Yep, 2009 is just about history. Notice I didn’t call this a year end rant. I really don’t want to rant and rave, lunatics do that.

I’m listening to WDRC-FM’s year end countdown, “Big D A to Z”. It’s pretty good as far as playlists go, they say it’s the entire DRC-FM library. Well, it’s Monday night and New Year’s Day is still a couple of days away, so if they don’t repeat anything then it’s really gonna be something. I don’t know why this is important other than the fact that I think WDRC-FM is the best sounding station, in terms of presentation and personalities, in the State of Connecticut. Perhaps anywhere north of New York City. The fact that this station has only had two owners since 1922 (if you count WDRC-AM 1360) probably has something to do with it. Heritage, and a small time owner in Buckley Broadcasting. Yes, I’m impressed, in a time when few things in modern radio impress me anymore.

I was reading Tommy Kramer’s blog and some of his coaching tips. You know, I love that aircheck of Tommy Kramer on KNUS that we have here on Airchexx… but I don’t necessarilly agree with his consultant ideas. Lemme give you an example.

Click that link, read it, then come back… I’d quote it but then again I don’t have Tommy’s phone number to ask permission.

While the ‘puker’ really IS bad, what is so bad about an old school delivery? (and all the consultants collectively GASP!) Lets talk about that old school delivery. Yea, have you been approached by someone wanting to hear your radio voice? They probably aren’t mocking you. The DEEJAY is still respected, he’s (she’s) just not HEARD on the air anymore.

The largest complaint I hear from my co-workers (and I’m now OUT of radio, except for a few shows here and there) is that the people they hear on the air are IDIOTS! They don’t WANT the jock to sound like the pimple faced kid who wears his jeans around his knees. Ok, maybe it works with Urban formats, but they don’t count. No, people want an intelligent deejay, and preferably one with pipes. The Fred Winston and Charlie Van Dyke types are still in demand. And, if the younger generation got exposed to and old school approach with THEIR music of today, it would be a HUGE hit! What I’m trying to say in so many words is that the consultants are just as much part of the problem as the large conglomerate bean counters. Oh, and by the way, I happen to really LIKE Tommy Kramer… didn’t mean to pick on him in particular as I happen to agree with most of his tips. Anyway, while its true that nobody wants to hear a jock puke (what’s that? When you hear it you’ll know…), its not true, in my opinion, that if you sound like an “announcer”, at times, that you’re going to drive the audience into their iPods. I got news for ya – those with iPods are gonna be listening to them over radio no matter what you do because there’s nothing INTERESTING on the radio!!

Several years ago, when the former WFMP Fitchburg, Ma. picked up the old WXLO call letters and moved the studios to the Worcester Center Galleria, one of the first consultant sessions we had, the guy who shall remain nameless said that we should NOT announce artists/songs, ever. Reason was that ‘the audience is not stupid, they know the music’. This was in March, 1984. Okay, he got it half right. The audience isn’t stupid. But listeners ARE forgetful. And they DO want to know who sang the song they heard five minutes ago. That was proven about a decade later, when a different AC consultant at a different station I was at said that the audience wants to know artist and song names (especially true in Smooth Jazz!).

So okay, this really is a rant. Well, here’s where I’m going with all this. Consultants are a two headed beast, one head is good and the other evil. Consultants, like bean counters, are responsible for the blandness we hear all over the dial. And, 2009, of course, will be remembered as the year the entire industry had a meltdown. After the October, 2008 stock market crash, nobody wanted to advertise. So ad revenues fell off a cliff. Then, of course, all the debt-laden companies like Citadel (not to pick on them but they DID go bankrupt this month) couldn’t shed talent fast enough to drop the bottom line.

It’s a lovely situation radio is in right now. Glad I’m working in a Union shop on an assembly line right now or I’d be living under a bridge. Ad revenue is way down, syndication/network programming is more common during almost any daypart now than at any time since before 1960.. in fact its far worse. Localism? What localism? That costs money. Even Howard Stern may have to take a pay cut! Voice Tracking has taken the place of live, local jocks in almost every place except for PM drive, and even there, they do it if they can get away with it. Add in streaming content available on Blackberry’s and iPhones, mp3 collections many times the size of most station’s entire libraries (nevermind the ultra-small playlists), podcasts, satellite and new, emerging media, and you see where radio is and where it’s headed. The picture got real bleak in 2009, and it looks even worse for 2010.

Yes there is a glimmer of hope for radio. Small market stations that need to actually SERVE their local community will remain relevant, at least for the time being, because they simply can’t take the local content and personality out of their programming and just play wall-to-wall music without losing their advertising base…. which, speaking of, really is LOCAL. The agencies just simply aren’t buying. Got to go LOCAL. It’s those stations that serve a small community that actually are faring better than their large and major market counterparts. And with music available on demand now and even more in the coming months and years, the stations that evolve out of the music intensive, voice tracked formats and go with a local oriented, personality based format, which also develops an interactive web presence which includes social networking… those are the stations that will survive and perhaps even thrive as we move into 2010 and beyond.

I’m not saying that hit music has to disappear from radio. Not at all. But stations absolutely must put the personality, the DEEJAY, the TALK SHOW HOST and the NEWS ANCHOR and REPORTER smack dab in the middle of their community on a daily basis. Get out of the studio and get visible. Do something for your communities. Play the music but talk to and with your audience. Remember all the iPhones that the kids have. All they do is txt all day long… more than talk. You have GOT to incorporate that into your programming efforts. Sales…. GET WITH THE STINKING PROGRAM! You can no longer go to your local car dealer and have station jocks peddle cars twice an hour for 3 hours and have 10 people show up to spin the cheap prize wheel!!! It DOES NOT WORK!!! That any car dealers in this country even get suckered into believing that they’ll sell one car by shelling out $3,000 for a Saturday remote these days is unbelievable!!!

Well, see why I call it a rant?

I have to post a correction. I wrote in my September 1, 2009 Webmaster’s Corner that jocks shouldn’t be posting to MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, et al. Well, that’s not quite true. What I should have said is be CAREFUL what you post in those blogs. Most people have an annoying tendancy to post when something is really bothering them, like political things. The one thing that personally sets me off is when I see one of my Facebook ‘friends’ posting about some far leftist dribble cause like ’save the icebergs from evil global warming Republicans’, or some other nit witted politically oriented statement. I’m not a Republican. I’m not rich (hell I’m barely squeaking by like the rest of the country), but the loony left drives me out of my mind. Likewise, people who post Conservative things make Liberals cringe. Point is, people, especially potential employers, DO read this stuff and they will make a snap judgement about you based upon things you write about. It’s not remotely fair, but when you make a post on a social networking site, you might as well be making a willful, written statement as a condition for employment – and all the constitutional rights and employment laws that prohibit such things go right out the window. It was a simpler time before the internet – we didn’t have to worry about such things. Just be careful because when you apply for your next gig, your boss, whether its the CEO or PD, IS going to search for you on Facebook. Count on it. Because he or she knows your listeners will look for you there also, and you are going to be representing the station. But… as I recently discovered, it’s almost essential TO have a Facebook account now. Ok. ‘Nuff said.

It was a lousy year for radio, we all know that. But the good thing is, we all have Airchexx!!!! At least what we remember and loved is here, and we’re not going anywhere. We will grow this year, and I can tell you that we’ll be migrating over to a much larger server in the coming months, with some new features and a ton of new airchecks that you haven’t heard yet. I can’t wait, and I hope you all share my excitement!

Have a happy and safe New Year and we’ll see you in 2010!

Steve West