I mentioned Gordon McLendon in the above post. Assuming this doesn't infringe on any copyrights here is a speech he gave at early seventies NAB convention. These are the words of a broadcaster:
I was, am, and always be essentially a program man. When I was a boy, there was no greater thrill than to climb in an armchair on a Saturday afternoon and listen to Ted Husing's great football broadcasts. I guess that's where I fell in love with radio, and nothing has ever changed with me. It is almost a physical anguish for me to talk to an operator who has lost the romance of radio And to me, the bewitchment of radio is its programming.
In the end, given a good signal over the population in your market, the wise owner and/or manager will spend every possible moment on programming, because programming is his product. I have always had a personal philosophy on sales as they relate to programming or, if you will, programming as it relates to sales. At each of my radio stations, programming has always been almost totally accentuated over sales, because I have always believed that if the programming is there, the dollars will follow. The few times I have allowed sales to dictate programming have invariably been among the times I have been beaten decisively in the ratings. Be sure that your station's signal strength over its major population centers is at optimum. The finest programming effort is generally nonproductive unless the radio station's signal is conveniently hearable. It is recorded that Washington's troops at Yorktown missed hearing General Cornwallis' words of surrender because the wind was blowing from the wrong direction.
Let's add the following questions to the Federal Communication Commission's renewal forms: What innovative programming has your station originated during the present license period? How many hours during the average week does the licensee's president, owner, manager, and/or chief operating officer spend in station programming? And, what has your station contributed toward improvement of the radio industry within the present license period? I certainly do not object to whopping profits, but rather to the tendency of some radio operators, both conglomerate and otherwise, to let their great signals, rather than their programming carry them in the community sales-wise. Almost invariably, these stations originate programming only half as good as it should be, and it is almost never innovative. People listen to radio not only for various services, but for entertainment as well. It is not ignoble to entertain. The FCC should award high renewal marks to stations which in the FCC's judgement have produced creative and/or innovative programming in the entertainment sector. I see radio owners everywhere who are losing sight of their cost advantage over television. Oddly enough, no businessman was most cost- conscious than J. Paul Getty. To Getty is was more important to the man with the "millionaire mentality" to be able to think small than to think big - in the same sense that he gives meticulous attention to the smallest details and misses no opportunity to reduce costs in his own or his employer's business. Today, many a station is letting its God-given radio supremacy in cost per thousand slip away. I see station after station raise base salaries and other fundamental operating expenses on the strength of momentarily higher ratings or a few good sales months. This increase in base pay, and other items, can be an unnecessary error. Increases in compensation should, like a cost-of-living index, be dictated by a station's current audience position as determined by audience survey.
In the days when most were predicting television would crush radio to death, those were some difficult days for those of us who stood on radio's embattled ramparts and yet somehow believed. Today, radio is still gaining, not losing, in sets in use. One might now raise a facetious question: Will radio destroy television? I am bullish on radio. The word radio evokes many sharp memories from the old years - Pick 'n Pat, Sam & Henry, the Eskimos, the Atwater Kent hour, Major Bowes, Myrt & Marge, Stoopnagle & Budd, Frank Munn, the Golden voice of radio, the A&P Gypsies, the Happiness Boyus, Graham McNamee, Husing, Bill Stern, Winchell, Boake Carter, Murrow, Jolson, Will Rogers, Benny, Allen & Woolcott - great names fraught with the memory of entertainment giants. The last of a magnificent school that with them died forever. They are all gone now, with their long forgotten audiences, but behind them they left the legend of a radio era as dazzling as the morning sun. To those of us who stand on the threshold of radio's tomorrow, these years have been but the closing of a brilliant chapter. The pages of radio's next chapter will prove once again that there are still sounds worth a thousand pictures. Radio is beautiful.
