This piece will be short.
Not that I couldn’t rant on for a couple thousand words on the subject, but I’ve been told by good friends and/or readers that they would enjoy, every now and then, a blog that didn’t require them to block out most of their morning or afternoon to read.
I’ve got some pretty witty friends, wouldn’t you agree?
Okay. So here’s a short one for you.
As you know, either because you know me or because you’ve read my bio, I am a writer/producer/broadcast personality and Grammy nominated songwriter.
And, what the hell, I’ve even had a few “real jobs” in my life.
Today, though, I’m sharing as the “broadcast personality”.
Who is, by the way, currently not on the air anywhere, what with being in the down part of the “boy, radio sure is an up and down business, huh?” thing and all.
And because I’ve been spending a lot of time in the last two or three months “looking for that next opportunity”, I’ve been working a lot in my home office and listening to a lot of morning radio.
Now, I’m going to slap an initial asterisk right on this missive because, given that I’m feeling a little unloved in the broadcast business these days, the case could be made that my opinion is steeped in the fine wine that only be made from vintage sour grapes.
I know it’s not, but I leave it up to you to decide for yourself.
In fact, I’m going to go a little further out on the limb and risk predicting that by the end of this piece, you and I are going to be “in tune” (pun intended)
Here’s the thing.
“Conventional” morning radio, no matter the music format, tends, these days, to consist primarily of a “crew” of folks whose main function, other than segueing into traffic reports on the quarter hour and weather on the eights, is to pander to the sense of humor of the least sophisticated listener who might be tuned in at any given time.
Okay. Crotch humor aint my thing, either as a listener or a broadcaster, but I’m big enough to grant that a lot of people enjoy jokes aimed between the legs as opposed to between the ears.
Different strokes and all that.
What chaps my cheeks, both as a listener and as a broadcaster, is the approach that the lion’s share of these “morning zoo crews” take when offering up their contributions to the history of AM and FM.
I call it “HEY! I’m over HERE!”
If and when you listen to morning radio, does any of this sound familiar? Jokes, one liners, double entendres, cheap shots, goofball gags, etc, etc fired off as if an original thought might cause a choking sensation in the throat of the person on mike, followed by a constant barrage of guffaws, chortles, giggles, chuckles and/or maniacal laughter on the part of the rest of the “crew”?
Yeah. Me, too.
And although I hold fast to my earlier “endorsement” of the different strokes concept, I still find myself almost always more annoyed than entertained.
Why?
Like I said, because “HEY! I’m over HERE!”
These yuksters aren’t talking to me and they’re not talking to you, either. They’re not performing for you or trying to get your day started by circling around you and doing their FCC licensed best to tickle your funny bone.
They are, to put it simply, getting each other off and getting off on each other.
Oh…and how long have you been there, mister or missus listener?
Ever been to one of those music concerts where during a particularly smokin’ few bars of a song, the musicians all turn and face the drummer, playing and gigging and just having a high old time, getting their very talented groove on with each other, only mildly aware of the fact that they have turned their backs on the nice folks who have paid fifty or sixty or a hundred bucks to see the damn band in person?
Ever been tempted to set fire to your hundred-dollar ticket stub, wave it around and yell out…
“HEY! I’m over HERE!”
Or better yet, quickly enlist all your fellow ticket holders to simply turn around and walk out, so that when the band members finally got bored with each other they would spin around to find that the packed house had become an empty house?
Yeah!
I said at the outset that I’m not happy about not being on the air because I love the work, I’m very good at what I do and I really do enjoy talking to you and trying to tickle your funny bone.
But even if I had never set foot in a radio station and had, instead, taken up caulking and grouting as a profession thirty years ago, it would still annoy the bejesus out of me to tune in to a morning radio show and hear three or four or five “personalities” laughing at each other’s fart jokes ten minutes at a time.
By the way, I was reading the other day that the radio industry is in a state of upheaval, with industry analysts searching high and low for some reason to explain why they’re losing listeners faster than Titanic took on water.
We could tell them, couldn’t we?
But, first, they’d have to turn around and see us standing here.
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