I am probably one of the luckiest people on the planet. I have a beautiful wife, beautiful daughters and good health for my age. As you get older, perspective becomes a power thing. You start to understand certain things that have eluded you through the years. Like, why did I end up doing something for 30 years that I necessarily did not like. Why did I stay in my career for so long, not liking it mind you, but putting up with it for so long. Can you sometimes be too close to the fire to feel the warmth or you just focused on the flames! Either way, stay there long enough and you get burned.
It was only after getting out of the radio business, did I start to understand why I stayed too long. Because I was hoping against all hope that the magic would return, soon. After looking at all the crystal balls, and reading all the tea leaves I could find, I am afraid that radio never ever will come back. They are still some good honest operators, but more rug-merchants, and carpet baggers who have no sense of the community responsibility they have as promised to the government to get the public license in the first place. If I'm not mistaken, the FCC licenses each station for the "community interest, to become a part of the community, to be a good citizen of the community...etc."
How is Ryan Seacrest, beamed in from Los Angeles doing any of that in say, Savannah, GA or a host of other stations that he is on?
When are they going to send Lowery Mays to jail for single handily destroying local, community radio.
When is Fagreed Suleman going to be thrown out of his ivory tower for the dastardly deeds he has done when he took Cit-a-Hell and ABC down the crapper. They are trading at 11 cents a share today. When he showed up at the door, the stock was closing at 12. Shouldn't that be a crime?
Radio as I had known and loved for many years is gone; murdered by these bean-counters who never understood that it wasn't always about the stock value, but the good and wonderful things that your radio did for your community.
RIP Radio. "Those were the days my friend, we thought they'd never end."
