Is radio dying? That was the Point of View in a recent Radio Ink Convergence Conference. I blogged about this a few weeks ago…

http://www.radioink.com/HeadlineEntry.asp?hid=141391&pt=todaysnews

Leo states that “Good Content” is what makes good radio.  It’s my opinion that good radio people, who make good radio content, can always make good “radio” entertainment.  The problem we’re having is that the industry isn’t embracing the people that are growing into it. 

There really isn’t a grapefruit league for radio anymore… unless you embrace Podcasting.  Couldn’t it easily be said that good radio people never die they just live on in podcasting and internet content delivery? 

In many aspects, I think radio died a very long time ago. Billboard, R&R, Record companies, Arbitron, radio consolidation and brain dead PD’s are to blame.

The record companies tell the charts what to push - the PD’s play what the charts and some consultant on the other side of the country tell them to and arbitron rewards them accordingly for playing along.

The radio I grew up with was compelling and kept you glued to the dial.

Don’t blame technology - blame the content.

I look at it this way:

• I have a fun job
• People seem to enjoy that I do it
• I make enough to keep us alive
• I don’t smell like coal dust when I get home
• My audience believes in my product, and show up when we go out
• You can’t buy community support like we have
• My boss loves what I do, too

Today’s Best Music 99 1/2 WLOL Minneapolis, St Paul with another hour of custom mixed music…  Now that was a great radio station and a great PD.  Gregg Swedberg had some amazing talent and content with John Hines and the crew in the morning.

Hey tight and bright baby!!! Let’s create some new content! 

Justin Kaiser
Creative Identity Group

photo credit: paper by design

Just read this and thought I would share. It comes from Michael Tate over at Aria.

How do you take courage when your whole world is collapsing around you? How do you maintain a continued vision and philosophy of success when everything around you turns to crap, and continues to do so? How do you maintain a vision when you’re under attack?

Each time I sit to write an article for the revenue.generator newsletter I try to create something helpful, something purposeful, and something hopefully not only valuable to your day in radio sales but also useful somehow in your life.
I suspect like you I read my fair share of motivational books and articles - sometimes a word, an idea, or some simple phraseology penetrates my dull brain and helps make some kind of difference to me and hopefully to the way I interact with those around me. But it’s when I’m struggling and drowning in the world that I need this stuff the most, yet I turn to it least.

It is extremely difficult to maintain courage ‘under fire’, particularly to maintain inner-strength, character, and the clarity of your ‘dream’ beneath a consistent and prolonged attack of what can feel like ‘you against the world’.

So what’s the difference between those who persist and those who cave-in under the outside pressure?

hat happens to the dreamers of big dreams?

What happened to the dreams you had as a kid?

What happened to the goals and grand visions you had at the beginning of last year; and of this year? Let alone the dreams you dreamed the day you finished college; the day you got married; or the day your child was born?

Whatever happened to fulfilling what quietly lives in your heart?

Have you all but stopped seeking and believing?

Have you become so tired, so jaded, and so mediocre that you’ve convinced yourself that your dreams were simple minded ideas of a younger more innocent you?

Have you stripped yourself bare of all your promise and power? Are you now simply quietly and cynically drifting through life (waiting to fade away) convinced that genuine success and joy is for others?

It’s absolutely true that the gutter is full of failed genius. Yet did these people truly fail because “that’s the way it’s meant to be”, or did they fall under the weight of their own self-imposed beliefs and barriers? Did they simply lack the strength of courage to fulfill their inner dreams and desires?

If you are going to allow fear to win the war for your life you will lose, and your dreams will die with you.

Don’t depart without showing us the real you.

Get rich, go broke, and do it all over again. Get married, don’t get married. Love your children; live your truth and speak your truth. Enjoy your madness and embrace your genius. A life lived less than genuinely is a mere façade, and then not you.

Helen Keller wrote: “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
If you simply avoid living consciously and courageously, then that is equivalent to giving up on life itself, where your continued existence becomes little more than a waiting period before physical death - the nothing as opposed to the daring adventure.”

Sell (and live) without regret.