Tag Archives: automation

November 8, 2020 · 3:00 am

Hold On or Let It Go

Life gives us many challenges.

Sometimes, the hardest thing to decide is when to stick to something and when to let it go.

Traditional media – print, radio and television – are at that moment now. Do they stay the course and hope the “good old days” will come back, or do they let it go and begin inventing and innovating for the future?

Indiana Jones

In 1989, the third Indiana Jones movie was released. The film was a wonderful parable about what’s really important in life. Parables, as you may know, are simple stories used to illustrate a moral or spiritual lesson.

In this film, “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” the parable told is about what happens when greed overpowers the soul.

Indy and his dad are searching for the Cup of Christ, the Holy Grail. When Indiana finally holds the treasured bounty in his hands, he is faced with a life or death choice. Does he hold on to the cup or use both hands to save his life, for you see Indiana is in a rather precarious position on the edge of a cliff and can’t do both.

Indy’s father whispers, “Let It Go.”

Radio

2020 for the commercial radio industry is a milestone year. It marks the 100th birthday of an innovation that forever changed the world.

Like Indiana Jones, radio needs to decide, should it hold on to the past or let it go.

Back to Our Movie

After the senior Jones asks his son to “Let It Go,” you can see the terrible anguish on Indy’s face. Both father and son have spent a lifetime searching for the Holy Grail and now Indiana has it firmly in his grasp. To let go of the cup would seem to have made their life’s quest meaningless.

Indiana’s father now says more firmly, “Indiana, Let It Go!” And this time he does.

Movie audiences gasped.

The Lesson

In the end, the father and son journey was never about possessing the Holy Grail. It was about the importance of spending time together, of taking on a challenge that one of them could not do alone, and by building a stronger relationship. The true meaning of life is never about the things we can possess, but about the relationships we can build.  

Radio strength was always about the people creating the magic and not about the delivery system. Unfortunately, the radio industry’s leaders held on to the “cup” instead of its people.

For radio, the really valuable prize is the relationship it can have with a radio listener, and its ability to bring together businesses and services for the betterment of a community.

Is there still time for radio to make this change?

Empty radio studios all across America, as stations run on full automation

15 Comments

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

February 2, 2020 · 3:00 am

2020 – The Last Year of the Decade

New Decade Begins 2020 or 2021A lot of people think that a new decade began in 2020, but the reality is, it’s the last year of the current decade. 2021 begins the next decade.

The 21st Century didn’t begin in 2000, but on January 1, 2001. The new millennium also began in 2001.

I think what may have confused everyone is the angst so many of us felt when the calendar turned from 1999 to 2000. I remember that New Year’s Eve so vividly because I spent it at my cluster of radio stations in Waterloo, Iowa. Why? Because virtually the entire world was anxious that their computer systems might crash at midnight.

Y2K

Did you forget about the Y2K Bug?

Y2K, short-hand for year two thousand, was a computer flaw — or bug — that was predicted to cause great problems with dates beyond December 31, 1999.

Every company worked feverishly putting in patches that were supposed to fix this problem, but no one really knew for sure if they would.

The fear was that all of our computer systems at the radio stations might not interpret the “00” as 2000 but as 1900.

New Year’s Eve 1999

The CEO of my company’s radio stations commanded that all general managers, operations managers, programmers and engineers be on duty on New Year’s Eve 1999 and be prepared to take the operation LIVE if our computers failed.

I told the staff of my four radio stations what the company plan was, and my director of sales said at that employee meeting, “If you’re going to be here on New Year’s Eve, so are we.” Shelly Routt, then began planning one of the best New Year’s Eve parties I’ve ever enjoyed at our cluster’s headquarters in downtown Waterloo.

Friday Night

December 31, 1999 was a Friday night.

What made this computer bug issue so critical at my radio cluster was, we operated all four radio stations every weekend without a single person on duty. We were fully computer automated.

On a typical Friday afternoon, when the week ended at 5pm, we locked the doors not to return until Monday morning. Think about that, we were running full automation over twenty years ago.

All those jobs that gave new radio people their start in the business, weekends and overnights, were gone.

The talent farm team system was decimated.

25 Dying Professions You Should Avoid

I guess that’s why I wasn’t surprised when a reader of this blog sent me an article from Work+ Money 

about 25 professions that were going away, that BROADCASTERS was fifth from the top.

2020 Vision

The primary reason cited was that more and more listeners prefer streaming over their local, drive-time disc jockey.

Work+Money wrote:

“One in 10 of the nation’s 33,202 radio and television announcers are expected to see their jobs disappear by 2026. Consolidation in the industry, as well as increased use of syndicated content, is fueling the decline. There’s also the explosion of streaming music services.”

Automation

As I went through the list of professions in danger, a singular reason reared its ugly head, automation. Robots, artificial intelligence – both newer forms of automation – were replacing many white collar as well as low skill jobs in the workforce.

robot djIf your job can be replaced by a mathematical equation, a logarithm if you will, consider your future employment to be at risk.

To be perfectly clear, all broadcasters won’t be disappearing, but the profession of broadcaster will be in a state of decline.

College Degree & Broadcasting

The cost of higher education continues to soar, but the payback of a college degree hasn’t kept pace. While the price of consumer goods has increased by a factor of 4 since the late 1970s, getting a college diploma has increased by a factor of 14, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Sadly, not all degrees offer the same ROI (Return On Investment), but ironically they’re all pretty much priced the same at any college. According to PayScale a college degree in dentistry sees a dental graduate’s median entry-level salary of $118,800 versus a degree in broadcasting where a starting disc jockey or newsperson can expect an entry-level salary of $40,000.

I never went to college to be a broadcaster. Broadcasting, which I started professionally while a freshman in high school, paid for my college education; both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

What did I go to college to learn? To be a teacher.

It wasn’t until I retired from over four decades as a broadcaster that I would begin my career in education as a broadcast professor at a university.

During that time, I would witness extensive broadcast industry deregulation and consolidation and that led us to the state that broadcasting is in today.

Apprentice Programs

The radio industry needs to grow new talent. It’s time for broadcasters to have an apprentice program in place that allows youth to learn and grow as responsible community broadcasters without requiring a college degree at the outset.

Over time, the broadcast industry can provide “just-in-time-learning” programs that will allow these new broadcasters to grow and expand their skills to take on more and more responsibilities leading to senior management and ownership of radio properties.

The new decade begins in less than a year.

15 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

December 8, 2019 · 3:00 am

Has Radio Become a Commodity?

commoditiesBy definition, a commodity product lacks a unique selling point. Two examples of what I mean are lettuce and pencils. No one has a brand favorite of either. To the consumer of both, they’re all the same. Commodities are interchangeable with other products or services, widely available, and therefore undifferentiated except maybe by price.

How about Radio?

Recently, an administrator of a radio group that I’m a member of on Facebook posed this question to the group “Rick Sklar once said jocks are like spark plugs and can be replaced with another one. What do you think?”

Now for those readers that may not be familiar with the name Rick Sklar, he became program director of WABC – 770AM in New York City in 1963. With WABC’s clear channel signal, a tight playlist that targeted teenagers and air talent which included Dan Ingram, Ron Lundy, Harry Harrison, Cousin Brucie, Chuck Leonard and Charlie Greer, Sklar made Music Radio 77 into the most listened to radio station in North America from the mid 60s to the late 70s.

Needless to say, the comments by former air personalities in the group took issue with this “spark plug” analogy, me included.

Unique Air Talents

One-of-a-kind radio personalities built radio into the listener favorite that it’s enjoyed for nearly a century. More recently, there’s Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern (who said he was influenced by Arthur Godfrey), Paul Harvey, Super Jock Larry Lujack, Robert W. Morgan, The Real Don Steele, Dave Maynard, Joel Cash, Dale Dorman, Larry Justice, Jackson Armstrong, Salty Brine, Bob Steele, Dickie Robinson, Danny Neaverth, John Records Landecker, J.J. Jeffrey, Bill Bailey, Big Ron O’Brien, Don Imus, Bob Dearborn and so many more. Those are just some of the names that inspired me to pursue a 50-year radio career.

Each of these radio personalities is unique and the shows they presented attracted an audience that was loyal to their style of broadcasting. They were anything but, a commodity.

Computer Automation

With the advent of computer automation, the concept of voice-tracking was born. Now a few disc jockeys could be heard on-the-air over a multitude of radio stations across America. Unfortunately, this meant that customizing their radio shows to a particular radio market had to be eliminated and the DJ patter had to be appropriate for all markets the program was airing in. It became watered down and because all big box radio operators were employing the same “Best Practices,” the ownership of the station really didn’t matter as everything began to sound the same.

Contests became nationally oriented, jingles (if there were any) all sounded the same, and playlists, which once reflected regional differences and artists, were now homogenized.

On Air production, which was once an art form in and of itself, was now also computerized. The result being a disjointed, sloppy and anything but smooth radio experience.

The result of all of this was radio being turned into a commodity.

Culture Shock

“Technology is enabling great gains in convenience and diversity,” says Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University. “What is being lost is a sense of magnificence.”

He goes on to say

“It is possible we will look back on the present day as a special time when both patterns of cultural consumption could be enjoyed in tandem and enriched (by) each other. But I suspect not. As today’s over-50 crowd slowly passes away, and our experiences fade from collective memory, I wonder if the world might be in for a bigger cultural shock than we currently realize.”

 

23 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 30, 2018 · 3:00 am

Best of the Blog 2018

73On this last Sunday of 2018, it’s a good time to look back at the year that just past and share with you the Top 5 Most Read and shared blog articles from 2018. Maybe you missed them or perhaps you’d like to read them again.

To date I’ve published 233 articles that have been viewed around the world over 158,000 times. 2018 was the year that my blog visitors crossed the 100,000-milestone.

Most Read Article of 2018

My most read/shared article of this past year was “Corporate FM” published on March 11, 2018. It told the story of Kansas City Filmmaker Kevin McKinney’s movie “Corporate FM” released in 2012. In 2015, the film was re-edited, updated and released on Amazon Prime for viewing nationwide. A link to the film is contained in the article. “Corporate FM” received the most comments of any article I published this year and was widely shared. To read it, click HERE.

Second Most Read Article of 2018

In August, I wrote an article asking the question if the radio industry does itself a disservice in referring to all radio studies as being AM/FM radio, when virtually all of the radio listening today is to only FM radio. I’m sure this article will continue to stimulate reader comments. You can read “AM/FM or just FM” HERE.

Third Most Read Article of 2018

My third most read article received lots of sharing and was republished in several publications. It pondered if “Automation Killed the Radio Star”. When I was growing up, radio built an audience on the personalities who presented the music. Having the right line-up of personalities was key to winning the most listeners in a market. Join the discussion by adding your own thoughts after you’ve read the article HERE.

Fourth Most Read Article of 2018

Radio in America reaches 93% of adults on a weekly basis according to Nielsen Audio. So, the article on “Why Do People Love Radio?” came in as my fourth most popular for the year. The primary takeaway for the radio industry was to focus on what is not going to change in the next 10-years. The “secret sauce” that has led Amazon to dominate retailing. Read the whole article by clicking HERE.

Fifth Most Read Article of 2018

And finally, the fifth most read blog article I wrote and was widely shared was “Radio’s Money Problem.” Between now and 2029, one Baby Boomer will turn 65 every eight seconds. People aged 50 or older have 47-times more net wealth than households headed by a person under the age of 35. The discretionary dollars are with the Baby Boomers and the Greatest Generation, the very people who were raised on radio. There’s money to be made for savvy radio operators. Read more HERE.

Most Read Articles, Period

Two articles I’ve written continue to see lots of traffic and continue to be far and away the two most read on my blog.

They are “SiriusXM Radio is Now FREE” and “The Day the “Dumbest Idea” Invaded the Radio Industry”.

Both articles have now been viewed over 17,000-times.

The first article I wrote for my blog was “Clear Channel Media & Entertainment becomes iHeartMedia” and it has now been viewed a total of 8-times.

Why I Blog

I blog for broadcasters, educators and students.

I blog to provide media mentorship and to pay-it-forward to the broadcasting industry that I have been a part of for over 50-years.

I’m grateful for the more than 119,230 people from all over the world who have visited to read an article that caught their interest.

FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS

You can subscribe to this blog for FREE and get a copy of each week’s article delivered to your email IN BOX every Sunday morning. To subscribe, simply go to the bottom right-hand corner on your screen and click on the FOLLOW button. (If you’re accessing this blog via mobile phone or tablet, that button may not be visible, so be sure to do this on a computer or laptop.)

Thank You for reading, next week I will begin my fifth year of blogging with all new articles.

Together we can all learn from one another by sharing our experiences, knowledge and wisdom. Feel free to contribute your thoughts to the discussion in the comments section, I read every one of them.

Happy New Year!

 

10 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , ,

November 4, 2018 · 4:00 am

Automation Killed the Radio Star

BugglesRemember when the rock group, The Buggles, introduced a new cable TV channel, MTV (Music Television) with the song “Video Killed the Radio Star?” That was August 1, 1981. Here’s how Mark Goodman introduced the channel over 37-years ago. CLICK HERE 

What Killed MTV?

By the early 90s, MTV was looking to boost its audience ratings and introduced a trivia game show called “Remote Control.” It attracted more viewers than its music videos, so MTV created “The Real World” in 1992, television’s first unscripted reality show.

These new programs were attracting a new generation to MTV and also dooming the channel’s original concept of 24/7 music videos.

So, MTV didn’t kill the radio star, but something else did.

Consolidation, Computers and Cash

Ironically, it would be the radio industry itself that would kill the radio stars. Those talented men and women that made a couple of turntables, a few cart machines and a microphone work together and created real magic. What many liked to call radio’s “theater of the mind.”

After the passage of the Telcom Act of 1996, a massive and swift consolidation of the radio industry took place. Radio was very attractive to Wall Street due to its fat bottom line and year-over-year revenue growth.

They say you make money in radio station ownership at the time you buy the station, not when you sell it. In other words, the die is cast at the closing of the purchase. Consolidators were so eager to buy up radio stations, they over-paid. iHeartMedia and Cumulus, two of the country’s largest radio owners are poster children for this practice as they work their way out of bankruptcy.

In an attempt to mitigate this problem, computers and voice tracking were introduced across these radio station empires allowing them to drastically reduce their air staffs. The very people that were the bridge to the listeners and advertisers were the first to go.

All in the name of sending more cash to the bottom line and paying down crippling debt.

What Radio Stations Promoted BEFORE Consolidation

WHDH Radio PersonalitiesRadio used to really promote its greatest asset, its radio talent. WHDH in Boston promoted itself as having “New England’s Finest Radio Entertainment 24 Hours Every Day!” The “Big 5 on 85” print ad featured Jess Cain, Fred B. Cole, Hank Forbes, Bob Clayton and Norm Nathan, as their air staff, and never mentions what kind of music they play, or news they featured or anything else the radio station did. WHDH was not alone in doing this. Every radio station promoted its talent line-up. Radio air talent WAS the reason people listened.

George Johns recently wrote that when he bought his first radio station (K103 in Portland, OR) that he knew he had to have Craig Walker as his morning man. Unfortunately, Craig was already on the air in Portland at the #1 radio station, KGW. Geo pitched Craig a job with K103 for more money and said he was willing to wait out his one-year noncompete contract to get him. George Johns said his financial partners thought the deal was too expensive and so Geo took out a mortgage on his Coronado, California home to guarantee the money personally.

Did George Johns gamble pay off? Yes. On day one. Craig Walker premiered at #1.

Can you feel the love radio once had for its air talent?

Non-Competes

Which brings up another radio industry problem, the non-compete contract. Have they hurt the radio industry’s growth and innovation?

Boston’s Route 128 corridor used to be the center of technology in the 60s and 70s. In the 1990s, California’s Silicon Valley took over that title from Massachusetts.

Why did Boston’s tech companies lose to those in the Silicon Valley?

Boston was a collection of high tech companies, like Wang, DEC and Data General competing against one another. They kept everything in-house and were vertically integrated. They had employee non-compete contracts. If you left your firm, you were looked upon with great disdain.

Silicon Valley, on the other hand, built an ecosystem. They shared everything. People were free to move between companies, and did. And everyone was still considered part of the family.

Value Chains versus Ecosystems

The radio industry operates like a value chain. Radio’s big consolidators are driven by efficiencies.

Accenture Strategy published a study that found that ecosystems are a “cornerstone” of future growth in a 21st Century world, a way to increase revenue. Ecosystem companies thrive on making connections, lots and lots of them.

The broadcast industry has pushed away from so many chances to collaborate and in so doing lost a competitive advantage.

What is Radio’s Most Valuable Asset Feeling?

Don Anthony’s Morning Show Boot Camp (MSBC30) collaborated with Jacobs Media Strategies to produce the first ever “Air Talent Questionnaire: How Radio DJs View Their Industry.” Some of the takeaways were disheartening to hear. Such as:

  • Most of the shifts where DJs got their first jobs are disappearing

  • Many DJs are not air checked and that lack of attention appears to impact attitude

  • Many DJs have feelings of angst & insecurity; many others are struggling financially

If radio connects with listeners through its air talent, then just these three items ought to give every radio station operator pause.

How to Win the Triple Crown

Diane Lane with Secretariat

I just watched the movie “Secretariat.” In 1973, Big Red, as he was nick named, became the first Triple Crown winner in 25-years, at a time when many thought there would never be another. “His record-breaking victory in the Belmont Stakes, which he won by 31 lengths, is widely regarded as one of the greatest races of all time,” writes Wikipedia.

What struck me, was what Secretariat had, that the other horses did not, a loving caretaker, a loving trainer, a loving jockey and most of all, a loving owner. Big Red was surrounded by people who genuinely loved and believed in him.

Great radio stations are filled with people like that.

I’ve always believed that what happened in the halls of my radio stations were transmitted out, over-the-air, to the listener. We transmitted so much more than just the music we played, the news we delivered, and the entertainment we provided. We transmitted an intangible spirit that was contagious and attracted loyal listeners.

And we do that when we love, appreciate and take care of our most valuable radio asset, our air talent.

33 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 20, 2017 · 3:00 am

Coal Ain’t Coming Back & Neither is AM Radio

114I lived in Kentucky for 7-years.

Kentucky actually issues black license plates that say “Coal Keeps the Lights On.”

And yes, a lot of our electricity is generated from coal fired generating stations. But our dependency on coal has been in decline for years, today only about 30% of our electricity is generated from the burning of coal. 15% is generated from renewal energy sources.

But when it comes to jobs, solar & wind-energy jobs are growing 12 times as fast as the US economy. This has all been happening over the last 10-years or so. Renewable-energy jobs grew at the rate of 6% while fossil-fuel jobs declined at 4.5% from 2012 to 2015 according to Business Insider who also notes that the average number of employees at US coal mines dropped by 12% in 2015.

The solar industry now employs more people than coal, oil and gas combined.

The most recent statistics (2014) for the coal industry say 76,572 people are employed mining coal. That includes miners, office workers, sales people and others who work at coal-mining companies. In 1980, the industry employed about 242,000 people.

But to put the coal industry employment in perspective, there are more people employed in education in Kentucky than in coal. And the Washington Post compared the number of people employed in coal to other industries and reports: “Although 76,000 might seem like a large number, consider that similar numbers of people are employed by, say, the bowling (69,088) and skiing (75,036) industries. Other dwindling industries, such as travel agencies (99,888 people), employ considerably more. Used-car dealerships provide 138,000 jobs. Theme parks provide nearly 144,000. Carwash employment tops 150,000.”

In fact, more people are employed in RADIO (94,584 people) than in the mining of coal.

Coal jobs ain’t coming back.

AM RADIO

When I hear people in coal country cheering about coal jobs coming back under a new presidential administration, I look to my own industry; radio. AM radio is like the coal industry.

America, to a large extent, was built on coal due to the industrial revolution. All of our great factories depended on coal to power their machines. Coal was plentiful and we had lots of it. It was coal’s time.

In the 1920s, AM radio was born. Nothing like it had ever existed in the world. While the telephone brought people together, one person to another person, radio would bring the masses together. Inc.put together a list of “The 25 Greatest Inventions of All Time” and radio was #2 following the wired telephone. The History Channel compiled its own list and it put the smartphone in the first position followed by radio.

The “Golden Age of Radio” is the period from the 1920s to the 1940s when AM radio was the main source of entertainment in American homes. It would be replaced by television in the 1950s.

The transistor and car radio would pump new energy into the radio industry to a young generation in the 1960s and AM radio would be “born again.”

FM RADIO

The latest FCC (Federal Communications Commission) report as of the end of December 2016 shows that there were 4,669 AM radio stations on the air in America. Over on the FM dial, 16,783 signals now beat the airwaves (FM, FM educational, translators and low power FM).

To put things in perspective, at a time in America’s radio history when the number of FM signals equaled the number of AM signals on the air, 75% of all radio listening was to FM. So, you can only imagine what it’s like today for AM radio listening.

JOBS & ROBOTS

In coal mining, the need for coal miners goes down every year. Today, mining for coal no longer means muscle hardy men in maze-like tunnels wielding picks and shovels. The coal industry has steadily been replacing those jobs with robotic machines that require far fewer miners but more computer engineers and coders.

The radio industry employs its own cadre of computer engineers and coders that allows for fewer folks to appear on more radio stations through automation and voice-tracking. Is what’s happening in radio broadcasting any different than what’s happening in coal; or any other industry today?

I grew up on AM radio.

AM radio was my world and the people who made the magic caused this boy to make radio a career.

But AM radio and those jobs are not coming back any more than coal miner jobs.

93% of Americans 12-years of age or older listen to radio every week.

What percentage of those are listening to AM?

As AM radio stations add FM translators, do you think that number will grow again?

Sadly, AM radio is to broadcasting as coal is to power generation.

87 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 13, 2017 · 3:00 am

Make it Memorable

114aI recently just returned from my first real vacation in many years. I joined some of the members of my high school class for an 8-day Caribbean Cruise.

We sailed aboard Carnival’s Splendor and it was wonderful.

Behind The Fun

Carnival offers a special behind the scenes tour of the ship on the last sea day of a cruise. It’s a very extensive tour that starts on the bridge and time with the captain, Splendor’s Roberto Tine.

Next, we travel to the ship’s engine room and visit with Splendor’s chief engineer Mario Testa.

What we basically learn is that everything on today’s cruise ship can be fully automated, but a full staff of people man the controls and make the decisions.

The Carnival Splendor can carry 3,012 guests along with a crew of 1,150.

The Key People

One of the light boards on the ship had pictures of the key personnel on the Splendor and showed four people, the captain, the chief engineer, the head of hotel operations and the cruise director.

MarQ

The person just about everyone on the Splendor came in contact with was cruise director MarQ Anthony.114

His Facebook page really tells the story of this dynamic personality. People write on his page things like: We will definitely be returning just for MarQ and his funny, crazy self.  He blew it away. Truly an epic vacation. The most memorable moments of the cruise included the very talented, energetic, and hilarious MarQ, our cruise director.  I won’t forget this cruise anytime soon! Carnival has a jewel with MarQ and some other staff members on that ship. MarQ was fantastic, phenomenal, amazing, and overall the most energetic and fun person I’ve ever met. He made every single event my mom and I attended on the ship memorable and we had a great time. The best part was seeing how much he enjoyed everything he did and his effort to connect and build relationships with people throughout the cruise. We looked forward to hearing his wake-up calls and getting into any event he was involved in on the ship. We loved you MarQ and we look forward to (hopefully) seeing you again!!!

I have to say, I concur with everyone’s comments and MarQ IS Carnival in my mind.

People Attract People                                                                  

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how it’s people that attract people. I wrote that article to emphasize how it was the radio personalities that put a fire in my belly to be a part of the radio business. I worked in radio for over four decades and then seven years ago I transitioned into teaching when I became a broadcast professor at a university. I wanted to light fires in the bellies of my students for the radio industry.

First Impressions

We never get a second chance to make a first impression. For my fiancé this was her first cruise. For me it was my second one but my first was about three decades ago, so it was like the first time for me too.

Good first impressions come from projecting a positive image and doing that comes from your attitude. MarQ led a team of people on the Carnival Splendor that had a positive attitude. Anna is the head of training and staff development on the Splendor and was the person who led our group of 16 people on our tour.  (Note: the Behind The Fun tour of the ship is limited to a maximum of 16 people)

The crew’s section of the ship is like a city within a city. It’s not as flashy as the guest accommodations but it is clean, comfortable and Carnival makes every effort to ensure that their team members are happy and well cared for. The hiring business model appears to put hiring people with the right attitude first. Everyone on the Carnival Team was upbeat, positive and fun to be around. They don’t just make a great first impression but reinforce that impression with every encounter.

8-Days, 4-Islands

The cruise was a wonderful vacation. We visited four islands over our eight-day cruise, we saw many wonderful and amazing things, we even rode a Segway, but what we will remember forever were the people of the Splendor and how they made us feel.

In the end, it’s not about stuff or things, but people-to-people encounters.

Automation

So much of the cruise experience could be fully automated, but it would pale with the experience we enjoyed because of the wonderful people on the Carnival team.

Almost every radio station impacts more people with their broadcast signal than the 3,012 guests aboard the Splendor, but they lose their advantage when they automate and voice track their product. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Clayton Christensen wrote in the “The Innovator’s Dilemma” that businesses are disrupted not because they ignored threats to their business but because they didn’t recognize the threats to their business.

Radio can’t dilute its core business while in pursuit of possible ancillary activities.

Radio’s core business are talented people totally engaged and focused on their service area, 24/7.

 

3 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 15, 2017 · 4:00 am

Radio’s Jobs Didn’t Move to Mexico

75It seems like no matter what line of work you’re in, someone is finding a way to take your job away. If you’re in coal mining, you think the EPA is doing it to you. If you’re in manufacturing, you think its Mexico or China or some other country that pays their workers less and offers no benefits. But is that really what’s happening to jobs?

Where are the (Radio) Jobs?

I got into radio when I was in high school because I wanted to be a disc jockey. (Discs were what records were once called. Records were how we played music on the radio off of turntables, after live musicians were replaced by recorded music on the radio.) My DJ days are long behind me, but I don’t remember anyone from my earliest days being upset that records replaced the need for live musicians to play music on the radio. Do you?

Musician’s Union

I was also a musician. Played trombone. This was another way I earned money to go to college in addition to my radio work.

A fund set-up to promote live music from the playing of recordings on the radio is where the money came from to pay for my performances in local community concert bands. It was called the “Musicians Performance Trust Fund.”

To be eligible to be paid under this fund, you had to join the local musicians union AFL-CIO. I was a union member at age 15.

Truck Drivers

As high wage manufacturing jobs were leaving, many turned to the profession of truck driver. Truck drivers are well paid and people thought, let’s see them automate that. Truck driving employees have been untouched by globalization and automation. You can’t send truck driving in Ohio to be done by person living in Mexico. But that other factor, automation, is now on the horizon.

Uber Driverless Truck Delivers 50,000 Beers

I’m sure you’ve heard about driverless cars and that many expect they will be a reality by 2020 (3 years from now). But while many in the radio industry worried about the loss of radio listening in the car if the car starts driving itself and now everyone can watch TV or surf the internet, I worried that more middle class jobs would soon be automated, never to return.

Wired magazine reported in late October of 2016 how OTTO (Uber bought this company for $680 million) was driving the beer truck down the highway in Colorado without a human behind the wheel.

So it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to realize that we soon will see driverless cabs, buses, trains, planes, boats and a whole lot of people formerly known as the middle class will be out-of-work.

This same thing is happening in higher education too via the internet.

The Fate of the DJ

So where did the radio jobs, like being a disc jockey (DJ) go? They were high-teched. Automated. The industry calls it “voice tracked.” The very technology that did away with the need to have live studio musicians playing music now no longer needs the person that played the recordings of those musicians.

To radio personalities this is not news. It’s been that way since the late 20th Century.

To the multi-tasking, hard-working, over-committed and under-paid middle class it might have seemed as nothing had changed. Heck, they might have even seen the change as an improvement. Certainly recorded music was better in some ways than live studio musicians as it provided more variety in musical entertainment.

It’s Technology, Stupid

The wonderful high-tech devices designed to make our lives so much easier are also taking away the well-paying jobs that created the middle class of the 20th Century.

What’s the world’s 21st Century plan to deal with this change?

Ad Supported Media

The current crisis in ad supported media is that in a world of infinite media choices, and unlimited advertising avails, the money that used to be enjoyed from the sale of advertising is now less than previously realized.

About two years ago I wrote in this blog an article about what I saw as the future of ad supported media. I wrote it after reading Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the 21st Century.” I went back and re-read that article and see the trend lines of the graph on page 357 still all moving in the same direction and that should give us all pause.Picketty Chart on page 357

21st Century Media Business Model

All media is moving to a pay-for-play model. HBO, Showtime, Hulu, iTunes Radio, SiriusXM, CBS All Access, Amazon, Netflix, Pandora, Spotify etc. The ad supported model is coming to an end and the pay for what you want is replacing it.

The Wall Street Journal reported in the 4th quarter of 2016 that streaming revenues off-set declining sales of CDs and digital downloads.

People now rent what they want versus own.

And where does that leave your business?

15 Comments

Filed under Education, Mentor, Radio, Sales, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,