I read the other day where CSB – The Connecticut School of Broadcasting closed its doors nationwide, stranding students who were about to graduate and hopefully enter the ranks of on air talent. Now, I genuinely feel for these students, after all, 10K tuition costs are not cheap. But I can’t help but remember the advice I gave a number of young people who asked me, “do I have to go to broadcast school to go on the air like you?”. I always told them how I got my start at a small 1,000 AM station that turned off the transmitter at dusk, and how I never went to a broadcast school, and never even studied media even in high school. Most were amazed at that, because they had always heard that they needed some sort of training to break into radio.

I’m not going to comment on CSB or any other school and how they ran their business. I’ve read comments under the news reports and none are complimentary. I will say this, however. If you are or ever did consider going to get an education to get into radio, my advice still is, DON’T. This business is not worth the time and expense. While I love radio and always will, it makes no sense whatsoever for an individual to spend thousands of dollars in tuition fees in return for some promise of job placement or lifetime use of production studios, for a job that will pay you one or two bucks above minimum wage, and that’s AFTER one breaks into the business as a part timer on a station’s street team, and that might even be a non-paying position. It makes no sense whatsoever. Besides that, most stations don’t want someone who annunciates properly, has deep pipes, or any of that. They want someone who sounds just like everybody else, with a young, adolescent voice (think Ryan Seacrest) and who lives the lifestyle of whatever format they’d end up in.

If you’re reading this with interest, do yourself a favor and check out the job postings on the various radio-related websites, and really look. There are virtually NO full time positions. Most things advertised are for sales, street teams, part time board ops (which means a babysitting job and you WON’T go on the mic) and mobile DJs, the latter being the most lucrative but it won’t put you on the radio, just in some strip club if that’s what you’re into.

An education in media will help if you’re interested in copy writing for Newspapers or TV, but it is virtually no benefit to those going into radio. Want a job on the air? Find a studio or get some audio production software and a mic, make your own demo and send it to some stations. You might get lucky… at the very least, you have just as good a chance of landing some kind of on air position as the guy next to you who just spent 10 thousand dollars at a broadcast school. And that’s the truth, from someone who once graded aircheck tapes on a part time basis.