Forbe's Magazine has called for the return of 'Mr. DJ'. Here is why 'Mr DJ' is gone and why 'Mr DJ' might never return.
A great friend is dying from cancer. This friend, John Majhor who has made his career a model for the saving of radio itself, is lamenting what is really killing him. He knows what it is more than his doctors do. Most other 'disk jockeys' out there know what is killing the industry as well. But like the doctors, the industry does not, as it cannot know what it does not have.
Passion.
Radio is nothing at all to do with the music it plays, or the talk it offers. It has nothing to do with the fillers placed between the commercials. It has everything to do with only one thing: the revenue. It always has. The problem is in perception; of how to receive the revenue. In any industry, when the focus changes from what makes the revenue to simply collecting the revenue then what makes the revenue looses out and the revenue itself stops.
When commercial radio began, (and by that I mean, personality driven entertainment) it was all about the entertainment. Radio was made of the passion behind the voices that resulted in the passion of the audience. It stayed that way through the great KHJ and Ron Jacobs' stable of Morgan and Kelly. It was their passion that created the difference between stations playing the same music between commercials.
Passion.
Radio progressed from a conceptual medium painting mental images, to an image driven medium ignoring the concept. Passion was replaced with promotion. Promotion is intended to inform the public of the passion and why it matches the audience. Promotion became the medium, which itself was replaced by the frustration of failed promotion: shock and carnival barking. Humans with real names who related to their audience were replaced by humans with fake names that related to the thing the fake name invoked.
Radio moved from a passionate broadcasting industry to a cold, desperate money machine. Money is the goal, but the goal can never be the means, although it almost always is when desperation replaces passion.
What was desperate?
Nothing new actually.
For most of the radio broadcasting industry's life owners of stations were always desperate for cash. It was a low income business with high expenses. Talent that is indeed talent and not circus clown, is not cheap. If it was, there would be no value to it.
The broadcasters who knew radio was all about the people fought what happened next, to no avail. Broadcasting became corporate.
But that is not a bad thing. What is a bad thing is corporate became desperate. That is simply bad management. Desperation makes for very bad decisions. Just because you can, does not mean you should.
You can eliminate the cost of a person by replacing that person with a person who does the same job as 10 persons. But should you?
You can eliminate the cost of passion but you cannot replace it.
And the main reason radio is in such deep trouble today has nothing to do with ipods, satellite (is not radio and the NAB should sue to stop its use of the term) or MP3 players. It has to do with society doing what radio stopped.
Society is ruled today by passion. Society is ruled by emotion, while radio has elminated emotion with canned announcements, recorded voice tracking, wall to wall music and the lame replacement: shock. While society is reacting to every little detail of passionate expression, radio is expressing nothing to be passionate about.
John Majhor said it, but radio should: "What's killing me is that I cannot do what I do." Listen to John Majhor and picture radio itself talking instead:
"I haven't done a daily live radio show, the one thing I've consistently done for over 30 years for a looooong time now and the prospect of never again being able to be in full form, rockin' out LIVE… it's killing me, too."
"I hope there's something that's as important to you as breathing, as exhilarating in its execution as flying down the highway at 100 miles an hour taking a high, hot turn without so much as a hint of a loss of control. Y'know? That one thing, no matter other people's opinions or like or dislike of it…it is something of yours. That one singular something that helps to define you, a something that you just can't live without doing. Hobby, job, avocation…whatever."
"I don't know if you have a passion in your life. Mine's broadcasting. Mine's verbal or musical expression of myself, whether it's silly or serious, deft or ham-handed…it's that verbal expression tied to music or current events that unfolds over a three or four hour period in which I've researched, sought out meaning, distilled into a regular place and time for sharing from me to you. I don't even care if you like it or not. I am not in the thrall of approval, it's not bout you loving me so I can feel fulfilled. The fulfillment comes merely from the doing of it. The passion of it. The substance or lack thereof… of it."
"No outlet. BUT WAIT, you blithering, self-pitying idiot. You've got the blogs, you can podcast, you can do those things and still get the word out. Yeah…no. Nice one, but that ain't it. That's like telling Jeff Gordon he can fulfill his need for speed with that highlight reel over there. It's not about the content, really, it's about the DOING, the rush, the thrill, the spike of peak emotion that courses through my veins, my soul as I crack open the microphone and tell the most compelling story I've just written or the stupidest joke someone told me or how a song could have possibly made it out of the head of a lifelong heroin junkie to have an impact on "straights" everywhere."
It isn't like broadcasters did not warn of this. The bulletin board at AllAccess.Com (the industry's most reliable news and information source) does not retain its history but if you could read the postings made by long term veteran personalities you would find the same common thread in their cries for logic. They blamed corporate radio. They were wrong.
It doesn't matter who owns a radio station (unless you are in court where stations are owned by separate corporations where they hide behind the 'corporate veil' of paper). It matters who runs it.
Many years ago I was told that personality would not work on a specific radio station because they had tried it. I replied, no, you tried YOUR personality. Radio is run by people. The wrong people have been running radio.
The people running radio today are mostly salesmen (yes there are a few sales-women) who's sole focus is on the income. That is what sales should be focused on as half of the radio equation. The other half, programming, should focus on only one thing: causing listeners to actually LISTEN to the commercials sales, sells. They do that by giving reasons for an audience to stay listening to the station even IF a commercial is playing.
Radio found itself in the binary option and totally ignored the right decision, which is neither.
Radio stations should not be run by programmers anymore than radio stations should be run by salesmen. They should be run by business managers. And just because you sold cars before you sold time, does not mean you can run a radio station, no matter how big you get doing it completely wrong and then sell out before its too late.
Writing in Forbes, 'Come Back, Mr. DJ', Tom Van Riper focused on the obvious, and missed the point: "Some industry experts say radio's efforts to scale costs have failed, and that a return to developing local talent is key to the future success of what is largely a local medium." [1]
Radio's problem has nothing to do with being local. It has nothing to do with being costly. It has everything to do with being run by people who ignored what made it great. Passion. Presenting local content will not acquire listeners. Presenting it passionately will. Hiring cheap no talent voices will not acquire listeners. Hiring talent will. Talent like John Majhor.
When I hired John Majhor a few years ago to perform an afternoon drive position on a rythmic oldies station in South Carolina I did it because John had what was no longer evident in the tapes I listened to hour after hour from applicants. John had what Robert W. Mogan had. He had that thing General Managers in radio today look at as attitude and shy away from: cannot have a threat in the building. Bull. John had talented human passion. The phone conversations we had were passionate about the business. John was not a music maniac, although he could relate what he knew as it was interesting to hear. He was not a stunt coordinator or game show host. He was a personality who was John, both on and off the air. He did what he did because he loved doing it. He conversed with his 'listener' no matter how many he had. That came across on the air as relational to the audience who loved doing what they do and loved hearing someone do it too, especially if it interested them.
Van Riper quoted an 'expert' in Tom Barnes, CEO of MediaThink. "Barnes notes that while 95% of U.S. households still tune in to broadcast radio, the average time people spend listening has dropped steadily for years. A renewed concentration on going local 'is the only thing that can save the industry,' he says." [1]
And there is just another reason why it won't happen. 'Experts' are lost.
Why are people listening less to radio? They still hold radio as a medium to feel inclusive with. Radio does not. So the more they listen the more they realize radio doesn't care about the listener. No amount of 'local' will change that.
Clear Channel, selling off poor performing stations will not change that either. Clear Channel's managers led the way in destroying the passion. They cannot lead the way to restoring it by dumping.
Another 'expert' almost gets it right: "'The stuff between the records is what's key, it's what separates radio from iPods,' says Mark Ramsey, president of Hear 2.0, a media research firm in San Diego. He acknowledges that a lot of the syndicated programming out there sounds better than what most local stations could produce, given their managements' current reluctance to invest in new talent." [1]
Current reluctance to invest? Give me a break. Today's radio does not 'invest' in anything. It takes from what it has. It is canniblism in its worst business form. Yes, the 'stuff between the records' is important but what will work is not 'stuff'. Its passion. Production value and color and packaging does not a passionate presentation make.
Radio was inclusive when radio was the personality listeners related to. It was the personality that made a station. The music, whether picked by that personality or picked by a music meeting, filled the spaces between the personality and the reason the personality was there at all: the commercials. Radio today needs revenue so it plays more commercials to get it, instead of increasing the cost of fewer commercials because it deserves it. Radio today needs profit so it slashes its expenses to create it, instead of working to succeed to deserve it.
Van Riper uses inductive reasoning to come to an illogical conclusion: "And the recent announcement by Clear Channel Communications, about to go private in an $18.7 billion buyout by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital Partners, which will look to sell off 448 of Clear Channel's 1,150 stations, could push the pendulum back again, to a time when DJs exuded a local flavor and educated their audience on the artists whose tunes they played." [1]
The behemoth crumbles does not result in the industry recovering. It will create more like it: businesses set up to reap profit without regard to product, doing it on the cheap, like slum lords.
The 'time' when DJ's 'exuded a local flavor' never existed. That was a time when 'local' was show prep. That 'time' was when DJ's were human and they related to human listeners. What they said did not matter. It wasn't what the artists were doing. It was that the DJ was doing it like the human he or she was. It was an inclusive conversation with the listener. A 'friend' everyone knew, but no one knew well enough to know personally (ie: what a Star is). The DJ was passionate about doing his or her 'show'. The 'talent' knows that and has been screaming for years for a return to the 'time' when radio realized its greatest asset is its talent's passion.
"Friends and family are noticing but no one's saying anything about it. Why? Well, 'cause they're scared. They're afraid it's gonna freak me out because THEY know how much it is my life, how much it means and how quickly it could kill me if I let the fact I'll never do this again, that solitary notion, rise as a concept in my head and soul. They're protecting me from...ME." John Majhor, former E-Entertainment Television anchor, popular Canadian air personality, talent from L.A. and many places in between is dealing with cancer. Visit http://www.majhor.com to donate to the John Majhor Cancer Fund. It will not replace his passion. But it will ease his pain. Read his blog for the rest of this story.
Will Mr. DJ ever return? Only if those who manage and own radio stations start being broadcasters again.
Van Riper does get this right: "Clear Channel has lost a third of its market value over the past five years." [1]
Because you always get what you deserve. Sooner or later.
[1]
Lee Kent Hempfling, (known as Lee Kent in radio) is a former Air Personality, Program Director and General Manager of radio stations across the country.