What's It Going To Take...?

General Radio News and Comments, Satellite & Internet Radio and LPFM

Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Fri Oct 04, 2024 8:24 pm

Room for Both Content and Process

“What listeners really want is more information – more content!” This soon-to-be universal edict was, no doubt, uttered many decades ago by a fledgling PD whose former gig was that of a fair-weather lumberjack. This was shortly thereafter ensconced by the delightful “light, tight and bright” platitude – the bane of any performer with an imagination and a desire to communicate that on the radio. The follow-on to that was the insulting proviso of “If you can’t say it - play it.” This carried with it an understanding that most jocks had, indeed, nothing to say, no way to say it, most of the time. Conclusions were also drawn that information was also entertaining. Astute broadcasters are still standing in a pelting rain waiting for the evidence to arrive. So much for bogging everything down and gumming up the works.

These attitudes had quickly permeated the radio landscape, taken hold and decimated the medium. Dogma was thusly created, reinforced, and made to be holy.

Pure information or, as I like to refer to it – “content” – becomes very dry and very droll almost instantaneously. Like a dob of Crazy Glue, it oozes only momentarily and then transform into a brittle and inert pebble. It loses its impact and lustre almost as soon as it is applied.

Process words as opposed to content-based communications supply dynamic and fluid forms of the language – those delicious and imagination-driving elements that secure a listener’s attention and ongoing participation. These are the words that are descriptive, sensory-based and emotionally compelling. They are embedded in stories and supply multiple sensory-based representations of any given materials. They draw us in and challenge our imaginations to engage with what the speaker is delivering. Here is where the entertainment dynamics are actually kicking in.

Humor, while useful and always a desirable element, is not a required element Rich, succulent, visual and meaningfully strong and solid descriptions become the priorities, while going for the gag becomes an add-on and a fabulous bonus.

Foregoing process communication for pure content reminds me of the forlorn, frustrated, fearful, thirsty, and weary cowboy out on the trail a long way from town who laments how lonesome in the saddle he is since his horse died. The only option he has is to drop his saddle and continuing to mosey – or amble towards an empty horizon. The larger and more sinister varmints, meanwhile, are gathering for an impending smorgasbord.

The non-descriptive content-oriented report would read: A cowboy’s horse died many miles from town.

What makes PDs ape-snake nuts is the amount of time it takes to deliver the process-laden descriptive. They are holed up in their cubicles designing seriously punitive retribution for the presenters.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
[email protected]
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Wed Nov 13, 2024 9:29 am

In Case No One Has Noticed

While leaving my family somewhat aghast, I find myself to be more a ponderer than a muser. So, I ought not be surprised whan I find myself pondering the extraordinary lapse demonstrated by radio when it ignores the many, varied and readily available techniques, methods and strategies for delivering the English language to a broadcast audience.

To be sure, radio deserves indictments for having spent the last forty years in the systematic deconstruction of any language approaches it once enjoyed. That very exercise brought with it the gradual but ongoing elimination of talent that could actually provide at least some modicum of skills in delivering aspects of the complexities of language.

As broadcast and electronic media were proliferating across the landscape, radio was and is going out of its way to trash the only advantages it had in delineating itself from other related media.

What makes this tragic is that a few more generations of younger providers of radio language have arrived on the scene with absolutely no memory or awareness that such concepts were, at one time, bandied about with vigour and glee.

No longer do purveyors of the craft duck outside with coffees and smokes to discuss the subtleties and nuances of presenting the English language in ever more complexities and trickery in order to be more appealing and more influential to their audiences.

Lest a few astute readers determine that I am putting the boots to a hardly recognizable and thoroughly dehydrated corpse of a well and truly dead horse, I openly confess that the prospects of regenerating an interest in the business of re-addressing the extraordinary advantages of re-developing the patterns of a serious and exceptional program of language improvements are, in fact – extremely grim.

Instead, we are saddled with the droning and boring recycled patter of what remains of the “live” presenters as they go about setting up the next “music marathon” having already usurped the delicious opportunities to make an impact on an already disinterested audience.

Meanwhile, as the body of knowledge about communications has expanded to an enormous, if not overwhelming, degree over the decades, radio commercials ran aground and are being dashed on rocky shoals. The spots that are being puked out today could be rendered unrecognizable from those being rolled out 50 years ago – no differences whatsoever. If there were ever clues for the need to re-address the matter available, this alone would suffice. But, apparently, nobody is willing to take the leap into the waters below – something about the pool being replete with crocodiles, sharks and tiny fish that go directly for the bodily orifices.

While those are serious considerations, what’s to stop anybody from throwing some convicted felons in – just to test the waters, so to speak.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
[email protected]
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Sat Dec 07, 2024 4:48 pm

Toxic Creativity

The following may not seem as a shock nor as a mere tremor, but it does indicate the degree to which radio “creative” has been utterly trashed and shelved. As mentioned in my most recent, radio spots that are being produced today are exact copies of those produced 50 years ago – and even those were not particularly expressive or effective.

Sure, from time to time a spot will jump out that is spectacular in its creativity and impact, but one would starve to death while waiting for another one to roar out of the speakers.

The standard, daily, locally-produced commercial fare is totally lax in its appeal or effectiveness. This is not completely true as even the drivel being produced today does, indeed, have some impact as the industry has been depending on the trash-offerings and has not yet turned into an obscure, forgotten desert. That, of course, has more to do with the innate power of radio than it does with the shabby construction of most commercial content.

The lamentations and barrels of vitriol lambasting the calibre of the commercials have been emanating from the staffs of radio station creative departments since I was slip-cueing and spinning my first ‘45’s. The moaning and bitching was and is a veritable cacophony that, alas, falls on numbed ears. Still, the hype just kept on getting typed, produced and foisted on an unsuspecting audience – the poor lambs.

Yet, “For all your piping, tap and drainage needs, hurry in to Adolpho’s Plumbing and Low Interest Loans today.” was the tried, true and dependable approach – then as now.

I have heard it said, and been eager to join the chorus, that radio in general, and commercial content more specifically is where the English language goes – if not to die outright then to be unmercifully and obscenely tortured.

Radio is still the medium that continues to attract the mushy of mind and mouth without the so afflicted participants realising it. This, as they have been swept up in the siren-song by which so many of us were also raptured up.

Somebody desperately needs to be indicted on the ongoing and lasting charges of losing or ignoring every opportunity to resurrect the radio business with explosions of creativity and the extraordinary and available new applications of the language.

Radio is due its own age of enlightenment. There is no evidence, however, making of that a forgone happenstance. Not so long as “creativity” is considered a costly and toxic waste of time and resources.

“Do it today! Buy now! Plenty o’ free parking!” This will have to suffice for now and, possibly, forever.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
[email protected]
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Thu Dec 26, 2024 2:20 am

Those Pesky Words

The spoken language: there’s nothing quite like it – accept no substitutes. And there’s no place like the radio to find regular, universal examples of just such extraordinary phenomena. (Particularly astute readers will have immediately noted the dripping-goop irony and steel-encased cynicism with which that latter comment was delivered.)

Indeed, and for the most part, radio is a barren wasteland over which bone-dry carcasses of those many that made the attempt to avail themselves of opportunities to communicate over the medium in a meaningful way are scattered, sometimes in subtle piles but always in plain sight. These blatantly obvious bundles of bodies have served as very extreme warnings to those that would wander on to the territory with intentions of exercising their communicative muscles in attempts to be more engaging and influential with their audiences.

Even despite noteworthy evidence of the severe ramifications for failure, there are always other poor saps that are willing to engage – for a little while at least – in making some worthwhile contributions to a body of material that has, over the decades, become sorely missing. Radio has become essentially devoid of such elements. Indeed, bereft.

And yet, without factoring in the non-participation of most radio presenters, examples of oratory are available in just about every other medium. Most of it is, essentially, content-based and missing the spectacular nuances of the language that is otherwise still available.

Meanwhile, from time to time, glistening examples of oratorical excellence are presented elsewhere – such that listeners are captured and held by individuals that are literally weaving communicative spells and are motivating a listener to consider alternative concepts and to take actions they would never have contemplated beforehand. A listener could make the claim they had just been hyp-no-tized, although this would be unlikely as listeners would hardly be aware of the process.

Nevertheless, strong communicators make it their business to become adept at navigating the trails, roads and highways that make up the vast geography of potentials that comprise verbal communication.

It could be argued that those uninvolved with the radio biz would expect that attaining such skill levels would be the starting point for those individuals that are considering joining the ranks of jocks, writers, and other radio aficionados.

I have always been in awe of those speakers that can, within moments, gain the attention of listeners and in the process, go on to influence them to move along and begin to work towards accomplishing wonderful things well beyond their otherwise unknown capacities.

Unfortunately, the principles of language don’t only apply to those that are compelled towards the concepts of sweetness, light or The Marquis of Queensbury rules. The language strategies are also available to those blackguards and scoundrels who are excited by the darker impulses – delighted to be lyin’, cheatin’, and sadistically manipulating the great unwashed - the gomers and rubes - with flourishes and tubs of aplomb. (I submit the shuddering example of too many run-of-the-mill Republicans on the other side of the 49th.)

This hardly bodes especially well for the standard-issue contemporary radio presenters that - mostly because of management mandates - have yet to acquire control over those pesky words nor the communicative skills for motivating their moms to pack them a bag lunch.

Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
[email protected]
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby pave » Tue Jan 28, 2025 3:31 am

Surrendered To The Tunes

According to my fading and disjointed memories, the conspiracy was hatched in the mid - ‘70’s. This was way before jocks were being banished to North Korean re-education facilities or worse, bodies were being discovered in shallow graves and deeper ditches beside hardly used county roads. DNA was in its forensic infancy, and that the remains were found wearing t-shirts emblazoned with station logos did not comprise enough evidence to stand up in court.

There was another decade-long hiatus before the Purge of the Personalities really started kicking in, but there were still enough clues to suggest there was a serious skullduggery afoot.

Stations had already begun to prepare the soil for what was to be planted in due course. Glorification of The Music took up the on-air promotional priority. All participating stations girded their loins with a combination of “The Most Music” “The Best Music” and “The Greatest Music of All Time”. These absolute quantifiers were foisted on audiences without any notice that the other stations were taking exactly the same tack - word for word. Is it possible that somebody was lying, stopped paying attention or perhaps, had immediately run out of optional approaches?

By then, Program Directors and Music Directors had taken on holy orders and were seen prowling the station hallways garbed in cloaks and cowls – the PD’s taking on the duties of a vicious inquisitor, meting out cruel justice in protection of The Devine Format while MD’s were conjuring up their own brand of voodoo in the application of top-secret music mixes consistent with The Holy Format. The purge was on. Personality pain became the constant.

From the mid ‘60’s to the mid ‘70’s music rotations had gone from the Hot 100 (according to Billboard and Cashbox magazines) to a Top 50. That was whittled down to Top 40 and finally the coup de grace – The Top 30. Some of the true believers, the fundamentalists, even toyed for awhile with a Top 20. Music research began emanating from a multiple of varied sources _ including some well-informed bakery and loan shark shops.

That’s when radio – as an entertainment medium – sidled up to the edge of the chasm and blindly stepped into the abyss. They started playing two music cuts in a row, sometimes without a jock insert between them. And that’s when the bell tolled. Could 3, 4, 5 or 6 cuts in a row be in the not-so-distant future? No one dared fantasize about “Commercial Free Music Marathons”. These, by the way, were the days when radio was being shipped into palliative care, waiting only for the gurgling rattle and the death notices to follow.

By then, jocks, particularly the prolific and talented ones were subtly invited to sit mostly idle in the control rooms.

Meanwhile, those of us who were considered “performers” were regularly cautioned about becoming “tune-out factors” and were invited to address our very real and toxic forms of anxiety and paranoia, and to polish up our resumes for gigs that were systematically being eliminated across the industry.

The previously mentioned research never did address impacts the personalities were generating for their respective stations either. It was no longer of any consequence. We were all being collected and summarily dropped into the darkest, slimy recesses of The Belgian Congo. We had become no more than live bait.

The great irony of all this is that now, with the proliferation of music of every genre through the convenience of the internet, radio stations are left with the lowest common basis: All Rock – No Jocks.
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Please note: I am inviting reader comments to be sent to my email address (below).
Ronald T. Robinson
[email protected]
pave
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby Just sayin' » Tue Jan 28, 2025 9:29 am

Actually Ron, I prefer all music vs all babble from the current crop of uneducated and ill-informed 'personalities.'
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby [email protected] » Tue Jan 28, 2025 3:42 pm

Having read everything on this page, I have to ask: What prompted the re-issuance of several of the "What's it Going To Take..." columns?

Are we running out of contributors?
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby the-real-deal » Tue Jan 28, 2025 11:22 pm

Ronald's column (What's it Going to Take) has been a regular feature on Radiowest dot ca for as long as I can remember (and I have been writing on this forum for at least 15 years, with this nom de plume and under another name).

I find that Ronald's writing to be quite good and he has an excellent command of the English language. He is a good voice over artist. He is also a wordsmith, indeed, while I am a "foul-mouthed" Smith, (admittedly ?)

He calls the shots as he sees them and he doesn't throw dog biscuits at anyone, nor does he suck the c--k of the People's Party of Canada or the Republican Party, like those on the other website.

I think that Robinson has earned the right to his opinions.
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Re: What's It Going To Take...?

Postby thehighwayman » Wed Jan 29, 2025 6:42 am

Please keep Ron Robinson's columns coming!
I don't always agree with him, but for the most part he is right on the mark with his comments about the banality of current radio management!
There is too much focus on what the shareholders want ... not enough on what the listeners (customers) want!
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