Radio is Dying, Part 1

My boss is 12 years younger than I am.

My boss is thirty years old. She is wearing glittery orange plastic butterflies in her hair. She also wears a t-shirt and overalls. She is tapping a gleaming, pointed letter opener on the tips of her fingers, which are about three inches from the tip of my nose.

"OK?" she says, "You, like, totally need to-" her head snaps to the left. A co-worker is rounding my cubicle, sucking on a Slurpee. "Oh, my God," says my boss, "Why didn't you totally get me one?"

"Dude," comes the retort, "I-like-totally never know what you're going to want,"

"Retard," says my boss, "You knew I'd totally want one," she turns back to me, again formal and sour. The shining tip of the letter opener flails even closer to my face.

If this woman did not have the power to fire me I would have simply snatched the offending object away, admonishing her to be more aware of her agressions for the good of everyone. Now, I watch the letter opener dance. I need this salary.

"You-OK?" my boss sighs, "You, like, need to make a lot more calls and not bullshit on the phone all day. You need to make, like, fifty calls a day instead of thirty,"

I meet her carefully outlined eyes and answer with my Tissue Voice. It's a voice I have perfected for use with people on the phone and with potentially violent mentally ill adults and program directors. It's soft and simple, with a hint of compliance. It's a voice that yeilds and asks for nothing. It's there to receive aggression, frustration, general bitchiness, and other forms of psychic snot.

"OK," I say.

"Dude!" the shout comes from behind my cubicle.

My boss is still frowning at me, wondering if she's been understood. "What?" she shouts, directly into my face.

"Oh, my God, it's a new picture of 50 Cent! Come look at this!"

"OK?" my boss says to me.

"Fifty calls. I can do that," I smile calmly, but every internal organ is still trembling with the proximity of the letter opener.

"OK," she turns away, then turns quickly to me again, searching for dissent. I have already begun to sift through a file. She waddles away, shouting to the cubicle behind me, "Fitty? Oh, my God, show me,"

To keep this job I call radio stations and ask them for affidavits, or proof of shows they have run. It's tedious paperwork that I'm asking them to do, and most radio people hate doing anything that isn't bright and shiny and over quickly. I am one of those people. I am asking those who are stumbling under an increasing workload, in an increasingly uncertain workplace, to do more work. Some of them won't take my calls, hoping to avoid me. Some are directly abusive. Many moan. And often, they want to talk about how tough it is. I'm someone they can confide in, because they don't know me. They do know by my instant ease with them, by the slang I use and by my vocabulary that I am FM. Most of them know right away. And when I ask them how they're doing or how many hats they are wearing these days, they spill aggrevation and dissapointment and sordid details about an industry that is dying.

I have first-name relationships on the phone with three women (one in Bakersfield, California, and two in Maine) who each run an entire cluster of radio stations, solo. Picture a lone woman, checking settings and wandering empty halls between six different control rooms which hold no air talent, no producers, no one. They are ghost stations. Studios holding several microphones and CD players and beer-stained chairs are now just large, hollow receivers, broadcasting national shows to the locals from satellite or from recorded mediums like CD or tracking programs like Prophet. I know of several husband and wife teams who run smaller radio station clusters the way some couples would run a Mom-and-Pop store, or a kennel. The wife is the traffic manager and the continuity director for all four stations, the midday talent on one of them, and the news person on local morning news cut-ins on the AM station in the cluster; the husband is the engineer, the program director, the promotions director, and the afternoon drive talent on an FM. This is quite common.

Much more widespread is the bloodbath of mass layoffs. Entire staffs are fired and the station begins under a new format, or an automated format, or under a new PD, or any number of scenarios. The result is this: radio is shrinking.

Instead of a bustling, loud, outrageous industry of misfits who have rediculous adventures and share those adventures with listeners, radio is becoming a ghost town, a lonely hallway, a dry echo. Only the great survive by the law of the jungle, and local radio is going the way of Lord Of The Flies. It's paradise until one little boy who's been rejected by Daddy too many times grabs the big spear and starts giving orders.

Ten years ago a friend of mine in the industry received an anonymous call from a lady lawyer back East, who told him, "You people in radio need a union yesterday," and informed him that she'd just been to a BIG meeting, and that the grand plan was to eliminate 90% of the air talent in the United States within the decade. They haven't succeeded. I have no numbers, but my rough, uneducated guess is that about 60% of the air talent in this country have gotten the ax so far. When I was voice tracking multiple markets I put four women out of work, and there are plenty of jocks like me voicetracking all over the country. Still, the industry isn't dead yet; its heart has stopped, but it's still flailing in the dust.

What, then, do we do? We the misfits, we the commitmentphobic, we the overly verbose and undereducated, who are deprived of our purpose, our passion, our tribe, and our community-what do we do?

Comments

[JD]

I was one of those who put others out of work. Its not a good feeling watching the industry go in that direction and realize the only way you're gonna survive is to participate. I always rationalized with the belief that there will be a revolution. Local listeners will get tired of hearing generic jocks who they can’t access and can’t view as their very own local “celebs”. Remember that when you were a kid? Getting to SEE your fav jock hawking some new thing or place that you just knew you couldn’t live without? Oooops, I just started talking bout how radio USED to do business. That has nothing to do with the biz today. The world is getting smaller now so my revolution idea may need to be revamped

[Jared Ewy]

Well, first, let me say that you are so totally hot. Like maybe Phoebe from friends, but smarter. I mean, all those big words and feelings. I thought it was so cool. Like an Eminem song. But it didn't rhyme. I like it when things rhyme.

Actually, that's the start of something. The engine has been turning over and over and now you've sprayed the ether. It's time to fire that bad boy up again.

I love your writing. Great dialogue and description. jared

[EC]

Writing again, yes! How I love you. That was fantastic.

Keep hanging on sweetie. I'm sorry you must suffer these paper-people. It's so bizarre for someone outside of it all to read about. And it makes for great stories.

[carried away]

When I was a kid (sounds like we are about the same age), DJs were my heros. I wanted to be one. I remember listening to the radio and feeling connected to others, the way people are connected when at the theater. I hope you find a way to create that again, for yourself and others. You write well. Maybe this leads to something later on. I think it does.

[Jeep]

Just came across this blog. Great article and it's fun to read the comments. Thought I would check to see if you still watch it. Have your views on a radio career changed since the article? You are very good at writing and I don't think books will go away for a long time! Go for it. You certainly have the material.