Companies With Their Heads in the Sand

Wow!

Yes, that was about the size of coffee I would need every day to get through my last job. The stress at that place was unimaginable, and every day something completely dysfunctional happened.

From what I've heard, the company is still behaving the same way.

Radio, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, is a dysfunctional business. Not that it should be, it just is. We live in an ever-changing world where technology is constantly being redesigned and pushed forward. Communication is absolutely sacrosanct, yet so many radio people prefer to live in the 1950's. "Oh, don't be ridiculous! Radio will never be threatened by the Internet or satellite radio. Those ipods are just a fad! People will be listening to those little transistors till the end of time!" My last job had the worst communication from its managers. People would write emails but ignore all etiquette and decency.

Here is a little bit of an email I received. I won't name names, but this came from someone who had no power over what I, as a radio performer, was doing. Mind you, I was hired as someone to be a radio performer for the time period of afternoon rush hour. You MUST entertain people during this time period; it is demanded of you. Even on music formats, mornings and afternoons need to be entertaining. Some stations let their nights be entertaining, too. Most keep the midday, from 10am to 3pm, pretty music intensive. My show was music intensive, but when I did speak it was always for less than a minute and always entertaining. Here is a piece of the paragraph-long email:

Yesterday, I heard you trying to imitate a French accent. No more warnings. Keep it straight and play the music.

"Keep it straight." Read: Keep it boring! That's what your radio stations today want from their jocks. Boring. Do you know why I was doing a French accent? I did it for 2 seconds and it was part of a joke! I didn't do my whole show in a French accent. By the way, I am quite good with many accents (you can hear by clicking on the Santa Fe Cafe samples to the right). I can even speak a little French and was coached specifically on French pronunciation. But this is communication in radio: It's only purpose is to treat employees like little spoiled kids that constantly need reprimanding.

Radio has no idea what world it's living in. It thinks it's still in the world of "Mad Men" where discrimination and sexism run amok and employees are made to be kept down. We live in a new world! Radio apparently doesn't know that and has never looked out the window.

The way I was kept down runs totally contrary to how an organization should be run. Even the book Managing For Dummies says in a situation like this, everyone loses! "Your employees lose because you aren’t allowing them to stretch themselves or to show creativity or initiative. Your organization loses the insights that its creative workforce brings with it. Finally, your customers lose because your employees are afraid to provide them with exceptional service. Why should
they if they’re constantly worried that you will punish them for taking
initiative or for pushing the limits of the organization"?

Today's WHAT THE HECK??? Why are companies like this allowed to keep running? You know what, they're not. They're the ones that are filing for bankruptcy. Try as they may to blame the economy or blame Obama for not bailing them out, they're own worse enemy is themselves and their failure to grow with the times. I use radio as an example because it seems the most pronounced in fighting everything it SHOULD be in today's world. The managers and the owners behave like the spoiled children: Not willing to try something new or something that is needed.

If you want your employees to "keep it straight" and keep their noses buried in the past, good luck. Your company will die out in this very different world you refuse to live in. Have fun keeping up. Enjoy the coffee you'll be downing.

Music and the 80's Generation's First Big Goodbye

That's my crazy radio DJ face.




Very frightening. It's a fun job, no money in it, but for a type like me that enjoys a wide swath of music it fits me.

When I first started in radio in 1986 there were at that moment no Michael Jackson hits getting played in tight rotation on the station I interned at. That would all change when he released the first single from his "Bad" album, "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", a duet he did with Siedah Garrett. After that there were number one hits with "Bad", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Man in the Mirror", (the next single, "Another Part of Me", from the Disneyland ride Captain Eo peaked in the top ten but not at number one) "Dirty Diana", and "Smooth Criminal."

After that I start to lose track of what went number one for him. I know he had a very intricate "live action mixed with animation" video that MTV used to play all the time called "Leave Me Alone" but that hardly got played on the radio. When his next huge hit "Black and White" came out I was working formats that didn't play him much (or didn't play his fast songs, just his ballads like "Will You Be There" and "Heal the World"). Meanwhile, his sister Janet was all over the radio and had pretty much been so since her 1985 album "Control".

Today's WHAT THE HECK? What the heck is wrong with us, with anyone, for slamming this man now at his shocking untimely death? We all know he lead a life that most of us question, but look at what will be his REAL legacy, his two amazing albums "Off the Wall" and "Thriller". Both those albums taught us how to let loose and have fun. Michael was not ashamed of his high falsetto. Eddie Murphy and others poked fun at it, but he knew he could rock like the best guitar gods in his own uncompromising way (he even enlisted a guitar god, Eddie VanHalen, to play the crazy solo on "Beat It"). Without him, I doubt we would have been so willing to open the doors for Justin Timberlake and others who sing high and dance like we wish we all could.

In the months and years to follow, we'll get the whole story on why he died so young. We'll maybe hear of even more controversies: What did he do while staying in the middle east? Why did he hit such economic hard times? What is the legacy of his children? How many plastic surgeries were ultimately involved in the expanse of his entire life and why was he so vane?

He is the first of the 80's pop generation to leave us so soon. He had such a lasting impact: He is like an Elvis or a Sinatra though there will be those who call that blasphemy. Those people have their ears in the sand and have no idea what greatness we were listening to from Michael's earliest years playing with his family to 1995 when he enjoyed his last number one hit ("You Are Not Alone" which broke records for making it to number one so quickly).

When you work in radio, especially a top 40 station, that plays the same songs over and over again, you get to know each and every note of certain songs. I am honored I got to hear every note of Michael's.

The Great Americana Radio Format and Why It's Gone

The high point of my radio career was somewhere around 2002. The corporation that owned us happened upon their one good idea...to let me be more creative and have more control of my radio show. They also decided that on Sunday evenings they would play 2 hours of "Americana" music.

Americana falls somewhere between the triangle of folk, rock, and country. It would be an awesome format to work for if radio was indeed experimental in that way anymore, which it is not. You literally play the cleverest lyricists, the best musicians, and sometimes the deepest music. I know there's KPIG in Monterey, but that is the exception to the rule. They have done a fantastic job staking a claim in the world of Internet radio before anyone else did. They play new music by Americana artists and throw in some classic rock songs. You really can not predict what you're going to hear.

When we did this format, I was fortunate enough to get a lot of the Cd's that were sent to us. I still have them, and still listen and party like it's...well, 2002.

Here's my WHAT THE HECK!?!...Some time in 2004, idiots in corporate decided to clamp down. Actually, the guy they put in the position to do it at the local level ended up being pretty cool, and he was successful in explaining to me his reasoning for executing corporate's wishes. Clutter and consistency were the main words he used. My question in hindsight though is what did we sacrifice creatively by making those changes? The actions we took ended up making radio more repetitive and less unpredictable.

"Well, listeners like predictability. Radio should be an appliance. When you flip a light switch, you expect to see light." The day radio was explained to me as an appliance was the day I should have bailed. That was NOT what I signed up for. I like radio because of its potential: you could paint a million pictures and stretch the imagination from your words and by playing with sounds. Some DJ's used the music itself to paint a picture or make a comment. Those days are gone.

By the way, KPIG is the perfect example of what I talked about in a previous blog: how radio stations will die and be taken over by one main station...the "Radio Unification Theory," if you will. KPIG started out on just one frequency in Monterey at 107.5FM. Now it can be heard on 4 more frequencies throughout California including 94.9FM in San Luis Obispo and 1510AM in San Francisco; basically covering most of California's coast. The last "group-thunk idiot company" I worked for would never take a chance on a station like this. I have heard people that worked at the corporate level that said "that format doesn't work" and they should have long since given up the ship. Yet this format has now grown to 4 more frequencies and has built a business model that only shows it can spread to MORE stations. Looking at my ex-employers and how they've forced mandatory furloughs on their employees showing how their ship is in its final mount before the whole thing goes underwater at the foot of the iceberg, I would say they were wrong yet again! Corporate radio has no incite in matters like this, and thus its current down spin.

Look up Americana on the Internet. I'm sure you'll find a group worth listening to. The cool thing is a lot of these artists tour frequently and EVERYWHERE so you're bound to see them in your local (or somewhat local) venue soon. Till then, I'll be pulling out The Gourds or the Old 97's out of my CD rack and giving them a little listen...probably ripping them to my computer so they'll come up in my Windows Media Player. At least my WMP has good taste in music.