• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Nicole Alvarez’s KROQ resignation column

The problem isn't the station. The past isn't coming back. People aren't going to throw away their digital devices and go back to radios. At the same time, the music being made now isn't as consensus as it once was. The music industry isn't making music to get played on the radio. The whole system has changed. To blame the radio station misses the point.

I can tell by the picture in the Hollywood Reporter article that Nicole feels closer to the music. That's great. She should get a job in the music business. That's not what radio is. There are a lot of former radio people working in the music business. They have a lot of knowledge and can help artists reach audiences. She might look into that. Or non-commercial radio. Matt Pinfield seems happy at KCSN. The future won't be like the past.
 
I can tell by the picture in the Hollywood Reporter article that Nicole feels closer to the music. That's great. She should get a job in the music business. That's not what radio is.
This. Right here.

Perhaps she had deluded herself into thinking radio was something other than a vehicle to deliver advertising and has now come to understand the reality. It's always been about "the numbers." Now, due to technological evolution, the numbers are not what they used to be, and legacy media is coming to terms with it.

It sucks, for sure. For some people, maybe it's just easier to blame "suits" and "bean counters."
 
It sucks, for sure. For some people, maybe it's just easier to blame "suits" and "bean counters."

I get it. There was a time when radio served this purpose. Radio was the window through which people experience music. Garth Brooks said that 30 years ago. Back then, radio was part of that process. Today artists communicate directly with their fans, and they monetize that relationship. Radio is out of the loop.
 
I can tell by the picture in the Hollywood Reporter article that Nicole feels closer to the music. That's great. She should get a job in the music business. That's not what radio is.

Those of us still in the radio business decades after we started realized early on that it's a business. And we are not in the entertainment business, we are in the advertising business.

I have posted this a few times before in now-closed threads, but this is how I explain it to armchair quarterbacks who justify their philosophies as "I'm your customer so do it my way":

My client is the radio station, because I am the consultant/programmer. My job is to attract as many listeners as possible to have a decent sized audience to sell to advertisers, who are the radio station's clients. The listeners themselves are what the station is selling.

Perhaps Nicole was not clear on that concept and has now become disillusioned as a result. OTOH, I have no misconceptions and I still love what I am doing, so I'm still active as I near the end of my sixth decade on this planet, and over a half century of being in the radio industry.
 
This. Right here.

Perhaps she had deluded herself into thinking radio was something other than a vehicle to deliver advertising and has now come to understand the reality. It's always been about "the numbers." Now, due to technological evolution, the numbers are not what they used to be, and legacy media is coming to terms with it.

It sucks, for sure. For some people, maybe it's just easier to blame "suits" and "bean counters."
I can attest to this delusion. My college radio experience came complete with a pair of rose-tinted glasses. Those glasses broke when I quit my first job in commercial radio less than 2 years into it. I work in the music industry now.

I wonder if Stryker will reel her over to Alt in some capacity. Or, perhaps the island of radio castaways that is The SoCal Sound.
 
OTOH, I have no misconceptions and I still love what I am doing, so I'm still active as I near the end of my sixth decade on this planet, and over a half century of being in the radio industry.
Pardon me, my friend, sorry to burst your bubble. You are in your late 60s, and closing in on the end of your seventh decade.
 
Pardon me, my friend, sorry to burst your bubble. You are in your late 60s, and closing in on the end of your seventh decade.

You're right. I always get that wrong. (I'm lucky to remember what century this is.)
 
Math is so hard these days.

joey-friends.gif
 


Back
Top Bottom