Radio Pet Peeves

I'm doing a lot of traveling this summer, and I also listen to many out-of-town stations while I'm in Philadelphia, so I get to hear a lot of different radio stations with a lot of different DJs and a lot of different approaches. There's a lot of good stuff and a lot of stuff that, frankly, pisses me off. Yes, I have my thoughts about how radio should be done, but I also think there are a lot of things that just make common sense to the average radio listener, or at least should. Therefore, when these common-sense things are not done, it tends to piss me off. Hence, what follows are some of my radio pet peeves...

First of all, it drives me up the wall when I hear a really good song on the radio that I have not heard before or do not know precisely the artist and title, and I listen to hear the DJ tell me what the song was... and the DJ doesn't tell me. Sometimes, it's because the DJ may have introduced the song and I tuned in about 30 seconds into the song; other times, the DJ doesn't talk AT ALL... either because the station is "jockless" (and I'll get to my issues with that) or because the station's formatics mandate that they go straight from the song (or the last song in that set) into the commercial break. True, there are ways to look up a song title and artist now, either online through a station's website, or through smartphone apps that will display title and artist, but I don't always have access to those things, so the best way would be the "good old-fashioned" way of the DJ telling me what he/she just played.

I really shouldn't have to ask for DJs to do this, and neither should Dan Mason, the president of CBS Radio, who recently put out and edict for CBS DJs to do just that. However, such is the state of radio today. Mason recognizes that in the last 20 or so years, the idea of frontselling (telling the listener what is about to play) and backselling (telling the listener what was just played) went out the window as unnecessary "clutter". Probably because it required the DJ to talk for more than 10 seconds, and we just can't have that, can we? Yes, I know, the PPMs supposedly tell us that when a DJ talks AT ALL, the listener changes the station. Frankly, that's bullshit. The listener changes the station when he/she is no longer getting something he/she feels is useful. Giving the title and artist of a song IS USEFUL. Hell, even consultants understand this (although I will be letting them have it later...)

Of course, a key to this forgotten practice of ID'ing songs and artists is HOW you go about doing it. Yes, it may require you to do some (*gasp*) SHOW PREP, which I said last time out is one of the important "dos" in radio. You have to put some thought into it, have artist info ready to go and the many other ways to make this piece of information NOT be clutter. We had a policy when I was an Alt-Rock DJ and PD that we ALWAYS backsell a brand new song, and should always try to frontsell or backsell any current songs so that people who don't listen that often and haven't heard the song yet can find out. Mason says he is looking into lively ways to go about doing this, such as having the artists pre-record intros. That's all well and good, but I've heard one thing that you CANNOT do...

There's a radio station in Philadelphia (I won't give the name of it, but it starts with a letter, ends with a number, and plays standard "listen at the office" fare) that backsells every song... with an automated voice giving the artist and title. And you can tell it's automated... especially when the real DJ comes on immediately afterward and starts talking about some station promotion or something. No, that doesn't scream "this air shift was pre-recorded". If you're going to ID songs and artists, it would be nice to have the ACTUAL DJ DO IT... and preferably live.

To do it this way just says "no effort" to me... no effort to connect with listeners, just going through the motions. Another pet peeve of mine that says this? PDs who think you should not do remotes anymore. For example, an Alt-Rock PD in Buffalo. He said in a recent interview that "remotes are the worst thing a station can do these days." Why? Because "it's some part-timer standing at a table full of prizes that no one wants... set up far away from the actual people." Sounds to me like you don't know how to do remotes. I loved doing remotes... and at my station, we made sure that we had a prize you could win that made it worth the trip to come see us, something like concert tickets. None of the DJs were embarrassed to be seen at something like that. So I'm sorry that this guy's station probably doesn't have the promotions budget it used to, but to me when you say, "I don't know why (remotes) still happen," you're really saying, "I don't know why I should actually have to MEET our listeners." THAT is what remotes are for... to get out there and actually have face-to-face contact with your audience. If you can't see that, then maybe you're too jaded to be able to do a good job, and maybe you should be replaced by someone with passion and hunger.

Staying within the Alt-Rock world, my next pet peeve... Alt-Rock stations that play Adele. "Rolling In the Deep" is currently #17 on the Alt-Rock airplay chart. Now I have nothing against the song... I've heard it plenty of times now, it has grown on me, it's a very good Pop song. And that's what it is... a POP song. In fact, it's the #1 Pop song in America right now, which leads me to ask why the #1 Pop song in America is being played on so-called Alternative rock stations. And it's not like Adele is an artist who started out in Alt-Rock radio and crossed over. She is a POP singer, period. She is the antithesis of Alternative. Therefore, no Alternative station should be playing her. Ever. If you consider your station to be Alternative, then actually play stuff that is Alternative, and by that I mean things that are outside the mainstream. That just makes sense.

National contests also drive me nuts, and they should drive everyone nuts. Again, this is just the way things work in our consolidated, conglomerated world of radio... instead of owning 100 Pop stations that each try to give away cash and trips, cut all their promotions budgets and just do one contest on all 100 stations. Saves money, harms the connection between station and audience... but who cares about that when you have billions in debt service to pay off and stockholders to keep happy?

And my last radio pet peeve: Consultants... PERIOD. Any time I see some consultant shoot his mouth off about what works in (insert major market here) and therefore should work in any other market, it makes me want to shoot MYSELF. For example, I recently read a consultant piece where he pretty much advocated for the same 350-400 song back catalog that every radio station has today that any average listener you talk to says is TOO small and TOO repetitive. And the consultant SWEARS that any song beyond those overplayed 350-400 songs is something that people don't want to hear, and he of course has the auditorium music test results to prove it. Furthermore, if you have a deep library and are a successful station, it must be because your competition doesn't do a good enough job "and you're winning by default." I would counter that maybe the listeners in this particular market LIKE VARIETY!!! They like to hear a song they haven't heard in ages come up every so often! Dear god, do NOT let this person behind the wheel at WMMR or some other station that prides itself on its massive music library and gets great ratings doing it! I give the guy credit for saying that we need to bring localism and personality back into radio, but that's only part of it. If you bring in a personable, funny air personality who is in tune with your community, but he's still introducing the same 3 Lynyrd Skynyrd songs or the same 3 Jimi Hendrix songs, it's not going to work as well.

Now by giving these pet peeves and my advice on how to fix them, am I not myself being a consultant? Well, no... I think of myself as more of an "anti-consultant." I don't go on market research, I go on common sense. I'm pragmatic, a qualitative thinker instead of a quantitative thinker. Therefore, I am not my own pet peeve... not on this topic anyway.

I'm Giving You This One for Free

I will soon be teaching my first class on radio to the young aspiring professionals of the future. Yeah, it's scary, I know, poor kids... Anyway, as I start to think about how I can help these young minds understand how they can become marketable air personalities who actually have a prayer of finding work in this post-consolidation, all automated and voice-tracked world that we are in, I think there are some basic dos and don'ts that you need to understand in order to be successful in the business. And considering that these students are going to pay several hundred dollars per credit hour to get this information, consider yourself lucky that you can just see this right here for free on my blog.

DO give time checks. The first hint I get that the DJ is not live? No time and temperature. You can't guess what the temperature or time will be when you pre-record a shift, so you can't do it. So if by some miracle, you do have a live air shift, give the time and temperature. It sounds a little jive, but it takes only a couple seconds to say "1:28, 73 degrees in Syracuse", then you go into what you were going to say over the song or after the song or whatever. And the listener recognizes that yeah, it IS 1:28 and it IS 73 degrees outside, and boom... instant feeling of connection! It doesn't take much to establish that, really.

DON'T give double time checks. Time checks sound a little jive, double time checks sound A LOT jive. Want to see a radio guy cringe? Let him hear an announcer say, "It's 2:43, 17 minutes before 3:00". It's a digital age, we think in terms of time a certain way, doing it both ways is just showing off and sounding like it's typical DJ schtick.

If you're going to be a talk show host, DON'T be a "bomb-thrower." That's what I call the Limbaughs, Levins, and Hannitys of the world who seem to say things just to infuriate and anger the opposite end of the political spectrum. As I've said here recently, their routine is no longer working... in NYC alone, Limbaugh has lost 1/3 of his audience, and Levin and Hannity have lost over 1/4 of theirs. Local is starting to come back in talk radio, people are sick of fiery rhetoric and gravitating to moderate voices like Michael Smerconish. I have no problem in principle with "shock jocks", but the best (Stern, Imus, the early Limbaugh) never made the statements they did to PURPOSELY anger people; it was part of the show, they were just being themselves! Now it seems like with their audiences slipping, it is now in vogue for right-wing talk radio to intentionally feed opposition anger to keep their core audience playing the role of loyal defenders. I'm too exhausted with this nonsense to defend them anymore.

However, DO care about your content. Think about what your listeners want to talk about. Read the newspaper, watch the local news, talk to your neighbors. All of these things would fall under a two-word phrase that seems to be largely forgotten about in the radio biz: "Show prep." DO SHOW PREP. And within doing show prep, there is the somewhat contradictory premise that you should prepare a lot of material so you can change topics smoothly if nothing is catching fire, but be prepared to toss those extra topics aside if you have something that catches fire with your audience. And it doesn't just happen to talk show hosts. Live DJs and non-political hosts have the same things happen; I know this from experience. On one particular night, I wondered aloud about the lyrics to "Toxicity" by System of a Down, and the phones rang all night with listeners wanting to join this suddenly esoteric (for an Alt-Rock station) discussion about song lyrics.

And finally... DON'T use your radio station or network of stations to forecast a coming apocalypse. By now, everyone knows about Harold Camping, the 89-year old owner of Family Radio, who broadcast and advertised the message far and wide that the Rapture was coming on May 21. He even had it down to the hour, and when a minor earthquake struck New Zealand, another one hit California, and a volcano in Iceland blew its top, he may have even had people really believing. However, it's May 23, and I'm still here, and he's still here, and there are no reports of people ascending to Heaven, and the world is not a ball of fire and devastation right now. The saddest thing about this is hearing about the people who gave up their live savings, quit their jobs, and devoted their lives to preaching about the end of the world, only to have it not happen. What happens to these people? No doubt they're on suicide watch right now because they truly threw their lives away over a ridiculous prediction... unless they agree with Camping's revision that we went through a "silent" Judgment Day and that October 21 will truly be the end of the world.

Even worse is the fact that this guy managed to rake in some $18 million dollars from these poor suckers, and that he owns some 66 radio stations, with which he was able to reach all those people who gave him all this money. Now god knows we've had our share of hucksters and televangelists over the years, and Oral Roberts' whole "give me money or God will call me home" thing was fraud of the lowest level. However, I think we've now seen fraud of an even lower level, especially given the fact that Camping wrongly predicted the end of the world in 1994 and PEOPLE STILL BELIEVED HIM THIS TIME. Say what you will about Glenn Beck and other right-wing talk show hosts, they're not telling you to give up your lives to spreading their predictions of doom across the globe.

This is misuse of the public airwaves, plain and simple, and even though there may not be a constitutional remedy within the FCC's reach, I would love to see a rush of FCC complaints against Camping and Family Radio to rival what followed the Janet Jackson incident at the 2004 Super Bowl. If you really think this guy has perpetrated all kinds of wrong here, call the FCC. Let them know Camping basically used the public airwaves to defraud people. Those 66 radio stations could certainly be used to serve the public interest in far better ways. It's kinda rough to come down hard on an elderly man like this, but with great power comes great responsibility, and even if he truly believed what he was saying, the fact is he was irresponsible.

There's a Right Way and a Wrong Way

As we are all too aware, states are going through major budget crises right now. Tax revenue is down because of the recession, obligations are up because of shifted Medicaid burdens, and the states have to do whatever they can to balance their books. In most cases, states are doing so by cutting education. Now I was firmly against the shenanigans up in Wisconsin where the governor felt that the correct solution was not to cut a deal with the teachers but to take away their right to cut a deal, but I do believe that education tends to be a bureaucracy that could use trimming. The problem is that attempts to do so usually end up hurting not the bureaucrats, but the teachers, and so too the students.

And it's not like these bureaucrats don't deserve to get a nice public flogging. Consider the recent case in Central New York. The Jordan-Elbridge school district has been embroiled in controversy for months over a number of things. The superintendent got whacked, and then the interim superintendent wound up in a ridiculous situation with the district's director of operations. In what may be the biggest abuse of tenure ever, the Director of Operations, 6 months short of tenure and not guaranteed to keep her job when the new permanent superintendent and school board took over, drew up a new contract with the interim superintendent whereby he would grant her tenure early, and that if the new board or superintendent fired her, the district would owe her THREE YEARS PAY. As in $300,000!

It gets better... turns out the cozy relationship between Interim Superintendent and Director of Operations may have been on several different levels, as according to the Sub-Standard... errrr, Post- Standard, the Lady Director was often seen arriving at Interim Superintendent's house at night and leaving the next morning. So the J-E school board said enough is enough, whacked the Interim Superintendent (meaning they now have an interim interim superintendent), and voided the Director of Operations' new contract, put her on paid suspension, after which she herself will get whacked. One problem... legal experts have said the rationale used by the school board to void her contract won't hold up in court, so don't be surprised if she sues the crap out of the district. It is people like THESE who deserve to get the boot when education monies get cut.

Alas, despite the fact that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has done it right, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has done it right, Cuomo and Christie have caught hell from the teachers unions for it. Especially Christie from the NJEA, who run ad after ad after ad continuing to claim that Christie hurt education in New Jersey just to give the rich a "tax cut". Which could not be more wrong. Christie made his cuts in education AFTER a millionaire's tax imposed by previous Governor Jon Corzine expired and Christie chose not to reinstate it upon taking office. What's more, the NJEA has spent all this money in advertising while doing very little to support its actual members... ya know, by maybe trying to keep them from getting laid off. A lot of teachers in New Jersey understand now that their union is not there to protect jobs; the NJEA is there to protect and help the NJEA.

But in making these moves, Cuomo and Christie have managed to balance their state's budgets without adversely affecting public university education. In fact, tuitions at SUNY schools did not increase at all this year. They recognize that in an age where private school tuition is out of control, where private universities tend to resemble for-profit corporations that only care about how much profit they can rake in, the public universities give people a quality education at an affordable cost. Governor Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania fails to see this. His response to the money crunch in his state is to just issue more school vouchers and call it a day with regard to the K-12 schools.

Perhaps a major difference between NJ/NY and PA is the issue of local control. In New Jersey and New York, the people get to vote on approving the school budgets prepared by the school boards. Sometimes when the proposed tax increases are too high (as was the case on Tuesday at J-E, ironically enough), the voters vote down these budgets. They have their say in the process. In Pennsylvania, there is no local check on the process. The board comes up with their budget, approves it, and Joe Taxpayer gets stuck with the bill. And Corbett has made clear that he won't tax gas drillers, even though it is the big booming industry in the state right now, and these companies are taxed EVERYWHERE ELSE. Instead, Corbett took his budgetary hatchet to the appropriations for state universities. His proposed PA state budget cut these appropriations IN HALF. As a result, programs will be cut and tuition increased at Penn State (already one of the most expensive state schools in the country) and other state-affiliated schools.

This is reflective of a general trend in some states that see higher education as one of the functions that do not fall within the parameters of "limited government." That is the silliest thing on earth. As noted in an earlier blog post, I was in Texas last month, and the big story down there was that the governor and the Board of Regents were trying to do pretty much the same thing with Texas's public universities. Their rationale was that the things academic researchers get funding for are silly and have no bearing on our everyday lives. Add to that the perception that professors are only trying to indoctrinate students to become Marxists, and you have the unfortunate far-right view of higher education.

As a grad student and future professor, let me put the whole Marx thing in its proper context. Yes, I've had to read and understand Marx as part of my classes. He was an influential sociologist with many devotees who have carried on or tweaked his work in the last 100 years. However, having to read this stuff doesn't mean that I was indoctrinated in Marxism. I've also read Habermas and other proponents of more libertarian views, and I tend to like that stuff much more. And the things we research, at least in the communications field, ARE important to society because in case you hadn't noticed, communications and information kinda make the world go round these days... and your sons and daughters are going to college to learn how this stuff works FROM US. So wouldn't it be good for us to have the proper money within higher education to A) do research in order to FIGURE OUT how this stuff works, and then B) teach it to YOUR KIDS so they can make careers out of it!

In short, the most immediate way we can turn state economies around is by cranking out college-educated young adults who can enter the job force effectively and start making money, in turn leading to increased tax revenues for the state governments. So it would make the most sense to make sure these young adults CAN GO TO COLLEGE, and that they will get a quality education there. It is a difficult choice to make when balancing a budget that is running red ink, especially in the overtaxed Northeast, but Cuomo and Christie made the right choice, and Corbett could not have made a more wrong choice.

Take What Works and Run It Into the Ground

And once again, it is time for the summer movies to hit the theaters. Unless you count movies that came out already that were billed as "big summer movies," like "Fast Five" and "Thor", but I don't. If your movie doesn't come out before the college spring semester ends, it's NOT a summer movie. My rule. Deal with it.

Anyway, even if I did count those two movies, I would just be adding to the overall theme of the summer movie season, this year and most years... sequels and variations on the hit formula. If an original movie actually breaks through the clutter of "been there, done that", have no fear, that movie will beget a sequel of its own next summer. And so it goes. Let's only put out movies that fit the templates of "what will work in a summer movie": comic-book or action figure movies, franchise sequels, romantic comedies, gross-out comedies, animated franchises for the kiddies... and then you get the obligatory horror movies by August when they're scraping the bottom of the barrel. If you want extra bang for your buck, put the movie out in 3D.

It seems like we're starting to get into a situation where the summer brings us only the lowest common denominator and the movies the rest of the year are either pale imitators of summer blockbusters or blase Oscar contenders. I know people love a good "popcorn movie", and I don't mean to come off as an elitist snob. The truth is I can't afford "popcorn movies"... hell, I can't afford the popcorn at "popcorn movies." So when I go to see a movie, I want to see something creative and original and mind-blowing, which is why the last couple movies I saw the theater were things like "Inception" and "The Dark Knight." Yes, the latter of those was a "comic book movie" but it shattered the mold. "Thor" doesn't do that.

Movie critics open their summer movie previews now by raving about the "franchises" that return for another go-round: "Cars revs, Pirates sails, Potter bewitches..." I read that, and I see "Same old, same old, same old..." Really, you could take a movie preview that proclaims, "Sequels, romantic comedies, and comic book movies will rule" and just rerun it every year with the names of the movies changed. So allow me to sift through the drivel and and tell you what the summer movie season will REALLY be...

It all starts with the 4th "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie this Friday, otherwise known as the Movie Even Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley Wouldn't Do. How long can you keep a franchise going when it's only the star and a revolving supporting cast? Guess we'll find out soon if this becomes the movie equivalent of "Archie Bunker's Place." Memorial Day weekend kicks off with the 2nd Kung Fu Panda movie. And all over San Francisco right now, people are asking, "What did you just say about Pablo Sandoval?" Also that weekend is "The Hangover Part II". I did not see "The Hangover", I really don't care if I ever do... but I see the people who loved the first one already fearing that this will ruin the original, like "Caddyshack 2"... or "Mannequin 2: On the Move". Too far?

The primary competition over the holiday weekend for these sequels comes from Mel Gibson. Oh come on, this isn't even fair. I have heard a couple of good early reviews for the movie that go something like, "If you can get past the fact that it's Mel Gibson..." Yeah, I don't think a lot of people are going to do that. They're going to see previews for "The Beaver" and immediately think "You should just (expletive) smile and (expletive) ME!" The other movie is "The Tree of Life", which is a serious drama starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn, but if they thought it had any chance at an Oscar, it wouldn't be released until December... right after it gets nominated for Golden Globes (don't even get me started on how that happens).

The major movies of June are either formulaic or adaptations of books, which I suppose is good if you've read the books, but if you haven't read "Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer" or "Submarine", would you go see the movie versions? Otherwise, it's "X-Men: First Class" (yawn, a comic-book prequel), "The Green Lantern" (yawn, another comic-book movie), or "Cars 2" (yawn, another Disney/Pixar franchise). Teenagers may go flock to see "The Art of Getting By" with Emma Roberts, and those who liked "Bad Santa" will probably go see "Bad Teacher". I don't think those movies are related in any way except the titles and the premises... although nice touch of irony having lead Cameron Diaz making a play for real-life ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake.

The 4th of July weekend will be a classic divide-and-conquer situation for the family: the boys will go see yet another "Transformers" movie (unless they were only going to see that franchise for Megan Fox, in which case, they're screwed)... the girls will go see "Monte Carlo" with their favorite CW/Disney stars... and the parents will go see "Larry Crowne" with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts. As July continues, you'll get "Zookeeper", which is nothing more than "Dr. Doolittle" in a zoo. "One Day" is Anne Hathaway who meets a perfect guy on the day of her college graduation and then we get updated on each anniversary as to how their friendship progresses. Kinda like that TV series "Reunion" from a few years ago... only in this case, they won't cancel the movie halfway through.

Next up is the Final Harry Potter Movie... I don't care what it's actually called, that's how people are going to refer to it, so get used to it. If the violent denouement of this series is too much for the little ones, you can take them to a reboot of the "Winnie-the-Pooh" series... yeah, even Disney series are getting reboots now. Then it's the "Captain America" movie (yawn, yet another comic-book movie), "Cowboys & Aliens" (let's slam together two completely un-related genres because it worked so well in "Wild Wild West"), and the live-action version of "The Smurfs."

By this point, we've hit August, which is bottom-of-the-barrel time... so you get another "Planet of the Apes" reboot, a remake of "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark", a remake of horror classic "Fright Night", a remake of "Conan the Barbarian", a 4th Spy Kids movie (aren't the "kids" in this franchise pushing 30 by now?), and a 5th Final Destination, thus proving that much like the "Final Fantasy" series of video games, when they say "Final", they don't really mean FINAL.

Now maybe there's a movie out there that will cut through all of this and wow everyone unexpectedly, but I just resign myself to the fact that this may be the first summer ever that I look at the previews and the descriptions and decide that I just don't want to see ANY of them. If that seems pessimistic, it should, and we really should demand better from the studios. I could get into the whole political economy problem of the studios only churning out lowest-common-denominator drivel to fatten their profit-margins, but it's summer and my academic brain is off the clock, so I can sum it all up by saying that I don't read comic books, I don't like sequels because they usually aren't as good as the originals (and yes, I'll always go see a new James Bond movie in the theater, but that's the rare exception), and I want to see NEW, ORIGINAL, CREATIVE, INTERESTING MOVIES. Thank you.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up... or Maybe You Can

Talk radio has enough problems these days... its audience is shrinking, more to the point it's aging, and hosts like Limbaugh and Beck are going so far off the rails that it's hard to take what they say seriously. Local talk radio has been getting downsized and merged out of existence in most markets (more on that later). So the last thing the format really needed was the recent revelation that SOME OF THE CALLERS ARE FAKE.

This goes beyond that whole snafu at WGN in Chicago where Kevin Metheny (a.k.a. "Pig Virus" of Howard Stern infamy) got staffers from inside the radio station to call Mike McConnell in his first week on the station so they could prove people were listening, a stunt that undermined the credibility of a terrific talk show host, and likely was one of the reasons that Metheny later got fired. No, there's a PROFESSIONAL service that does this sort of thing, hiring "voice talent" to call shows at the request of the station, read from a provocative script, and generate buzz and discussion. Sickening to be sure... and not surprisingly, it's Clear Channel who was behind this "innovation." The same company that brought you voice-tracked DJs from hundreds of miles away to replace your favorite live-and-local guy. Now you can have a talk show host from another city make you think he cares about your local issues while taking calls from an actor pretending to be a local caller.

Sorry, but unless your name is Phil Hendrie (in which case, the fake callers are... Phil Hendrie), there is NO reason for a service like this to be used on the air. Part of the charm of listening to the radio may be that it is the "theater of the mind", but not in this way. Randy Dotinga makes a good point: When it gets out that part of your "real-life" talk show is using staged content, the listener may think that it's ALWAYS fake. Talk about undermining credibility.

This was at the top of the stack of radio-related things I had yet to cover in recent months as I was too busy writing academically about radio to write about radio in my usual much-more-snarky manner. But as you'll see in the months and years to come, I tend to write about the same radio-related topics in both places, both the good and bad of the medium. The good includes those people who "get it", who push management and talent to try new things, innovate, and advance the medium beyond the stale, getting-eaten-alive-by-Pandora-and-iPods state in which it currently finds itself. Of course a lot of that requires reversing the bad: the continued downsizing of live and local out of the radio business, leaving in its wake vastly inferior content that fails to connect with its listeners.

The bad is why I fear the Citadel-Cumulus merger and how many people who are part of the good will be lines on a budget waiting to be cut so that Cumulus can make up $50 million in "synergies". And don't even start quoting those studies that find more people listening to radio than ever... those studies also say that teens and young adults are listening for shorter periods, and that a lot of the gains come from the increasing popularity of Hispanic stations. So I guess radio has figured out a way to serve the portion of the population that speaks Spanish, but they are falling short on the English-language content. The most nauseating analysis comes from those who are trumpeting the industry line that such mergers as Citadel-Cumulus pump "life into the radio industry". No, they pump life into radio STOCKS... for about 5 minutes... until investors remember, "Oh, right, these companies are DROWNING IN DEBT."

The good comes from people like Lee Abrams, long regarded as one of the finest minds in the biz. He finds that a lot of what radio does hasn't changed in 30 years. No wonder younger listeners don't listen anymore! Radio is "what their parents did" and it hasn't changed much. It needs to change. It needs originality. It needs (gasp) creativity. Abrams lists a lot of ways that radio can return to its roots, what makes it work, content and connecting with listeners. We've seen the extremes of super-serving the listening audience (the early days of FM Progressive Rock) and not serving the audience at all (the current voice-tracked, over-consulted mess). I think the pendulum has swung about as far in the latter direction as it can (or I hope it has)... it's time to start swinging back the other way.

The bad is the fear people have of following advice to put in more of the good because corporate execs won't like it. The PPM numbers hold way too much sway over micromanagers, and although so many of us know what we need to do and what we should do, we can't because either we no longer have jobs, we live in fear of corporate retribution, or we're too jaded to try.

Of course, some of the things that do get done to fix the problems of radio wind up causing new problems. Consider the new trend of simulcasting heritage AM news/talkers on FM. That's a great way to try to solve the problem of an aging talk radio audience, but at the same time the content is the same. If you think Rush Limbaugh is a bomb-throwing blowhard, it doesn't matter if you can hear him in mono or stereo, you're not listening to him. About 10-15 years ago, radio tried to fix this by putting talk formats on FM that appealed to younger listeners with content they would enjoy... but the "hot talk" format imploded after the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident and Howard Stern's subsequent departure to satellite radio obscurity. And now the "second wave" of FM talk is... well, AM talk on FM. And making that format flip might piss off listeners of the FM station you blew up (or moved to AM) to put your talk station on FM... like in Syracuse where the primary station serving the African-American community was sent to AM. Logistically, the move made sense in terms of sheer numbers, but people don't get riled up over numbers. They get riled up over the connection they have with a station, and anything that affects it.

Could AM become as retro-cool and niche-friendly as vinyl records, as one columnist suggests? Well, nothing's impossible, but if that's going to happen, at least make sure your retro-cool AM station is still being innovative and doing all the good things previously mentioned. And don't even think about faking phone calls... fake is about as retro-uncool as it gets...

Americana Panorama: Welcome to My Travel Nightmare

Everyone has bad airplane stories. My friends have bad airplane stories. My mom, god love her, has had to deal with more crap from the airlines than anyone should. Stand-up comedians have built careers on bad airplane stories. I don't fly much, so I had been fortunate enough to not have any major problems traveling until recently. I have now learned what others have to go through... and it sucks.

Actually, the troubles started on the way back from Vegas, when my connecting flight back to Philly from Atlanta was held up because of rain... in Philadelphia, not in Atlanta. Apparently, when there is bad weather hitting the Eastern seaboard, they ground the flights going there so that they don't get stacked up by the bad weather. Well, that was rather inconvenient for me, and I got in one hour late because of it, but that was the trip home, and usually you can handle a small problem on the way home. On the way out to San Antonio a couple weeks ago, I had the kind of trouble you can't handle... trouble on the way TO your destination.

Again, it was a situation where my flight left late (this time going TO Atlanta) because of bad weather. Well, I had planned my trip in such a way that I did not have a particularly long layover in Atlanta, so any delays were going to cause problems. The airlines usually work moderate delays with takeoff and landing into their itineraries, so when you are told that your flight will take off from City A at 8:45 and land in City B at 11:15 and nothing goes wrong so your flight actually does take off at 8:45, you'll probably land in City B around 10:30... and then you might have to wait a bit because you got there so early but you're still good. In this case, we used up our cushion waiting to take off, so it was gonna be a close one.

At this point, I should note that my flight had about 60 high school students and chaperones on their way to Hawaii. Yeah, where was something like that when WE were in high school? Anyway, they had about as brief a layover as I did before boarding their flight to Honolulu, so it was getting kinda panicky when we landed in Atlanta and had quite the line in front of us to get to a gate. Well, in the interest of getting this large group to their flight on time, they changed our gate so we would be right next to the flight to Honolulu. That I understand, and it was a nice gesture. Besides, as big an airport as Atlanta is, I still probably had enough time to make my connecting flight if I hauled ass through the terminal. So, we land, the flight attendants make a very courteous announcement that people who do not have immediate connecting flights should stay in their seats so those who do can get off the plane first and get where they need to go...

And then they didn't open the door... for 5 minutes... 10 minutes... 15 minutes... THEY DIDN'T OPEN THE DOOR.

Suffice to say that by the time they finally let us off the plane, the only people who could make their connecting flights were the kids going to Honolulu.

So I get in line with a bunch of other similarly inconvenienced people to rebook and get on the next available flight... which makes it all the more annoying that we have to keep explaining "I'm here because your moronic staff wouldn't let us off the damn plane." I ask when the next flight is and if I could get on it, the lady starts to type it in, then she makes a face and says, "Oh dear..."

Yeah, that's not something I particularly want to hear or see. I mean she was a nice person and all, but maybe this particular airline should add to their customer service training a lesson about maintaining a good poker face. Anyway, she tells me, "We should be able to get you on the next flight." You can understand if I felt less than confident about that. So while I'm watching the magic board to see if I make the cut for the flight... it gets delayed. An hour later, it looks like they're ready to go... except they had to actually go pull another plane out of the hangar and therefore had to do security checks and so on. Meanwhile, I'm 8th in line for a flight with 8 available seats, and they can bump people ahead of you if those people have better frequent-flyer statuses... so all I can think at this point is this flight's been delayed for 90 minutes, and at the last minute I'll get bumped, meaning that I'm waiting for either the last flight out or I'm stuck in Atlanta for the night. Well, I made it on the flight, we left without incident, and I arrived in San Antonio a good 3 1/2 hours later than I had expected. No major problems that came about because of this, just a major inconvenience for all.

So why was I in San Antonio? Well, for another Academic Egghead conference, and also to see family. I can say that San Antonio is quite a nice city with nice people. The two things that you hear about if you go to San Antonio are the Riverwalk and the Alamo. Well, I saw the Alamo from a passing minivan... that's good enough for me. The Riverwalk is spectacular. It is quite a sight to see in that you have this urban area that is so natural and picturesque, dotted with outdoor eateries and things to see and do. And it's quite safe, because they know that if anything happens to the tourists, they won't come back, and San Antonio is for the most part a tourist town because of the two things I mentioned. The people at the hotel (also very good) made suggestions for places to eat, and they proved to be quite handy. There's an open-air Mexican marketplace that you have to walk a little ways to reach, but for authenticity, it cannot be beat. Go find La Tierra, the 24-hour restaurant with a bakery up front, guitarists and mariachi bands strolling throughout, and amazing technicolor decor.

I also found that if you take about a 10 minute cab ride past the Alamodome to the outskirts, you will find the BEST steaks you have ever eaten in your life, at a place called The Little Red Barn. This is pure Texas, with waitresses in full cowgirl costumes, and the menu painted on the walls, along with brands from (presumably) all the ranches they get their meat from. I didn't even know what a club steak was before I ate there, and now I think anything else would fall short for me. All in all, once I got to San Antonio, I had a nice time, aside from the fact that the weather was ungodly hot.

However, I did have to get back to Philly... and so began part 2 of the nightmare. Actually, it didn't start until the connecting flight to Philly. Again, we were delayed by bad weather in Philly, and when the flight landed, I picked up my bag about 2 minutes AFTER my train left. So I had the option of either waiting an hour for another train or saying "screw it" and getting a cab. I chose the cab... which is how I got to see 2 cabbies almost throw down because they were fighting over who had dibs on an elderly person. Guess who the "loser" got for his passenger? Yuh-huh, me. And when he'd never heard of my apartment complex (even though every cab that crosses the bridge from the airport PASSES it), I knew it was gonna be a rough ride.

Now I know that everyone goes through stuff like this and my experience was hardly unique, but it was mine, and this blog is mine, and if I'm not gonna use it to vent every once in a while, then why do I do this? Don't answer that...

Americana Panorama, Vegas Style!

So I have now been to the Broadcast Egghead Academics conference in beautiful Las Vegas twice... so I feel like I can speak adequately to the experience of doing Vegas. It's something everyone should do at least once in their lifetimes because it is a spectacle you can't really understand until you've experienced it. And I am lucky enough to belong to an organization that chooses to hold their annual convention there every April, which is really the perfect time of year to go. The weather is in the 70s all the time, not much rain to worry about, not too cold at night, not paralyzingly hot during the day.

My experience of getting to and from Vegas has never been overly difficult (unlike other recent trips I've had, which will be expanded upon in a future blog entry), but one thing is for sure... once you touch down in Vegas, you know you are in VEGAS. Within seconds of stepping into the terminal, there's a cluster of slot machines... in the terminal. What better way to start your trip than by thanking the stars above that you already paid for your airfare home so you don't have to worry about losing all your money before you even leave the airport. Anyway, the billboards and advertisements for shows (both family-friendly and otherwise) are everywhere, and at the baggage carousel, you get treated to video ads for same. I'm not saying this is a bad thing... the cynical elitists among us may think this is capitalism run completely amok and it will steal your soul and eat it alive in front of you, but obviously there is a market for this stuff, and this is one of the many faces that is America. Oh, there is such a place that is "capitalist American hell": it's called Branson, Missouri.

I stayed at the convention center hotel this year (which shall go nameless), and this hotel is no doubt like most of the big deal hotel/casinos along the Strip. By that, I mean it's a bitch to navigate. Your typical Vegas casino (now that I've been in my fair share of them) has a big sweeping entrance that places you right at the foot of the slot machines, then you go in any number of different directions to find the game/hotel room/bar/restaurant/showroom of your choice... but you never get there quickly. Instead you snake your way through several other places, shops, and so on, and maybe by the time you reach your destination, you still have all your money. Now I know why they call such places "tourist traps". It's a lot like Pennsylvania... you can enter and exit anywhere you choose, but if you're going to make your way through, it's gonna take you a while.

I learned all of this last year on my first Vegas experience. A fellow academic invited me along with himself and some of his students for the Vegas equivalent of a "bar crawl", in this case a "casino crawl." I saw just about all the big name places, and in Vegas, you make your mark if you stand out from the rest, so I'll gloss over the ones that didn't interest me and point out the ones that did. For one, the Venetian. AMAZING. It's one thing to enter by crossing a bridge surrounded by fountains over a Venice-like canal with boats and everything. It's quite another to walk in and see that some of the best decorating and architecture jobs were on the CEILINGS. Talk about attention to detail... Michelangelo would have tossed his paints aside and gone home if he'd seen this. So that's certainly at the top of the list for breathtaking design and beauty. If you're into something that's more "American", I suggest New York, New York. You can't miss it because it's got the Statue of Liberty out front. Go inside and there are recreations of New York City life from uptown Manhattan to Brooklyn to Little Italy, with some of the best "authentic" NYC-type eating establishments.

And there's a roller coaster going around the outside of the place. No, I didn't make that up. Apparently, roller coasters in a casino are in, but the kids have gotta do something, right? So at a place like Circus Circus, where you are greeted by a lady in a ringmaster costume, they have a complete "big-top" set up with games, attractions, and an INDOOR roller coaster. Yeah, it's probably a little hokier than taking the kids to Six Flags or an actual carnival, but if you want to make a family trip to Vegas, you're gonna want the best of both worlds.

As interesting as it is to wander the Strip at night when it's in full flower, doing it during the daytime is probably safer, so I did that this year while in search of new dress shoes. I pretty much took the fact that I forgot to pack the dress shoes I had not as my usual travel-related forgetfulness, but my subconscious telling me, "You didn't really like those shoes anyway." So I took a nice long walk and looked around. First of all, if you can look past all the skyscrapers and see the horizon, the panorama is amazing. You pretty much know that you don't have to go too far to find genuine natural beauty should you venture out of town for that sort of thing. As it happens, I was in search for the genuine natural beauty of a cheeseburger, and I found it at a place called "Stripburger". Yeah, I know, the name's a little unfortunate, kinda sounds like what the buffet should be called at Diamond Dolls... but it's a burger place on the Strip, so in that way it makes sense, and you can eat outdoors in the shade and enjoy the weather and terrific cheeseburgers. It's also attached to the Fashion Show Mall, wherein I accomplished my number one goal of finding affordable dress shoes. Yes, you can do affordable something in Vegas, although it's quite difficult. In fact, I feel like the motto of Las Vegas should not be "What Happens Here Stays Here" or "Overtime Guaranteed", but "Las Vegas: That'll Cost You Extra..."

Which brings us to the #1 reason people go to Vegas (unless they're eloping or really like Elvis impersonators): to gamble. I know enough about gambling to know you can go down in flames quite quickly, so everything in moderation. Last year, I was fortunate enough to get a nice run going at the blackjack tables, and I had the luxury of being able to quit while I was ahead, which gave me enough money for souvenirs and cab fare to the airport for the trip home. This year, I got to see the other side of it. I was done in 4 hands. Obviously as a grad student, I don't have big loads of cash to throw around, but I figured what little I brought to the table would last longer... but how many times in a row can you be dealt 13 or 14?

On the one hand, I like the fact that I can keep going back each year for this conference, but I get the sense that Vegas gets old after a while. I mean on my 2nd trip I was already used to knowing from the signs that George Wallace has "the best 10pm show on the Strip" and that the best Motown revue in Vegas is done by four white guys. On the other hand, we're not really there to sightsee, right? We're there to be academic eggheads, to learn, to network, to muse about the state of our industry... yeah, that gets old after a while too. Which way to the tables... but not before I get my complementary shot of whiskey...

Sorry You Can't Handle That We Won

So, I've been away from blogging again for a while, what did I miss? Nothing important going on, right?

It's been so interesting as a media scholar to follow how things have played out in the week since President Obama announced to the world that our troops killed Osama Bin Laden and tossed his wretched corpse in the ocean. There seems to be three main storylines that have emerged: 1) the attack itself, and the new details we keep learning about it, 2) the huge role social media played in everyone finding out what happened on Sunday night, and 3) the backlash. Yes, because in this country, we cannot have anything truly positive happen without someone (or a cluster of like-minded someones) ripping it to pieces, we have a backlash against the death of the world's #1 terrorist... a backlash in our own country, no less.

But back to Sunday night, and I guess I'm going with storyline #2 before I get to the other stuff. I was in the midst of a hellish week and a half-long stretch of working furiously to get my final papers and projects finished. I just happened to take a break around 10:45pm and decided to see what was happening on Twitter... and that's how I (like many others) found out that the president was going to speak to the nation to declare that Bin Laden was dead. Erroneous facts about drones doing the job went out, but soon we found out the truth... and people immediately were joyous, cathartic... and pretty damn funny. I have to tell you the lines people came up with on Facebook and Twitter in the first 24 hours after the news broke were laugh-out-loud funny... or maybe I should say LOL funny. People enjoyed the fact that after Obama released his birth certificate and dropped both Donald Trump and the birthers in their tracks, after Obama skewered Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner the night before... the president decides to make break into network programming to make his big announcement... in the middle of "Celebrity Apprentice." Well played, Mr. President.

So we got a lot of jokes about Trump demanding to see death certificates, Obama telling Bin Laden, "You're fired", and many other terrific lines that fit within 140 characters or less. My personal favorite was: "Bin Laden's final tweet: 'Hold on, there's somebody at the door...'" And then Jon Stewart, who is truly made for moments like this, went on "The Daily Show" Monday night and declared that Osama Bin Laden now "lives in a pineapple under the sea"... followed by an animated map that turned Florida into America's rejuvenated manhood, if you know what I mean. It really was something impressive to see that social media worked for news dissemination in a manner that its creators and proponents always dreamed it would... and not just to live-tweet the royal wedding...

However, at the same time, there was this undercurrent building up from the usual suspects... people who could not be happy with America getting a win at a time when this nation needed a win. People who found the cheering crowds in front of the White House and at the Phillies-Mets game on ESPN to be tasteless and offensive. People who found the cathartic response of America as a whole to be tasteless and offensive, and let's face it, they probably found the fact that we killed Osama Bin Laden tasteless and offensive. After all, these were likely the same people who on September 12 were saying that we should "understand why they hate us"... in other words, instead of bringing al-Qaeda to justice, we should have tried to figure out what we did to make them want to attack us... and then presumably changed our wicked ways. It seemed like the only people in the days immediately following the big announcement who were upset that we had killed the world's #1 terrorist were Hamas, the Pakistani Taliban, Venezuela (hmmm... kinda makes you wonder...), and American peaceniks.

In the days since, we've found out a lot more about the attack, that it was the Navy Seals elite team that pulled off the attack on Bin Laden's swanky (for Pakistan) compound in the suburbs, where he was hiding right under the collective noses of the Pakistani military. And I can understand why Pakistan is so pissed off at us for conducting this operation on their soil... after all, when you screw up something others were counting on you to do (ya know, FINDING THE GUY), the usual defensive reaction is to blame others, and angrily so. Then there was the debate about whether or not to release the photos. I side with the president on this one: when you score, don't spike the football, and if I may carry the football metaphor further, don't give the other team "bulletin board material" they can use to motivate themselves to come back at you. I honestly think the administration handled this very well. In fact, with everything that happened recently, Obama may soon get his own episode of "Best Week Ever" on VH-1.

However, in the days since, we also started to see a lot of nit-picking start, and again from the usual suspects. First it was all about whether or not Bin Laden was unarmed when our troops shot and killed him. Then it was about making sure President Bush got absolutely NONE of the credit for this because the legacy of his policies as destroying the country would be harmed in some way if people actually credited the Patriot Act and other aspects of the War on Terror with the desired end result, as executed by President Obama and our elite troops. Then, Michael Moore slammed the president for the operation, saying it was an "execution". Okay, sounds good to me, Michael. I don't care what you call it, the bastard's dead. And the 9-11 Truthers popped up, telling us that none of the evidence found in the compound links Bin Laden to the 9-11 attacks in any way, and since the photos were not released, did we REALLY kill him? I mean Obama's been criticized so much and in so many different ways for this successful military operation, you'd think BUSH was still president.

I'm sorry, but we accomplished Objective #1 in the War on Terror: Get Bin Laden. For anyone to think that it was not worth the effort or should not have been done as it was (or not at all) is to not understand justice. Justice is that those who do wrong shall be punished. Justice was served. And like it or not (and as you well know if you read this blog on a regular basis, I'm not exactly the president's #1 fan), President Obama just went a long way toward ensuring re-election next year.

The one real question that remains is that of whether or not we should stay in Afghanistan now that Objective #1 has been accomplished. I've said in the past that I kinda feel like we've done all we can for Afghanistan, and if the Karzai regime is too corrupt to stand on its own, then they have nobody to blame but themselves. We haven't let the people down, we've done everything we could. If the president can find an exit strategy that drives this particular point home, then perhaps it's time. We're almost fully out of Iraq (and will be by year's end), might be a good time to close the book on all of this, while still remaining vigilant and ready to respond to any kind of reprisal attacks. The world will never go back to the way it was on September 10, 2001, and I don't think that's what we're ultimately looking for. We just want the safest, best America possible, and the safest, best world possible, and those two goals are not mutually exclusive.

But when you do score, don't spike the football... and don't go calling for "excessive celebration" because the player saluted in the end zone. Yes, I just made a Pinstripe Bowl reference...