Posted by Charlie O'Brien on September 30, 2009, 10:32 am
205.210.253.12

Where's the new blood in the business? Here's a excerpt from Sean Ross' recent blog: If a corollary of the “we must fix recruitment” discussion existed at NAB, it was the “we must stop living in the past” theme that emerged at the “Stimulus” panel and elsewhere. At that panel, Jacobs Media’s Fred Jacobs announced that he had stopped going to radio reunions, while Fig Media/Peak Broadcasting’s Bill Figenshu declared that the legendary ‘60s/’70s Los Angeles Top 40 “KHJ is dead. Long live The Boss. The boss is the consumer.” It’s a great line. And I’m all for moving forward at a time like this. But let’s be clear about which past we’re mired in. With the possible exception of Oldies KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles, you won't find many nods to KHJ in today’s radio. Broadcasters are not holding the industry back by hiring the seven best air-personalities in the market and giving away a car every day. They do not persist in hiring full-time music directors, who would find twice as many hits as today’s PD-of-four-stations-who-doesn’t-listen-to-music-at-all. Whatever radio’s problem may be, it’s not a surplus of great-sounding “old school” content that just happens to be wrong for the next generation of listeners. There is plenty that is stale in today’s broadcasting, but you’d have a hard time tracing it back any further than the “great liners, less content” radio of the ‘80s and ‘90s. The only way you could possibly pin that one on KHJ maestro Bill Drake is because those who followed in his “stripping radio down to the essentials” strategy kept going for another 25 years until there was nothing left to further codify. There were also a lot of personalities who weren’t particularly appropriate for a PPM era; they, too, came of age in the ‘80s and ‘90s, or they received the decidedly anti-Drake training of the last decade that held that almost any content was more compelling than just another hit song. And while I do not attribute these motives to either Bill Figenshu or Fred Jacobs, I am also a little uncomfortable with how similar verbiage has been used in recent years as a way of reinforcing radio’s status quo. Nearly two years ago, when Clear Channel’s presentational austerity took hold across the group, the message-board strategy of many of its defenders was to accuse those who disagreed, or who didn’t like the state of the industry overall, of pathetically clinging to their old airchecks. A “dinosaur” is one of the worst things you can be called in our business, and some of the 52-year-olds who are lucky enough to still be working in radio have no problem dismissing an exiled 55-year-old as a bitter old has-been. In fact, this is largely a debate among broadcasters of a certain age. Those 25-year-olds who have made it into our business are happily unencumbered by the Drake legacy, since few seem to have heard of him, Buzz Bennett, or even Mike Joseph during his “Hot Hits” era. Joseph’s 1981 WCAU-FM Philadelphia is as distant and abstract a memory as “Fibber McGee & Molly” was for the kids of ‘70s and ‘80s CHR. What we’re seeing instead is a continued sibling rivalry between those Drake- and Bennett-era broadcasters and those who got into the business slightly later: it’s 30 years of rankling at every teacher who ever commented on what a good student their older brother or sister was. For better and worse, a 20-year-old broadcaster doesn’t have much from radio’s recent past to cling to or build on. And in the spirit of Tom Webster’s column, maybe that’s a plus when it comes to creating a new paradigm. But it also explains why there’s relatively little interest in creating that new paradigm within or on behalf of the broadcast industry. A radio station that offers companionship, new music discovery, and a shared experience might be more than a match for a jockless, interactive music widget. But how would a 20-year-old know that when what we’re offering them, if anything, is often the same jockless music widget with no interactivity and more commercials?

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Posted by stan on September 30, 2009, 12:08 pm, in reply to "Where's The New Blood In The Business"
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Maybe it's been that for the last 20 or 30 years, radio has seen itself as a business that only serves 25-54 year olds and the adverstisers who want them. Having been excluded from the party for so long, is it any surprise they don't show up to the dance? If a creative young person wanted to make a difference in today's culture, wouldn't they be developing a new iphone app or writing computer code?

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Posted by SC on October 1, 2009, 10:29 am, in reply to "Where's The New Blood In The Business"
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The Drake formatics were NOT an encumbrance, they were a road map for properly executed, succinct radio. Bob Wood expanded on that theme at CHUM in the 70's. The only difference was that... at CHUM... we tended to be more focused as a local, Toronto radio station than as a regional giant. Most of CHUM's content was targeted at the Toronto market, while at CKLW (for instance) we had to take into consideration that we were #1 in Cleveland too. KHJ, KFRC WRKO, and other Drake stations were very similar to CHUM. Very, very local. Drake never once intended to "muzzle" air talent for the sake of muzzling them. He wanted to create a fundamental level of performance that would stand on it's own, regardless of the creative abilities of the talent. If the jock had the chops, The Format tended to be nothing more than a launch pad.

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Posted by CKLWlover on October 1, 2009, 10:44 am, in reply to "Re: Where's The New Blood In The Business"
207.161.152.47 | Message modified by user CKLWlover October 1, 2009, 10:46 am

SC wrote .... "at CHUM... we tended to be more focused as a local, Toronto radio station than as a regional giant. Most of CHUM's content was targeted at the Toronto market, while at CKLW (for instance) we had to take into consideration that we were #1 in Cleveland too." For me, it was that regional approach to the execution of the Drake fundamentals that made CKLW sound larger than life. CHUM, although pretty good at what they did, just never infected me like CKLW did, especially when Paul Drew was running the operations side of the station. Later, when I was to work for the CHUM group for 5 years, it was a faaarrr better place of employment than CKLW, ..... where very day you avoided having a nervous breakdown in the control room was a bonus! That said, when I was "at the controls" of "The Big 8," I felt like I was at the ship's wheel of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier steaming at 30+ knots ... what a feeling of power!

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Posted by Pogo on October 1, 2009, 11:25 am, in reply to "Re: Where's The New Blood In The Business"
99.237.59.148

Neither of you two got past the first paragraph of Sean Ross's article did you? I have seen the enemy....

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Posted by mike marshall on October 1, 2009, 4:42 pm, in reply to "Re: Where's The New Blood In The Business"
207.253.57.78 | Message modified by user jazzman October 1, 2009, 4:47 pm

Wasn't going to comment on this thread but saying that CLKW wasn't local has me shaking my head. Say, huh? The Big 8, at least during my years there, was as local as KHJ and the other RKO stations. Can't speak to CHUM, simply because I didn't hear much of it at the time. What made CKLW unique in the chain was the fact that it was serving Windsor and Detroit, with feet firmly planted in both communities. For many residents at the time, the two were one. Drive up Oulette today and you'll quickly notice downtown Detroit is a prominent part of the skyline. Detroiters worked, shopped, dined, attended entertainment venues, vacationed on Canadian soil and vice versa. Motown was local and so were many other artists who earned airplay on the station. Funkadelic, Seger, Parliaments and Alice Cooper come quickly to mind; just look at Big 30s from the era for more. Much of what happened in Windsor was guaranteed a spot in newscasts. The "live" 10 to 15-second PSAs were almost exclusively Canadian. When we mentioned News Tip or Hitline numbers, we always did the Windsor line first, always did both. That said, we were "local" in so many places. When you reach 4 provinces, more than half of the lower 48 and matter-of-factly play a song for someone in Oklahoma City, the perception quickly becomes skewed. All of a sudden, you sound much more inclusive, almost bigger than life. >> A radio station that offers companionship, new music discovery, and a shared experience might be more than a match for a jockless, interactive music widget. But how would a 20-year-old know that when what we’re offering them, if anything, is often the same jockless music widget with no interactivity and more commercials? Not the first time that thought has appeared on this forum but it's so true. A few years ago, I timed the stop sets at :20 and :40 on my PM Drive show at The WAVE. With mandatory traffic, weather and recorded promo elements, they ran 7 minutes, not including any music backsell leading into them. I'm trying to think of the perfect word. Insane? Close enough. There's a lot of mindless babble on radio today. The key to avoiding much of it is knowing what to say, when to say it and where to say it. There *is* a happy medium. That, more than anything, was a big part of Drake's success. Communication. Connection. Entertainment. Flow. Do it when you've got it. Do it where there's a natural transition. Self-edit rather than self-indulge. Don't stop it down for something mindless. Keep the sound of the station uppermost in your mind. If your station sounds good, so will you. All of the above is a worthy alternative to an iPod. Radio is responsible for the position it finds itself in today. Here's just one example: Dick Drew told me the other night at the CHML Reunion that when he sold his station in BC, it was the first purchase made by the buyers. A year later, they had 28, all run out of his former station. One traffic department, one person invoicing, one person programming, etc. For a programmer running multiple stations, be they 4, 8 or 28, it's much easier to make them "jockless music widgets." More important, once you've done that, with no time and nobody to "teach," you've lost the primary source for "new recruits."

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