Within the broadcasting realm, I think we’ve lost sight of what the real spine of radio is…and that’s the on-air talent. We are so fixated on numbers and sales, we’ve completely tossed aside how radio was run in the beginning.
The first time the term “disc jockey” was used was in 1935 when commentator Walter Winchell introduced Martin Block. Back then, live orchestras were on the payroll. Most of the radio shows contained drama, comedy, of course news and music, as well as sports. It was during these times “story telling” really became the meat and potatoes of the disc jockey era. The radio shows were the main reason people turned on the radio. Radio commercials were broadcast live! Clients would wait in line to voice their spot and move on. Can you imagine a hallway of your most played clients? No thank you.
DJs like Wolfman Jack in the 70s became so popular, they had cameos in movies! Jack appeared as himself in American Graffiti. Along those lines, many actors started off in radio: Bob Crane from Hogan’s Heroes, Ryan Seacrest, Oprah Winfrey, Ludacris, David Letterman, Wendy Williams….and the list goes on. In the 50s and 60s, radio hosts were considered celebrities, just like the actors.
Those radio moments, the actors (or the DJs in these cases) were the ones directing how things should run. Sure, they had programmers and sales teams. However, it was the talent that had the pull, because people were tuning in to hear the talent. If you lost that radio program and its talent, you lost a lot of listeners. So what happened between then, and now?
Coming from the air talent aspect, I saw the fluctuation start taking place. I started radio in 2004, when talent was still important, but I saw it starting to shift. Sales teams got bigger, more aspects of the company were being implemented, side projects within the company were taking more time from programming, the original idea of radio was getting lost within all these monkey-making ideas.
I understand “we need to keep the lights on,” but there needs to be some recall of the reason radio came about in the first place…the ENTERTAINMENT! In some ways, I believe we need to get back to the story telling and the art of creating an illusion of something big happening inside that radio studio. Think Orson Welles with “The War of the Worlds.” His theater group read from the script and had everyone across America thinking we were under the attack of aliens! Now, we are told to keep our breaks short and to the point, and this is where we are losing the entertainment factor of radio. ANYONE can listen to a song. Not anyone can pull something like Welles did. He was the epitome of story telling.
In my opinion, we cannot be story tellers when we are told over and over to keep the breaks short and to the point. No, we can’t read an entire script. And yes, the attention span these days are much shorter than 50 years ago. We need to do what we were hired to do; entertain. If people wanted short and sweet breaks, then ANYONE could read the script! Not anyone can deliver the news or information the way a hired on-air talent can. DJ’s are hired for their personality and charisma. LET THOSE SHINE! Let the talent do what they do best. Let them tell stories again. Let them connect to the listeners without PDs hanging over their shoulder, wanting to know EXACTLY what’s going to be said in the break the next day. Let the morning shows TALK, and not read scripts that were written the day before. Let the shows be shows. Radio has gotten stale. It’s been pounded into the brains of jocks everywhere, “We must be short. We must get to the commercial break. We need to promote this.” If they’re stressed, it’s going to relay on air. If you have a solid show with solid talent who know how to do their job, the listeners will stick around, the cume will grow, the money will come.
Again, my opinion. I miss listening to the shows. I miss hearing the genuine laughs and banter from DJs. I miss hearing the fun. It’s time we remember why radio came about in the first place.
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