Bring Back Real Radio

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

... i don't think we will ever see a station fully staffed with live bodies 24/7.

If a radio station staffed the way we did back in say 1957.... what would all the people do?

We used to get those new fangled 45 RPM records in the mail every day. Someone had to open them, give a quick listen and decide what to start playing now, and what to put in storage (if you had a spare space like we did) just in case four months from now the thing becomes a hit. Someone needed to take one of those durable green "shucks" and number it and number the record and put it in the appropriate shelf along side all the tidy rows of records from the last 5, 10, 20 years.

Every morning when I came to work, I had to go through those shelves, find records appropriate for today, organize them in little stacks representing each hour or half-hour of my shift. I had to take records out of the shuck, put them on the turntable and cue them. Play them. Announce them. Take them off the turntable, re-shuck them, and put them back in their assigned library shelf.

In this day and age where music is stored on a hard drive, whether the automation machine plays it, or a live announcer clicks and icon on screen to play it.....

..... tell me what this full staff of people would do all day long? Play grab-ass and tell each other shaggy dog stories? We used to do some of that... and to the best of my knowledge the automation machines don't do that for us.

 

[cspotrun]

you haven't been in radio for some time right? there are ALOT of things to do around a radio station, when you see the ads for people they want "to wear many hats", they usually list them and its not ALL the duties related to what goes on at a station today. but when someone is talking about a radio station being staffed 24/7, i think they mostly mean a Local Live On-Air person around the clock. which will sadly not happen again in the radio industry.

 

[TheBigA]

i think they mostly mean a Local Live On-Air person around the clock. which will sadly not happen again in the radio industry.

You needed someone to wait for the record to end. Don't need that anymore. You needed someone to take transmitter readings. Don't need that any more. You needed someone to answer the phones. Nope.

What needs to happen is for someone to realize times have changed, and there are things radio CAN do that don't involve 1970s technology.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

you haven't been in radio for some time right? there are ALOT of things to do around a radio station, when you see the ads for people they want "to wear many hats", they usually list them and its not ALL the duties related to what goes on at a station today.

Yes, my days of being in the station 40+ hours per week and being an employee are very dated. The example I gave from circa 1957 was intended to make that clear.

When I read messages posted in these forums by people wanting radio to be what it used to be, I don't interpret that to mean they want radio to be what it was in 2003... or 1993... and in most cases even 1983 represents an era when the "eggs of nostalgia" were already long since laid.

HOWEVER!!! In the last 10 years I made a grand effort to return to the day-to-day toil of making a radio station function. And when I left a number of years ago, I promised myself IF I did return someday, it would NOT be as a powerless worker-bee who had no ability or authority to set the priorities.

So I spent a few years talking with brokers. Why is this station available? What mistakes do you see the current owner making? What is the current owner doing right? O.k. Broker... you're an old wise broadcaster. What do you think of the market. Why is this market really ripe for a properly operated radio station? What makes to market so tough that the station has had 4 owners in six years. What would you or I have to do to make it work... to engage the community as our helpers and friends instead of our roadblock and our enemy.

I downloaded automation software and manuals and operated them enough on my own computer to understand what has to happen inside the radio station today.... which I didn't know since I hadn't been working there recently.

I visited absentee owned stations where the "hired help" showed me around. I asked them what they wished they could be doing that present ownership did not support or did not allow.

I built financial models of two or three of these stations where I could say: What if I raised the price of spots by 15%, what does that do to the net profit at the end of the year. (These models were so complex that they figured out how much more I would pay out in sales commissions, how much more I would pay out in music royalties, etc.)

You can read my posts and say to yourself: The old fart is still living in 1957. He has no idea how we do radio today. There were a couple of stations, one in particular, where when I got through I knew more about the station than the owner did. And I knew which employees were carrying the load, and which employees needed to be shown the door promptly and gracefully.

And there are those of us who read all these posts and we, too, make judgements about people who write here. We recognize people who understand what it takes to make radio work, and we recognize "grand-stand quarterbacks" who have no clue what makes radio work.... they just want some one to wet-nurse them with audio that sounds like it did back in the prime of their life.

The thread is "Bring back REAL radio." The radio we did back in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s was REAL RADIO.... for the 50s, 60s, 70s. If we brought it back today, it would be un-real for today. I think what we all really want is RADIO TODAY that gives us satisfaction TODAY just like radio THEN gave us satisfaction THEN... as a participant or as a listener.

The challenge today is to assemble radio that is REAL for 2013 both as it relates to the financial statement... and for the ears of the 2013 listeners.

We have no encyclopedia or wikipedia that tells us what the 2013 listeners really wants. I'm pretty sure they don't want 1957. ;D

 

[cspotrun]

look, Real Radio is not comming back, because there's nobody left in radio who remembers what Real Radio was... so the crap comming out of your radio is whats called The New Normal..

 

[TheBigA]

look, Real Radio is not comming back, because there's nobody left in radio who remembers what Real Radio was... so the crap comming out of your radio is whats called The New Normal..

Depends on what you think "real radio" was. For a lot of people, it was network radio, providing drama and vaudeville, with live bands instead of recordings. That era of real radio ended 50 years ago. No one remembers that either. Did radio die then? No. It won't die now either. Radio needs to evolve with the times, and adapt to what the audience wants. Clearly it's not what the audience wanted 40 years ago, because many other options have become available. When AM radio was the only way to hear The Beatles, you listened to AM radio. Once you have 20 other ways to get the same content, everything changes. The thing some consider "real radio" was the crap the listeners put up with in order to hear their favorite music. Once listeners had options that didn't include the elements of "real radio," in other words the DJs and gatekeepers, we see what they really want. And it's NOT "real radio."

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

look, Real Radio is not comming back, because there's nobody left in radio who remembers what Real Radio was...

This forum (RadioDiscussions) is a discussion place where FANS of radio are welcome. We get considerable input from people who are not in radio and/or never in radio.

There are other list serves, forums, etc. that are primarily dominated by CURRENTLY ACTIVE broadcasters. It is interesting to compare the discussions in those other sites compared to the discussion here.

I have to disagree with your post. There are people currently in radio who "paid their dues" through the years. There are station owners who were young, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about beginning their broadcasting careers at the same time I was active in the business.

I don't know what you know about the business. I don't know if you were or are an active broadcaster. But trust me: there ARE people in the business who know what radio used to be. It used to be THEM!

I think they know what can not work.... the way it used to work.

 

[600kogo]

if group owners paid too much for their properties and are mortgaged up the ying yang, it serves them right, they made their debt, but having said that, on top of everything else this economy isn't helping things either. now that they can run a radio station with 1 employee covering 5 different jobs, i don't think we will ever see a station fully staffed with live bodies 24/7. but i do believe when this economy turns around, there will be more jobs in radio as a result. between station owners debt, tax hikes, obamacare mandates and a dozen New Taxes connected to it, a weak dollar, and all the rest, business doesn't stand much of a chance right now, and they know it, so they're saving what money they can for the future & trying to keep the lights on...[/i]

Actually the Waller stations in East Texas are fully staffed with the exception of the over nights. Their revenue is doing well too! The secret is they are not in debt their stations are all paid for in cash!

The only exception is their little AM 1400 KEBE that is translating KZQX a standards station

 

[TheBigA]

The secret is they are not in debt their stations are all paid for in cash!

Just because they paid cash for stations doesn't mean they're not in debt. They're private companies, so we don't k now their financial situation.

 

[Kent]

While it's true that we don't know Waller's financial situation, I have to say it seems plausible that he's not in debt. He owned several stations, including KOOI 106.5, and sold them for big money several years back. I'm thinking he bought several smaller stations for a fraction of the sale price.

 

[TheBigA]

While it's true that we don't know Waller's financial situation, I have to say it seems plausible that he's not in debt.

Buying and selling stations aren't the only aspects of debt. It's been my experience that actual operating expenses generally exceed any debt payments. Lots of Americans are in debt because of credit cards or home mortgages. Yet they somehow manage to live normal lives. They have monthly payments, and they meet them. So debt has little to do with how a company operates.

 

[richaroo]

I worked for Dudley Waller back in the mid 80's if there is one person in radio that is well heeled I think it would be him. I just can't believe he would be in much debt.

 

[TheBigA]

I worked for Dudley Waller back in the mid 80's if there is one person in radio that is well heeled I think it would be him. I just can't believe he would be in much debt.

There's a difference between personal finance and running a company. If you look to the owner of WFNX in Boston, who also owned the Boston Phoenix and other media enterprises, he was personally very well off, but his media enterprises were losing money. So he recently sold his radio station and shut the newspapers down. People on the Boston board suggested he could have afforded to pump as much as a million dollars a year to keep the company afloat, but that's not what he chose to do.

 

[richaroo]

Again, I speak from working with Dudley, I did morning drive on Kebe, and I was paid well, and I know the jocks on Kooi were paid well. All I'm saying is Dudley knows how to run a radio station, and I can't believe he would be in any kind of debt, of any sort.

 

[cspotrun]

look, Real Radio is not comming back, because there's nobody left in radio who remembers what Real Radio was...

This forum (RadioDiscussions) is a discussion place where FANS of radio are welcome. We get considerable input from people who are not in radio and/or never in radio.

There are other list serves, forums, etc. that are primarily dominated by CURRENTLY ACTIVE broadcasters. It is interesting to compare the discussions in those other sites compared to the discussion here.

I have to disagree with your post. There are people currently in radio who "paid their dues" through the years. There are station owners who were young, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about beginning their broadcasting careers at the same time I was active in the business.

I don't know what you know about the business. I don't know if you were or are an active broadcaster. But trust me: there ARE people in the business who know what radio used to be. It used to be THEM!

I think they know what can not work.... the way it used to work.

i'm ONE of them OK, but by your very post you are not satisfied with radio today, i'm not either... that leqaves you and me..where are the rest of them...

 

[TheBigA]

i'm ONE of them OK, but by your very post you are not satisfied with radio today, i'm not either... that leqaves you and me..where are the rest of them...

On social security.

 

[davideduardo]

look, Real Radio is not comming back, because there's nobody left in radio who remembers what Real Radio was... so the crap comming out of your radio is whats called The New Normal..

There are plenty of people who know what radio was like in the 50's when network block programming ceded to music-and-news formats. There are plenty who remember the 60's, when the FCC banned most simulcasts and spawned many viable new offerings on FM. And there are also plenty who remember the 70's when FM overtook AM as the "band of majority". There are even more who remember the 80's when changes in regulations gave new life to AMs which adopted spoken word formats.

And so on.

What I don't know is what "real radio" is.

That's because each era or period in radio's life has had a different definition of what was real.

Clocks generally don't have an option to run "backwards".

 

[redrocket]

I'm sure this one was talked out but I just saw it pop back up.

No offense to the original poster, but one of the problems radio has is too much living in the past. Whatever radio you grew up listening to (and working in), that radio doesn't exist anymore. There may be some tiny stations who are closer to what you want but for the most part, it's gone. I have a lot of friends who worked in newspapers, and it's the same way there. The industry has changed completely. There's no room for error anymore, and things have to be run razor-thin to make it work.

 

[cspotrun]

i'm ONE of them OK, but by your very post you are not satisfied with radio today, i'm not either... that leqaves you and me..where are the rest of them...

On social security.

Exactly, which was my point several posts ago. we can't go back in time but if one thinks a mix of Personality and Entertainment and music comming out of a radio is Old Fashioned, the industry is doomed to be lost in the shuffle of other media options. and sadly it may be too late.

 

[TheBigA]

the industry is doomed to be lost in the shuffle of other media options. and sadly it may be too late.

You view that as a negative thing. But the minute other options became available, radio WAS just one of several media options. There's nothing radio can do about that. You can mope about it, or deal with it. People aren't going to give up their cell phones or internet, they're not going to go back to the past regardless of what people in radio do. You can't put the toothpaste into the tube. Those of us working in the industry have learned we have to play the cards we've been dealt. That means we have to understand what the public wants, and give it to them. That changed the minute the public got other options, which was actually back in the 1980s. Once music became portable and programmable, old style radio as you knew it became obsolete. It just took a while for radio to recognize that fact.