“THE NEW AUDITION TAPE”
If you’re a free agent, or if you’re seeking to fill an opening, you’ve likely found slim pickins’ out there.
Ironically, radio-people-looking-for-jobs and jobs-looking-for-people have never had a harder time finding each other than now, as Consolidation V1 morphs into Consolidation V2. That very juncture is part of the problem. With so many stations changing hands, and new owners seeking economies-of-scale, and corporate cultures melding (or not), hiring is often frozen, and at least cool.
But things aren’t getting tricky, they’re getting trickier. Radio’s talent pool had already gotten real shallow since automation, syndication, voicetracking, and other shortcuts enabled owners to pay sky-high mortgages by paying less for programming.
The timing couldn’t have been worse. Just as music stations upped spot load, along came iPod. Just as Talk Radio was sounding like a seamless, national, homogenized, conservative political rant, along came podcasts, an exotic variety of niche programming. Research referenced on page 6 demonstrates that online listening is now mainstream.
And whatever satellite radio’s future, Sirius and XM marketing have certainly articulated and enhanced negative perceptions about AM/FM radio’s limited programming repertoire.
While technology may seem to hamper the hiring process, it can also help it along.
Smart stations aren’t just feeding audio to a transmitter. Beyond archiving on-air programming for on-demand listening, many stations are producing “other stuff” for online consumption. Already we are hearing people who staff the station’s web site graduate to on-air work. Often they’re entry level people wearing multiple hats on the promotion/production/ webmaster side. They develop a following, the boss knows them to be enthused and dependable, and one thing leads to another.
The station’s Internet operation is the New Age “campus radio station” or “all-night show,” where radio’s Baby Boom generation broke-in (starting the turntable at the wrong speed). And beyond GROWING talent online, stations are now FINDING talent there, perhaps by identifying local podcasters with a gazillion MySpace “Friends.”
If you’re a job-seeker, you should be using the Internet as “the new audition tape.” In Olden Times, talent supply exceeded demand, and wily applicants did what it took to maneuver their manila envelope to the top of the PD’s stack. Each job-applied-for cost the applicant $X in materials + postage, plus the-time-it-took-to-get-there...often only to get lost among umpteen others in a big cardboard box.
Now, talent tout their acts online, making airchecks, photos, resumes, and references available on-demand. And a person’s web site can convey lots more about the person than what-got-stuffed-into-that-manila.
And employers can surf the Internet unobtrusively, without spooking employees by running Help Wanted ads, or getting spotted having lunch with an applicant trying to stay “under the radar.”
Best of all, this new marketplace is FREE. Do-in-yourself blog hubs like
www.Blogger.com,
www.Wordpress.com, and
www.Podomatic.com come with all the “plumbing” built-in. I built
http://barbercast.podomatic.com for a free agent talk host I’m helping. If you’re looking for work, consider creating a similar page; and if you’re looking for help, poke around the blog hubs.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS,
Holland Cooke
News/Talk Specialist
McVay Media
www.HollandCooke.com
