Engineering Radio

Inside radio seems to be hitting its stride, the latest story about a survey they took hits the nail squarely on the head.  Of the survey takers, 74% say that radio is off the rails.  According the Inside Radio, 854 surveys were completed.

Granted, most readers of Inside Radio likely work in the industry.  The Recession (on which all bad things seem to be blamed) has cast a pall over the working environment in most radio stations, especially those owned by the big three.  If anything, this survey is a good inside look at how radio station employees feel.

What is more telling are the thirteen pages of comments that survey takers left, many of which state precisely what I have said in the past:

It’s about live local connection to the community!

That cuts right to the heart of the matter.  Radio has lost its connection with the local community and has marginalized itself.   Now the major owners are riding the wave which is in decay.  Radio is no longer about the listeners or even the advertisers, it is about maximizing profits and minimizing expenses until the day they throw the big switch and turn off the last transmitter.

I wonder if they’ll talk about that issue at the NAB, or will it be drowned out by happy talk of The Recession ending and a bright future ahead.   More likely the latter, no one in high levels of radio management wants to admit there is a problem.  A problem they created.  Firing most of the local talent will be the undoing of radio.  That being said, radio equipment manufactures and vendors will do pretty well this year.  After all, equipment is an asset, employees are liabilities.

This is getting ridiculous. Now the Congressional Black Caucus wants a bailout for radio. minority owned radio stations. Inner City Radio, Inc.  It seems that the group owner of 17 radio stations finds themselves $230 million dollars in dept.  Is that all?

Never mind the fact that helping only minority owned radio stations and Inner City Radio, Inc.,  in particular seems, I don’t know, what would be the appropriate word for it… racist, or at least discriminatory.  Never mind the fact that in this day and age, $230 million in dept is a mere drop in the bucket, especially for a group that owns stations in major market like New York (WBLS, WLIB) and San Fransisco (KBLX), not to mention several other stations in smaller markets.

Why should my tax money go to another corporation that was poorly run?  Why should I reward somebody else bad behavor?  I said it before:

No bailouts for radio.  No bailouts for big corporate radio, no bailouts for minority radio, no bailouts.  Let the markets and the financiers sort it out, the only way it can get better is if it gets worse.

Remember the move Planet of the Apes, at the end, when Charlton Heston realizes that the planet is actually Earth in the future, run by apes?  Here is a little refresher for you:

Anyway, my take on that movie was that world of the Apes was not a better place.  When the Statue of Liberty was blown up, it was the end of everything that represented western civilization, e.g. everything good.

I find some striking parallels in this story.

Radio was discovered and perfected by various inventors and innovators.  Heinrich Hertz is generally accepted as the first person to experiment with electromagnetic waves and their ability to be manipulated.  He was a physicist and an electrical engineer.

Nikola Tesla was the first person to use electromagnetic waves to transmit information.  He was also an electrical engineer.

Guglielmo Marconi developed and implemented commercial radio services, mostly ship to shore transmission facilities which charged customers by the word for delivered telegrams.  He was a physicist.

Reginald Fressenden invented Amplitude Modulation (AM) first using a rotary spark gap transmitter.  His first transmission included a violin solo and a reading from the bible.  This was transmitted a distance of about 1 mile.  He was an electrical engineer.

Lee Deforest invented the electron tube, which allowed for better amplification of transmitted and received radio waves, allowing the reliable transmission of voice over radio and broadcasting.  He was an electrical engineer.

Others such as Steinmetz, Alexanderson, Baker, Armstrong,  and even David Sarnoff (like him or not) added to the inventions and innovations that made radio work as a mass media and entertainment outlet.

Through the Golden Age of Radio, engineers and technical people ruled the roost, continuing to develop the technology and make improvements such as FM radio, Stereo Broadcasting, improved studio equipment, inventing television, and other wireless technology.  Radio was the first technical medium where budding electronics geeks could sink there teeth into something.  The number of devices that we use today because of radio is staggering.  Two way radios, cellphones, wireless internet connections, blue tooth, EZpass, RFID, shoplifting alarms, cordless phones, baby monitors, etc. all came about because somebody had the idea; “hey, we can use radio to do this…”

As the radio broadcasting developed into a big business, it became more of the realm of sales guys.  I once knew a General Manager, who rose from the ranks of the sales department say “Look, I don’t know nuttin about no technical stuff.  Those tubes and everything.”  We call him Biff (cause he looked like the guy from Back to the Future) the manager.  I worked for a general manager who, when I asked to spend money to fix something, would say things like “In the land of the blind, a one eyed man is king.”  While I contemplated what that meant to me, he would run out of the room and disappear for the rest of the day.  From this point, things only became worse.

Now radio is run by bean counters and bankers, a droll lot if there ever was one.  Not that bean counters and bankers are necessarily bad people, they don’t seem to understand the entertainment aspect of radio.  The fact that a successful radio format is more than just playing some music on the air.  It has to take the listener somewhere, either by evoking a memory or emotion, or by providing useful information.  Even a commercial, if well done, can accomplish this.

Computers are inexpensive, they are reliable, they don’t need vacations, they don’t call in sick, they don’t get divorced or get pulled over for drunk driving, they even reproduce good sounding audio.  In the end, however, it is just a machine.  Computers have no personality, no soul, no cognizant judgment, computers cannot decide if something is an emergency, they cannot engage a listener and make a personal connection.

And that is what radio is all about, making a personal connection with the listeners.

So imagine you worked as an engineer in radio in the 1940’s and by some strange occurrence, you were transported to the same radio station in 2009.  The atmosphere would surely be much different, if not completely unrecognizable.  Then you are discovered to be an engineer and the hounds are released.  You are beseeched with inane requests for everything from replacing the florescent light bulbs in the bathroom to fixing the squeaky chair.  You might think you are on another planet.  One run by… Apes.

This would be what it is like on a typical Monday morning department heads meeting…