like a few other circumstances where such is the case, the evidence for an explanation is, indeed, self-evident: The costs of making appropriate, necessary and (potentially) profitable adjustments to our model of delivering radio are perceived to be too great to justify the effort, expense, and risk. Sadly, the alternative ? the one that is already in play ? is to face the storm, untethered to the standing rigging, and be swept overboard.
Staff Alert: Radio is losing its appeal and its capacity to influence on behalf of advertisers at an alarming rate. That it still enjoys elements of its own mass and momentum leaves little about which to get or stay excited ? long term.
I wonder if it wouldn?t be too much to speculate what would result if a group of highly evolved aliens were to arrive here on Earth and settle into their Howard Johnson hotel rooms to monitor commercial radio stations.
Here is what they would be hearing:
- Stations playing the same kinds of tunes as all the other stations who are after similar audiences.
- Stations with severely limited numbers of those tunes. (Maybe that?s all there are.)
- Stations that continuously tell their audiences how great they are. (The stations ? not the audiences.)
- Stations that play their commercials in clumps so long that the aliens can go down to the bar for a quick belt ? and not miss anything.
- Stations that play commercials that are so embarrassingly crude, ineffectual, and unappealing that a space-guy could be forgiven for questioning why the advertisers don?t demand their money back.
- Stations communicating to their audience as if the station had some kind of authority over that audience and could continuously get away with telling the audience what to do ? subtly and directly.
- Stations? on-air and creative performers assuming they have intimate and immediate, personal contact with the audience ? one individual at a time.
- Stations whose on-air talent is not allowed to even make the attempt to communicate over such long periods that the aliens could adjourn again to the hotel bar for another smash and be back in time for some anemic blathering from the talent ? even as much of that is just more innocuous station promo.
What is truly weird and mysterious is that the aliens would recognize these gross, exceptional and pervasive flaws ? instantly. Radio-people, on the other hand, have yet to figure any of this out. I mean, I have to wonder: Are we Earthlings really that unaware of our own (radio) environments that we are unable to make these obvious distinctions? The evidence and lack of response would, in fact, support that very proposition.
Radio, like so many individuals and the organizations they construct, has been enduring a set of circumstances that are intolerable. Over the decades, the circumstances have become even worse. Some of that is as a result of external forces. Most of it, however, has been as a result of accepting self-inflicted wounds as a cost of doing business.
Alien space-guys would have no alternative but to declare to each other: ?Jumpin? Jehosaphat, Ernie! These radio Earthlings have taken all this time to figure out what absolutely doesn?t work, and now they are doing more of it ? harder!! So, let?s split for the bar. The last time I left when all those idiot commercials were on, I discovered something fantastic, sweet, and fresh. The Earthlings call it a ?cantaloupe?!?
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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