I guess we could pursue this small nuance of this thread as almost a new thread because I think it addresses THE ISSUE which not only does radio have to come to grips with, but so does politics.... and education... and the economy.
What is "real interaction"?
Does 'real interaction' only take place when human being sit down in a room, face to face, and have a discussion? If we expand the venue with two-way teleconferencing so that live human beings sitting in may 8 or 12 rooms around the nation or around the world have live interaction where we can hear the tone of voice and see the facial expressions, do we still have 'real interaction'?
If I pick up the phone and call my sister three states away and we talk for 40 minutes, is that 'real interaction'? After all, we can still hear the inflection and tone of voice, and from our many years of being in each others presence, we can imagine the facial expressions.
If I pick up the phone and call a local politician that I have never met face to face, and we have a conversation about a local political issue, and we have a free, wide ranging discussion of the issue, is the 'real interaction'? Now, I have followed the politician through news reports through the years... but he/ she have never heard of me or had opportunity to read about me, is it possible for us to experience 'real interaction' during such a phone call? (Isn't that a parallel of calling the radio announcer I have heard on the radio, but he/she has never heard of me?)
What if instead of calling the politician, we engaged in an e-mail exchange, or a series of Facebook posts? Would that be 'real interaction'?
If the politician is older than 60 and I am older than 60, does that result in different answers to any of these questions.... than if the politician is 34, and I am 24?
I look back to the days when I started in radio. As some one under 20 years of age at the time, I didn't have a whole lot to say that was profound. I didn't have a lot of "social interaction experience" that allowed me to be an overflowing reservoir of personality and tales to share. But we had one thing going for us. We had a stock of records, a Billboard magazine with some music industry insights, and maybe a few other industry publications. If you lived in a city (which I didn't) maybe you had actually been to some concerts by the artists you were playing. We didn't give the name of the artist and the title of the song because the whole world was waiting with baited breath to hear our dear sweet voice roll off such information.... we were cooped up in a studio somewhere in a pasture or maybe a back street in town and title and artist was the only damned thing we knew that the audience could possibly be interested it.... other than the time and the temperature.
And, fortunately for us, our audience was fresh and naive, and had no idea what they really wanted to hear us say. They assumed because we had the job, we must know what we were doing and should be doing. They ate it up. Isn't he great!
Today's modern radio receivers tend to have this little "ticker tape display" giving the name of the song and the artist going across the dial of trhe radio. Who needs to hear... or phone call the announcer. The lowly entry level announcer has no idea what he/she should be talking about... the youthful audience has no idea what they should be hearing... so a lot of radio today doesn't talk TO the audience, and a lot of the audience is happy with that.
But scattered among the human race are a few gifted individuals who have the charisma to be elected to public office, a few gifted individuals who have the smarts to run a corporation, and a few gifted individuals who have the charm to sound good talking on the radio. In the absence of charisma, smarts and charm, today's radio stations seem to know when and how 'real interaction' can actually happen and when it can't and won't.
