skyrocker said:
You have much to say about ...well, everything, really, DE, but it's discouraging to see I haven't made a dent. You seem to spend a lot of time disputing opinions or points of view other than your own.
After your prior post, and this one, I still really don't understand what your point is.
Fact: very few investors in any kind of company drill down to things like how production lines operate, how vegetables are planted or how a radio show is put together. Investors look at the results of these and other processes in the form of profits, EBITDA, etc., etc., which show a well operated company.
Fact: operating a radio station as well as possible for both the owners and listeners is the function of management, the revenue available in the market, the overall economy, and the competitive array presented by other owners to name a few.
Somehow it appears, vaguely, that you are championing the cause of the radio announcer (under whatever name you want to give him or her). But I really can't tell what it is you want.
I think the product can be enhanced, made better, certainly have it's customers more formost in mind; you seem to think it's just fine the way it is.
In the areas of my experience I see reasonable and sound fiscal management. Since the product is the basis of advertising sales, a product that is appealing is required. But spending more than is necessary, in the long run, does not benefit the listener as overspending creates losses, and, at the end, format changes.
The amount you can spend in LA is more than one can spend in Bakersfield. That's another fact. A top tier format can spend more than a more niched format. So, really, no station is the same. And you can't make such blanket statements as you are doing, as each case and station is different.
OK. Fine, there's nothing wrong with radio, this thread is theoretical misguided balderdash.
There is plenty that could be better. There are too many stations, flattening revenues, decreasing audience size, a soft economy, new media, etc., all of which put pressure on radio to control costs. Improving programming, were it possible, will not make revenues increase... so all it does is make the balance between stations change a little.
Nothing wrong with that, AND it goes a long way toward explaining why so many industry leaders today treat their employees and listeners like numbers rather than people, right?
You must work at an awful place. Why don't you look elsewhere?
In any case, this type of whining goes on in every industry. It's not a radio problem... it's one of the consequences of globalization and the huge corporation. It's funny, though, that the same kind of complaint was common when old Henry made the Model T on a production line.
Trying to equate the quality of programming ... with the stock market is absurd.
I wonder if Mel Karmazen would agree.
Mel, being one of the radio folks I do not admire, would do, as evidenced time and time again, whatever it takes to increase profits. If there are things wrong with radio today, the Genghis Khan attitude to ownership and management by fear is the reason for the other issues.
Your "filter" doesn't seemed configured to accept me without this "jock" label, DE, although I have had more titles than that in this business. But, OK, in my experience, I have and still do occasional jock in addition to other tasks such as writing, producing, programming and directing, to mention a few. In America.
BTW, every jock, as every performer, is a presenter and they would do well to remember it daily. Their investors or Program Directors may not know what they're doing, but they can rest assured it's being done with better ability.
You are to worried about the nomenclature and not enough about what jocks or talents do. Personally, I think the term "presenter" is dry and cold and sounds like someone in the 70s reading printed paper Teleprompter rolls. But if the term makes you happy, fine.
And I see good talented people stretched to the limit and beyond. I see people working within atmospheres of fear. I have seen wonderful, irreplacable experience ignored and discarded.
Too many stations, a bad economy, an industry that is severely challenged. I'll bet it's the same way they feel in Detroit at GM, Ford and Chrysler. Or in any industry where the economics of the business no longer allow for frewheeling disregard for revenue.
The fact is that the large institutional investors do not look that deep at a company. They look at ratings, not what is behind the ratings...
Not blaming you for it, but I see that as one of the things wrong with radio; they should.
Again, investors often do not even know what some companies they invest in do. How could they understand the intracacies of programming in radio as that degree of knowledge would require they have the same degree of understanding of every company they invest in? Lot's of investors, like day traders and speculators buy shares based on a stock presenting certain numeric buying signs... so they buy. They don't care what the company does, just that the stock move the right way... which may be
down if they are shorting it.
You seem to be OK with an entertainment medium that treats it's entertainers like jet turbine assemblers.
There are assemblers who, in their profession, are as capable and competent as any good radio talent or entertainer... especially when we consider that thousands of lives depend on that turbine being perfectly assembled. There is talent in every field... you demean the skilled people at Pratt & Whitney, GE, Rolls Royce and other makers of turbines by laying claim to the idea that there can not be talent of major proportions in other fields of endeavor.
Talent on a station form a part of the overall product... Each part is like the component .... The investor has no interest in a talent unless the company is inordinately dependent on a single talent...
No problem with that. I have no idea how a Major Leaguer throws a splitter, either. But I care that he's practiced at it and think the investor, while unaware of the individual intricacies involved would choose the craftmanship over the inexpensive inexperience. See what I mean?
No, I don't see. My point is that, from afar, investors don't look at the day to day skills and operations of a radio station or radio group. They look at the results, because investors deal with money, not skills or talents per se. They deal with the results of the human endeavor, not the processes themselves.
Again-- you made me a jock or talent in this discussion when I said "programming executioner."
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggghhhhhhhhh. Now djs and talents are "executioners." How horrible. Talents are the people who put the pieces of a radio station together, the glue that makes the various parts all fit together, the soul of a station, and who give the spirit to the machine. "Executing" sounds like painting by numbers rather than performing from inspiration. It's like having a matematician conduct a symphony orchestra.
