Is Digital A House Of Cards?
Ron Robinson
Candor From Canada
Ronald T. Robinson has been involved in Canadian Radio since the '60s as a performer, writer and coach and has trained and certified as a personal counsellor. Ron makes the assertion that the most important communicative aspects of broadcasting, as they relate to Talent and Creative, have yet to be addressed. Check out his website www.voicetalentguy.com
Talent – It Don't Come Easy
Only recently have I been sensing a quivering in the music radio zeitgeist. Sporadic considerations are emanating from a number of smart, senior executives that there might be something worthwhile to bringing talent back into the fold. The rationale suggests some positive impacts on ratings and revenues by dropping in more relevant "local" content by local "live" personalities – qualifying as more appealing broadcasting. They are dangerously mistaken.
Over The Cliff
There are some who respond to my comments on the potentials of what I believe are the necessary developments of Music Radio as if I didn’t have a grasp on reality. Those who know me can attest, while I may rant, I do not roar. Nor, as a hockey player, did I spear, slash, cross check or go into the corners with any guy named “Moose” or “Rabies”. In fact, my lifetime in radio has been more the blood-sport.
Road Rage
There’s nothing like a road trip to clear the mind, calm the senses, and allow for a period of uninterrupted time to muse on the possibilities. My most recent road trip, however, had none of those attractive qualities. If there is a Radio Hell prepared for guys like me, I believe I spent a few moments on the lip of just such a broiling, flaming pit.
Talent - The Only Option
That Music Radio remains solidly perched on the bottom rung of the professional media ladder is no secret. How we got here is no mystery, either. This was no accident. It came about as the result of ownership drastically diminishing their product - their services - to the point where most all of them became indistinguishable from each other and the product less effective and less desirable.
Radio Can’t Go Back
In another conversation, a number of former On Air-guys were revelling about being the Boss Jocks of their day and were trading war stories about hitting posts, kissing vocals, talkin’ dirty and, generally, Rammin’ the Hits. The chat got eerie, though, when many of them were not only pining for those experiences, but also insisting that if brought back – fortunes would be re-made again. That is: re-introducing the same approach to a 50-plus audience that was foisted on those tender ears when they were in their teens.
Research Is For Rubes
While acknowledging emailed charges to the contrary, I insist I am not writing Music Radio off entirely, as there are still some exceptions and examples of my own listening experiences that are, at least partially satisfying. Yes, I still get to listen to some great Talent out in the hinterlands and online!
Radio – The Prime Directive
It was a dark and stormy disposition – and I was sorely startled to realize: It was my own! As a defense, I plead it as a position to which I had come by honestly. Although I was able to avoid being captured by stations that held their Holy Formats in the highest of esteems and demonstrated as much by rotating the same 500 tunes, and by turning their Talent into mere, mechanical Robo-Jocks, I was still a witness to the lobotomization of Music Radio.
Radio Secrets
For many years – decades actually, there has been a widely held understanding that: “There are no secrets in Radio”. The standard explanation for the premise has been that since whatever it is that comes out of the (Radio) box is all so obvious, that is the full and complete representation of everything there is to know about any particular station.
Music Radio Has Become A Flock
This was a clear, quiet, warm and sunny day in November – a welcome and calm Toronto, Sunday morning to step out on the stoop for a smoke and a coffee while the rest of the family continued their zonk-fest. I had already turned on the radio to hear the locals doing their part in V/T’ing their audience into a drowsy, low-volume, background state of indifference.
A New Year’s “Definite, Maybe”
(by Ron Robinson) For the last 20 years or so, music radio owners and management, along with and thanks to dangerously toxic doses of “research” and equally unhealthy contributions from “Consultants” have rendered that portion of the medium’s programming choices – irrelevant.
Consult, Train or Neither
(by Ronald T. Robinson) Blistering criticisms that fall on deaf ears had better supply some benefits to the one offering the abuse. Otherwise, only when alternatives are being put forward is there any point at all to tabling the critiques. The wail of “Radio sucks and it’s because those guys have gutted it!” does little more than adjust the heart-rate and blood pressure gauges in an upward direction.
The Trap of The Client Survey
(by Ronald T. Robinson) In my most recent, I asserted that conscious recall was not necessary for a Radio-ad campaign to be effective. Lucky for us, too, as hardly anyone remembers anything about the content of those ads. Only if the ad is sensational does a listener remember anything about the spots – at all. Yet, Radio can work wonders. So, in my model-of-the-world – that’s just weird.
Radio: A Trance Medium
(by Ron Robinson) A neuroscientist and a hypnotist walked into a bar. Instead of a “live”, in-the-flesh bartender, there was a guy in a studio transmitting through a video screen taking orders and making conversation. He took the requests. A steady, robotic arm delivered the beverages. After a couple of rounds the video-barkeep asked, “Will there be anything else, gentlemen?” To which the neuroscientist replied, “Check, please.” The hypnotist looked at the bartender on the screen and said, “I, like you, am forgetting it.” Only the neuroscientist got a bill.
Can’t Do Radio – Let’s Go Online
(by Ronald T. Robinson) Although nasty and oh, so politically incorrect to say so, relative to other mass media, Radio has, nevertheless, been tagged by audiences and advertisers as the weak, stupid and ugly sister. While arguably unfair and even a little cruel, such a label has not been totally unearned.
The Codependent Listener
(by Ron Robinson) As a newly-minted Vice President In Charge of Everything, I require all hunkered-down on-air personality or flogged and scarred, hype-typist who insists on continuing to broadcast exclusively to this alleged “Uber One” to provide verifiable evidence of this Personal Listener’s existence.
If Only I Knew Who
(Ronald T. Robinson) The Arab Potentate, proud, confident and leaning comfortably on his sturdy, opulent and stylishly-decorated tent, was purveying an expanse of desert – his desert – that stretched beyond the cut and rolling dunes and on into interminable beyond-the-horizon, scorching stretches that allowed only the adventurous, well prepared and sometimes desperate to cross, turned to the squinting, sweating and exasperated salesman and said, “Right. What I really need is more sand.”
Are You Still Dropping The "Y" Bomb?
(Ronald T. Robinson) Over the years, I have found that my dropping of the “Y-Bomb” results in one of two, basic responses. Broadcasters either immediately panic and scurry away while covering their ears and muttering “Na-na-na-na-na.” Or, they panic; muster up some righteous indignation; pick up their torches and pitchforks and look around to make sure there are others willing to head up the mountain.
Who Are You Really Talking To Out There?
(by Ronald Robinson) First, a couple of (rhetorical) questions: 1.) When did Radio become a One-to-One medium? And, 2.) Why was I not informed? That the delivery of Radio has always been accepted as a One-to-One exercise has never, ever, never been challenged! This, because, like other areas of life, the premise was presented with the authority of, uhhh… Authority, and forthwith became: Dogma. As such, Dogma cannot be challenged. Heretics and infidels do pay dearly.
Are You Performing Every Day?
(by Ron Robinson) As “Dear John” letters go, perhaps my most recent was about as comforting and welcome as hearing a psyche-destroying, hard-time sentence being boomed from the Bench. “You’re goin’ away, Billy - and for a very long time. Doesn’t matter that the man needed killin’.” Nevertheless, it is that very letter that needs to be read to every Radio-person who cracks open a mic or who scribbles the drivel.
I Can't Listen To You Anymore!
(by Ron Robinson) Dear Talent: We have never met and I would appreciate your keeping that in mind as you consider this letter. Even though your first impulse on reading the following might be to take offense, it would be a mistake, as I don’t know you well enough for you to be offended or, for that matter, for you to care. There is still an opportunity to consider this as no more than "information". Nevertheless, I cannot listen to you anymore. And, I will list my reasons.
