• 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

If Steve Jobs Ran Your Radio Station

J

JustPastBuffalo

What Jobs proposed would require broadcasters to invest MORE money into their product, and let talented people create great content with a lot fewer restrictions than any radio company out there today. It's the antithesis of the Clear Channel / Cumu-less "systems" approach where everything is quantified to fit into a spreadsheet.

Anybody with the qualities that Jobs prized wouldn't last a month in today's corporate radio, and would go where there was REAL money to be made. The people left in radio today do their damndest to work around corporate and create product that they can be proud of when possible. And it's not always possible.
 
If Steve Jobs ran my radio station.....hmmmmm....

There would be a pile of messages slid under his office door, his e-mail inbox would be stacked up 2GB deep and his voicemail would no longer be able to fit any more messages........because he's dead. And as bad as some programmers are at returning phone calls and e-mails, dead people are decidedly worse.
 
There would be a pile of messages slid under his office door, his e-mail inbox would be stacked up 2GB deep and his voicemail would no longer be able to fit any more messages........because he's dead. And as bad as some programmers are at returning phone calls and e-mails, dead people are decidedly worse.
Click to expand...

??? ??? ???

Maybe I"M confused...
 
Wow. What a great - and frightening - article. It's a MUST READ. And it certainly is the story of too many radio corporations.
 
It's a fine article from Forbes, certainly worth reading. But many of us could have just as easily made the same observation. The problem is, we would have been dismissed by the MBAs and CEOs. That these observations comes from Steve Jobs, through Peggy Noonan, adds a high degree of credibility to what many of us know from personal experience and years in the business.
 
The most interesting parts of the article:

"This isn’t quite the whole story. It’s not just the salesmen. It’s also the accountants and the money men who search the firm high and low to find new and ingenious ways to cut costs or even eliminate paying taxes. The activities of these people further dispirit the creators, the product engineers and designers, and also crimp the firm’s ability to add value to its customers. But because the accountants appear to be adding to the firm’s short-term profitability, as a class they are also celebrated and well-rewarded, even as their activities systematically kill the firm’s future."

"In this mode, the firm is basically playing defense. Because it’s easier to milk the cash cow than to add new value, the firm not only stops playing offense: it even forgets how to play offense. The firm starts to die."

"If the firm is in a quasi-monopoly position, this mode of running the company can sometimes keep on making money for extended periods of time. But basically, the firm is dying, as it continues to dispirit those doing the work and to frustrate its customers."

"As the managers find it steadily more difficult to make money playing solely defense, they become progressively more desperate and start doing ever more perilous things, like looting the firm’s pension fund or cutting back on worker benefits or outsourcing production to a foreign country in ways that further destroy the firm’s ability to innovate and compete."
 
So what's the solution? There is a group who believes we should "kill all the lawyers." So enlarge that to "kill all the lawyers and MBAs?" I don't think so. MBAs have become big and powerful because they do what they're told.

Jobs was an entrepeneur. Not an employee. He didn't do what he was told. He did what he wanted. And if you're an entrepeneur, you can do that. He raised his own money, and spent it as he liked. If you're a Jobs employee, you do what he wants you to do. There was a great documentary on Jobs that interviewed a lot of people who knew him early on, and had the chance to stay with him for the long term. Among them was his original partner Steve Wozniak. Woz could have hung on with Jobs, but ultimately took the money and ran. Same with a lot of people. To some, Steve Jobs was a visionary. To others he was an "enfant terrible."

The fact that Steve Jobs had enough money to buy Clear Channel, but he didn't. In the old days, people like Jobs would buy radio stations to publicize their products. That's what RCA did. That's what Crosley and Westinghouse did. Steve Jobs didn't buy radio stations because today, he can go straight to the public. He doesn't need a medium like radio to show how great his products are. The products sell themselves, and social media motivates the consumers in way radio wishes it could.

So Steve Jobs wouldn't "run" your radio station. He'd build it. But he wouldn't build a traditional towers and transmitters station, because that's old tech. He'd build the new radio station. Run by the people. In fact, his arch enemy Google has built the radio company of the present. All the content comes from users. Google sells the audience and splits it with the content creators. That's a pretty good business, if you know how to play it.
 
TheBigA said:
So what's the solution? There is a group who believes we should "kill all the lawyers." So enlarge that to "kill all the lawyers and MBAs?" I don't think so. MBAs have become big and powerful because they do what they're told.

Jobs was an entrepeneur. Not an employee. He didn't do what he was told. He did what he wanted. And if you're an entrepeneur, you can do that. He raised his own money, and spent it as he liked. If you're a Jobs employee, you do what he wants you to do.
Click to expand...

I grew up WAY OUT in the country... a newly developed rural area where there was no infrastructure of people to look at and say: "Oh, I want to be like him." or "I want to do what she does." My "heros" of that era were my school administrator for a system that only went to the eighth grade, and a buy hired to demonstrate farm tractors at farm seminars. He wore a cool Stetson hat and coaxed performance out of a little tractor like the one I drove for my dad that I had to go home and attempt.

I was in my mid-30s before I knew that there was such a thing as an MBA and it took me a few years to figure out what they did and what they were good for. And the "poster child" MBAs that I read about were not the sophisticated "I slaughter the masses as ordered" folks that we ascribe to MBAs today. The ones I first learned about were disciplined explorers of the business process who challenged the status quo and challenged tradition.

That breed is exemplified by Mr Demming who was sent to help Japan rebuild after WW II and introduced/discovered/perfected/implemented the kind of thinking that made production at Toyota the model now adopted and emulated by manufacturing everywhere.

I never got my MBA but in the years after I left broadcasting I was able to finally make my way to the "Business Process Improvement" discipline as adapted to a service industry as opposed to manufacturing, and a "dot com bubble" company rather than one of the 80 to 100 year old heavy manufacturing companies. It was a thrilling time for me. Unfortunately, our "dot com bubble" company fell victim to the "dot com bust".

My disappointment was that at that point radio was in such a condition that I couldn't see any place to set up shop and apply those processes to broadcasting. Yes, some of the MBAs are responsible for crafting spread-sheet business models of efficiency and cost-cutting that result in slimming down the size of staff in radio.

Nobody seems to write in these forums about the MBAs and the Business Process Improvement people who have made is possible for radio to survive the hatchet attacks by the more visible MBAs.
 
According to TheBigA, each of us should be an entrepreneur. Then we can do as we wish, with no regard for the people around us. In the spirit of the season, let me point out that Scrooge was a pretty successful entrepreneur. And what happens to the not-so-successful entrepreneurs?

In case you haven't noticed, different people have different talents. The basis of most successful societies is that people with different talents gather together to create a better environment than we could create individually. In doing so, everyone shares in the fruits of their combined labors. Depending on the economic system involved, you share equally, or according to your contribution. In a capitalist society, you negotiate your share, and the laws of supply and demand come into play.

If we were in a purely capitalist society, it would be hard to quarrel with the results. We're not. In the case of broadcast outlets, they benefit from largely unfettered access to the public airways for which they pay a pittance from the profit that they generate. In return, they're asked to serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity, and abide by rules governing content. Entrepreneurship in radio is limited to a very small number of people with very deep pockets.

What we're seeing is exactly what Jobs predicted - the decline of the industry because of short-sighted management. If the United States economy is looked as a company, we're in the same situation. According to the NY Times, profits are at all-time highs, wages are at an all-time low, and taxes are at a post-war low as a percentage of National Income.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/business/workers-wages-chasing-corporate-profits-off-the-charts.html

In short, corporations are eating their seed corn. It will be hard to sustain a consumer-based economy when the consumers don't have any money to buy. The wants of a few are outweighing the needs of many. Historically, this has not meant good times for anybody. It's a recipe for unrest, if not revolution. You can fool all of the people some of the time, but there are a growing number of Americans recognizing that the current system is broken, and the game is rigged in somebody else's favor. Movements are born of such recognition, and movement in the past have led to significant change. The 21st century Teddy Roosevelt is out there.
 
SirRoxalot said:
According to TheBigA, each of us should be an entrepreneur.
Click to expand...

No, that's not what I said. I said that's what Steve Jobs was. If we want to be like Steve, then that's what we should be.

But most people aren't Steve Jobs, and never will be. Most people aren't going to be prom king or queen either. The playing field isn't level. All people may be created equal, but within minutes, that changes.

As I said, Jobs had the money to buy entire radio companies, but he didn't. Why wouldn't an entrepeneur buy a radio station? Because its not a growing industry. That's a problem for radio. It needs new ideas, new technologies, and new blood, both within and in the audience. The bad news is that the government can't help here. It can't define who owns radio stations beyond basic qualifications.

So Steve Jobs will not be saving radio. He's no longer with us. The previous generation of owners won't be coming in to buy stations at "fire sale prices," either. When I cashed out of radio, I put my money into new technologies, and I won't be coming back. I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same. We don't have to own radio to do what we want. And that's the American Way today. Get someone else to own and pay the taxes.

The companies that own radio today have two choices: Keep running radio the way it's always been run, with live and local talent, playing today's biggest hits, and selling spots to local advertisers. Or they can do something different. If they choose the latter, they'll find it won't be quick, cheap, or easy. Attracting new audiences to old technologies isn't for the weak of heart. But radio can work if it's part of an overall multi-platform media strategy. I think that those companies that recognize that, and transition slowly to that kind of approach, won't be left selling buggy whips. Along the way, a lot of people attached to the old system will be left out. But how things go as long as we have a system of broadcasting that's mainly owned by private companies. The only real alternative is to turn radio into Amtrak. That's the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt, who along with Grover Cleveland over-regulated railroads to the point where they couldn't be run as private companies any more.
 
As usual, you missed the point. The point isn't that anybody wanted Steve Jobs to run radio. The point is that radio is following the track that Jobs warned against to the letter. If radio corporations continue down that track, then they'll go bust, just like the railroads did. If they follow the movie industry, Apple, and others, and innovate their product - which is CONTENT - they're much more likely to thrive.

Too many decisions are being made by short-sighted managers who are only interested in the health of THEIR bank account, not the health of the enterprise. The attitude is "I'm gonna get mine, and I don't care what that costs others, and what happens after I'm gone."

I'm pretty sure that Farid's only regret is that he couldn't have sucked more millions out of Citadel before he was forced to pull the rip cord on his golden parachute. I'm pretty sure that the Dickey boys will hit whatever targets the bankers ask in order to keep their paychecks coming, and get whatever bonuses that they arrange. It's not a long term strategy. It's a "grab all you can while it's there" strategy.

So, you've cashed out. You grabbed what you could, and moved on. And now you come back to tell the people who are still in the game how it should be run? Your advice is pretty clear - "GET OUT". Thanks, but sometimes there's more to it than just the money. Oddly, some of us still think we're serving the audience. I know, how quaint. Well, next time your power goes out, and you reach for that "old media", it sure would be nice to know that there's actually a live body there working to keep you informed of what's going on, and where to go for help.
 
SirRoxalot said:
As usual, you missed the point. The point isn't that anybody wanted Steve Jobs to run radio. The point is that radio is following the track that Jobs warned against to the letter. If radio corporations continue down that track, then they'll go bust, just like the railroads did.
Click to expand...

Depends on what you think caused the end of independent passenger railroad service. I think most historians say it was several things: The rise in personal transportation (cars and trucks), the increase in federal regulation, and the inability of railroad companies to adapt to a changing marketplace. Radio is being hit by those three same things. Consumers changed from mass media consumption to personal media consumption. They want what they want when they want it. Not at the convenience of a radio company. Inability of radio to adapt to that fundamental change will mark its downfall. What I see many larger radio companies doing is redirecting resources towards more personal media platforms. It's not a universal thing. There are lots of companies that are still running their transmitter and tower companies as though it's still the 1970s. And for the time being, they can survive because there are still enough boomers around to make it profitable. But the writing is on the wall.

But the real question I have for you is how do you propose to get rid of people like Farid? Or prevent people like him from running radio companies? Create laws that prevent owners from profiting excessively from their companies? Really? Set income limits on people? They can only earn a certain percentage of their company's cash flow? Putting those kinds of income limits is what kills private investment.

As far as investing in content, Clear Channel hasn't cut back on that. They're probably spending more now than before. But the kind of content they're creating is the kind that can be delivered across multiple platforms, and retained for future enjoyment. As opposed to a live voice giving the time and temperature, which is only good for that moment in time and in that particular geographical location. That's an investment in short term content. It can only be used once, and then it's done. Not very efficient, especially when people want content that they can enjoy on their schedule. Getting back to Steve Jobs, his focus was on creating products that put control in the hands of consumers, as opposed to power in the hands of PDs or DJs telling people what to listen to. I see nothing in his biography that promotes that concept at all.
 
"the kind of content they're creating is the kind that can be delivered across multiple platforms, and retained for future enjoyment. As opposed to a live voice giving the time and temperature, which is only good for that moment in time and in that particular geographical location. That's an investment in short term content. It can only be used once, and then it's done. Not very efficient, especially when people want content that they can enjoy on their schedule."

If that's what Clear Channel is thinking, rather than just trying to cut costs and deliver radio on the cheap to improve their margin, they're trying to change what people get from radio, giving them something they are used to looking for elsewhere (usually online) and FAILING to give them somethng they expect to get from radio and tune in specifically to get--a live, local, and immediate connection to everything happening around them. The whole I Heart Radio initiative tells me that on a fundamental level, Clear Channel no longer gets it, doesn't understand what people expects from radio,and wants to change people's minds about the medium while companies like CBS and Entercom are ready to just give people what they're looking for. Who do you think is going to win in the marketplace--someone who tries to force a change in the market to suit their corporate vision or convenience, or someone who just goes ahead and tries to give the people what they want and expect?

I think we know the answer.
 
I don't know at what age or point in my life the terminology "high intensity usage" was verbalized, but the concept goes way back. I grew up on a farm. My father was a "high intensity farmer". Little patches of this, little patches of that. Multiple crops per year on the same little plot where possible. That results in LABOR INTENSIVE operations. The gross revenue per acre is high each year, the operating expense per acre is high each year. Hopefully, that results in more profit per acre. But not necessarily more profit per dollar of capital invested.

Look at the hay farmer. Seldom does he sew. Never does he cultivate. Call the custom operator to come in 3 or 4 times a year and do a highly mechanized harvesting process. Low intensity operation.

Look at the timber land owner. Seldom does he sew. He does very little, if anything, that could be called cultivation. Call the custom operator maybe once per decade, once per two decades for a given plot. Low intensity operation.

Look at the operator of a "Skilled Level" Nursing home compared to the operator of a rent-by-the-week refurbished old motel. The motel is relatively passive. The Nursing home is a highly intensive 24 hour a day operation.

Somewhere in this imagery are some views of radio. Today's corporate radio (ala Clear Channel, Cumulus and others) is a lot like the factory farms for beef and pork production, a lot like the 400 foot long Tyson broiler houses. It is a very intensive operation with maximum gross and net per "acre"... except in radio we are talking about a channel and in large markets, there are not a lot of channels left laying around to pick up "on the cheap" and operate a LOW INTENSITY operation.

Some of my analogy about labor requirements, etc, get stretched a bit in this observation, but the old traditional local service radio station is like my brother-in-law's current farming operation..... low gross per acre, limited expense per acre. You can only do that kind of farming where the land is cheap, and you can only do that kind of radio where the low density population results in available channels that are cheap.

It is not practical to try to run an organic dairy within the city limits of NYC or Chicago or Pittsburgh.

But it is interesting to speculate on how Steve Jobs would have approached radio broadcasting had he chosen to jump in for a swim.
 
Actually, the farming analogy is quite illustrative. However, the nursing home metaphor gave me pause, if only because it seems that's where radio may be headed: Intensive care. Which, BTW, is highly labor intensive. Think there's a correlation there?
 
I want to be respectful here....

If Steve Jobs ran radio stations.....like in the case of Apple......the jobs would have been outsourced overseas.
 
Bob1370 said:
Who do you think is going to win in the marketplace--someone who tries to force a change in the market to suit their corporate vision or convenience, or someone who just goes ahead and tries to give the people what they want and expect?
I think we know the answer.
Click to expand...

Once again, I don't think ANYONE is completely abandoning traditional old style radio. And I don't think ANYONE is trying to "force a change." I think the market is in the process is changing all by itself. It doesn't need anyone to force it. Just as no one needed to be forced off their horse or forced out of trains and into private cars. Radio companies, including NPR, know this change is happening. They are begining the transition.

The truth is that there is no one single thing all the people want or expect from radio. It's different, depending on the kind of radio you grew up with, or if you grew up with it at all. We have a generation that has no expectations from radio. So for them, the process will be different. The goal for radio companies is to make their content available wherever the people are. If that means phones, then that's where the content should be. But not at the exclusion of OTA radio.

But you live in Rochester. Tune into WHAM and tell me if you hear any human voices there. If not, then you're right.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom