Seeking A Radio Career? Separating Signal from Noise (ep.391)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Podcasting since two thousand and five. This is the King
of Podcasts Radio Network, King of Podcasts dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Someone actually wrote a book about getting into the radio business.
In twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
The King of Podcasts Radio Network proudly presents to the
Broadcasters Podcast. Here is the King of Podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
At before of July from yours trail, The Kingdom Podcasts
and the Broadcasters Podcast. The lead broadcast to you Tonight,
episode three hundred and ninety one. It is a slow
week in the world of media, and part of it
is I don't want to talk about anything political because yes,
Paramount and CBS had to go ahead and pay the

(00:47):
President in another settlement that was done by media. We're
not talking about that. I'm not going to talk about
Diddy being mostly acquitted of most of the heinous charges
like racketeering and major products prostitution charges. He got clear
to that, so we're not gonna talk about that either.
And in terms of movies, I'm not gonna talk about
Jurassic World rebirth. Just not interested another reboot of a

(01:11):
reboot of a reboot. No no, no, no no, that's enough.
That's enough. I think I saw the first Jurassic Park
maybe the second one, and that's it. I'm not going farther.
That's that. Sorry, No, it's not one of those movies
are gonna go back for. Maybe I'll go tomorrow to
rewatch F one or ball Arena, But I mean, I'm

(01:31):
still on the fence about it. I don't know if
I want to go. Maybe they get a little bit
fed up of the fireworks that go on in my
house around here on the weekend. What just depending on
we'll figure it out. But since it is a quiet
week in media, I did need to go and dig
around looking for what they're going to talk about the night.
But I found something that was fascinating. And you know what,

(01:54):
sometimes when i'm just a little Google search around, I'll
find something that's just gonna catch my attention. And this
week it's very amazing. There's a new ebook has come
out to explore radio careers for the next generation. So
Radio Today dot co dot uk wrote the story and
put it out to a new ebook that's available for download,

(02:15):
and I did so. A new free ebook aiming to
help students explore modern careers in radio and audio. This
caught my attention, and look, my thing was is that
the cynical mind that has been radio, newspaper, television and
podcasting for over thirty years. You know, I wanted to
go ahead and take this with a grain of salt,

(02:38):
and I wanted to go ahead and chastise what was
being said here if there was any good advice coming
in this. But I want to go and take some
of this in a constructively critical role. And I do
want to add some real world experience into what I
know about it, because I think it would be a
good idea to con't do that. So here's what I got.
The book is called Solid Advice A Guy Navigating Careers

(03:00):
in the modern and future radio digital media landscape. Now
you can find the book at Radiocopywriters dot com. Radiocopywriters
dot com. That is where you can find this free
ebook and it's available for download. You don't have to
do anything though, asking for an email address, nothing, You

(03:23):
just go right there. They have a download link. You
can actually go ahead and find it for yourself. So
the book was written by broadcaster Earl Pilkinson and the
guide was designed for secondary school and university students considering
creative technical commercial roles in today's radio industry. Now, this
is in the UK, and what I must say ahead

(03:44):
of time is that radio in Europe and in other
areas outside of the United States, Yeah, there is a
place where radio is important. And radio still matters. Whether
it's streaming, or whether it's on DAB dB or dB plus,

(04:05):
or whether it's on FMRIM it still matters. So Earl
has forty years of the experience in broadcasting. He says
that most radio career guys have not been updated since
the nineteen nineties, and there's a good reason why. When
the Internet changed, the digital disruption came in. Yeah, things
just started changing, and we know that there was a
lot of interest in new technology, and so there have

(04:25):
been quite a few pioneers that have come to the space.
We talked about it last week with the advent of Apple,
including podcasting in iTunes twenty years ago, last week, last
thirties of the Day. So he offers an overview of
current and emerging roles across on air programming, engineering, sales,

(04:45):
digital content, and voice tech. The question has to be
if you're going to get into the business of radio,
is you need to figure out what the radio environment
is right now where you live. Because we know in
the current American radio vironment. If I want to go
and apply what this person's thinking about possibilities of working
in radio, let me give you the lion's guide. The

(05:09):
landscape of radio right now is this. Of these companies
that are here, of the major corporate operations that are
running radio stations, they also have other departments. Podcasting is
one of those. They have marketing, advertising. You know that
you have a few things that can go to work
off of that you can find your way into. Obviously,

(05:29):
they'll take on salespeople if they can try to sell,
you know, whatever they want. But the thing is is
that we have radio companies that have the majority of
radio stations, of the majority of the highest wattage Class
A class B radio stations, so let's say between ten

(05:52):
and one thousand watts of radiated power on AM or
FM radio. And the big corporations in all top one
hundred markets are just saying they have a stranglehold on
those stations. They don't operate at a very profitable level.
Most of these radio companies are holding debt. They barely

(06:16):
make any profit off of what they make. They are
some of them are financially they are publicly traded to
the point where their stocks are very worth little. They're
basically penny stocks in some cases because they've been delisted.
And if you look at their debt, if you look
at their balance sheets, they are always holding on debt
because of acquisitions from the past. And then they're just

(06:39):
basically extending their credit as much as they can because
they can. And then the other part is they can
also lobby with the arm of the National Association to
broadcasters to be able to go ahead and move the
goal post anytime they want, which the most relatest move.
We'll talk about the delete, deleade, the SEC public commentary
and what they're going to be doing there. Brendt Carr's

(07:01):
already talking about the fact that he wants to go
ahead and expedite and hurry up the process, which means
if that initiative is going to move forward quickly, that
means you're going to go right into ownership caps and
ruin those completely. Because all media says that they're competing
against the Internet, that there's no longer a competition between themselves,

(07:23):
they're just finding for survival against the Internet. That's their argument.
I don't think it's such the same, but that's okay.
So this book in particular's ebook, it shows information about
how to enter the industry locally or internationally, advice on
how to bridge the gap between traditional broadcasting and new

(07:44):
digital media platforms. So again for school and university of
career counselors, media studies, educators as job seeking students, because
there was always something about maybe there's something here about
what could possibly be done with maybe people getting into

(08:07):
the radio business, because there was something you see in
various movies and various things that maybe we'll have caught
the attention of someone out there to learn about it.
Growing up myself, one of the movies I've said before
on this program that was one of the epiphanies that

(08:30):
got me wanted to go into radio was Pump Up
the Volume Christians Slater Samantha Mappis. That movie got me
interested in radio. I was always wanting to get into
media in some way, savee or form, but radio was it.
And then also the other part was the radio stations
that I got to listen to in the day and
what I got to hear previously growing up as a kid,

(08:51):
and some of the role models that I had in
radio that just had a fun time and just they
were amazing people, and then growing up and learning from
other radio folks about who they aspired to be or
who they admired from Afar as well. One of the
guys that I got to know in the radio business
Neil Liebowitz. He introduced me to so many different people

(09:15):
in New York and that market of the BABC and
other things like that were I mean, other people in
New York, other people in other markets. And then I
just started exploring and just learning as much as they
can about radio and the history of it, of the
talent of what was popular, because also what came with

(09:37):
radio was the music that came on and how we
all growing up. Maybe not some of you now you
know in your teens and twenties, but those of you
were on the older set of the demographic that listened
to this program. You know that you listen to the
radio growing up. Besides the music that you listen to
in your car and your headphones, walkman, whatever, you gonna

(10:00):
listen to a lot of music on the radio because
there's a lot of music available. Because they basically had
the access that what Spotify and Apple Podcasts or iTunes
gives you now or Pandora, they were the DJs that
all the music available, and they could play a lot
of things, and they could curate music for you. So
every radio station was like its own playlist, which they

(10:21):
if they were doing the right thing, they would have
an expanded playlist, but they would also play a lot
of new music. But they also would have a good
way of filtering out new music having it played for
so much until the point we got fatigued with it,
and then those songs would go away and something else
new would come in. And it worked for many years.
Record labels profited from it. But again everything was based

(10:42):
on physical units. So radio is a different beast today
because of what is being asked for by radio stations down.
If you really want to be in the business of radio,
just remember, in the words of Michael, it's a cruel mistress.

(11:02):
Many people get into the radio business because we love
it and it does not pay much. Sometimes you could
get into something where you might get paid well. You
can do something where you can supplement income as a
content creator to build off of and do that. I like,
there's other things you can do where you can continue
to go and do other things to create revenues rooms

(11:25):
for yourself be an entrepreneur and still have radio be
a part of you. That's being done now what I
see a lot of of the current crop of younger
talent that's out there that have got the opportunity to
go and work on radio stations in major markets. I
managed to see a handful of them out there that
I've tried to go and do their work as content creators.

(11:47):
I haven't seen anyone that has really excelled doing that.
I mean, it's nice. Some of them will do live
streams and we'll see them in the studio and they're
actually getting things set up, but really you're not doing
too much because they're not going to talk on the air.
They're doing more talking with the stream on social media.
Then they are getting to talk on the actual air.
And will they get to talk live, No, probably voice track.

(12:09):
Are they gonna get talk to talk to live listeners
or interact with live listeners. No. They might get some
messages on social media emails, I don't know, but they're
not gonna get anything where they get actual interaction because
for whatever reason now, a lot of radio stations they're

(12:29):
not going to allow somebody to get onto a hot
mic for fear what they might say, but when you're
in radio, we used to know how to go entertain
and form an educated audience live like we knew what
to do. And it's one of those things where if
you are getting yourself into the mix of wanted to

(12:50):
be part of the radio environment, I think you'll probably
do better in college radio. If there is a college
radio station in the university you're at, or even in
the high school that you're at, or the secondary whatever
it is, maybe you get a chance to go do that.
You should absolutely find your way into a radio station
that's local that you can get yourself into the small market.

(13:12):
If you got to intern, if you gotta volunteer, do
whatever you gotta do. I volunteered at one station in
West Palm when I started. I tried to get myself
engaged with some of the other radio stations in the
market that were not owned by major operators, just to
get in the door. But what I really got my
experience from was college radio. So at Ford Atlantic University

(13:34):
where I went to school, we had WOWL and at
the time it was on AM at the very end
of the daal at sixteen ten am. But I learned
so much from that, Like I got to make all
my mistakes at WOWL, and I got to bringing people
into the mix. I got to go and experience new music.
I got to go and learn the process of working

(13:56):
with record labels entrepremoting their music and be able to
go put together good playlists, promote, put DJs on to
do mixed shows. I learned all that. I learned promotion,
I learned publicity, I learned marketing. I learn so much
from all that that applies this to what I do
today in podcasting. But the work you get to do

(14:18):
in radio, if you're doing podcasting or you want to
get into podcasting, the experience you get at a radio
station gives you discipline. Because one thing you will get
from radio is it will help you become a better presenter.
It'll help you be a better communicator. You might not
know this, but at the end of the day, there

(14:41):
have been many people that have come out of radio
in their careers in media that have done very well
and have been master's ceremonies for whatever they have to
go and be doing, whether they're going to be offered
to do. And they're also able to go ahead and
work on the fly and do a lot of things
listen two of the most active people that have been

(15:05):
in the last what twenty years right now that came
from radio. I will say, there's Ryan Seacrest, who he
has had his hands on everything. Okay, he got under
the tutelage of Dick Clark, learned how to go and
become a TV producer. Keeping up with the Kardashians is
off there. All this time, nobody were talking about the

(15:26):
fact that he's doing that American Idol, hosting that show
at its inception and continue to host that show ever since.
He now hosts. He's been hosting at KISSF have been
Los Angeles. First, it was a start on eighty seven
in Los Angeles and then went to Kiss FM and
he now hosts multiple shows there, the morning show there
on air with Ryan Seacrest, and he still hosts the

(15:48):
American Top forty broadcasts, which I still detest the fact
that he's doing it, but the way they're doing it
now is the way it is. It's fine whatever, I
don't listen to it. I can't listen to that show.
It's just not. That format of the charts is horrible.
The media based charts is just a bad thing. No
matter what everybody else says, especially with the stagnation we
have right now the charts, it doesn't help to listen

(16:10):
to him now. But Ryan seacrests for his credit also
now hosting Will of Fortune. He's got his hands on everything.
If you needed to go host, host anything, if you
needed him to good host any award show, the Oscars,
the Emmys, the Tone whatever, he could probably do it.
I mean, he might not be the most adept or
the most knowledgeable, but he can host. He hosts Nearest

(16:33):
Ether Year. There's the reason why he does all this
in easy command. Is he the best, No, but he
knows he is a functional and serviceable host. He can
get the job done. He might may not be the best,
but he is adaptable. He's capable, more than capable to

(16:53):
do any of these work, any of this work on television,
on radio, social whatever. Then there's Steve. We don't hear
much about him, but of course he came from comedy,
moved over to radio and been doing radio for a
long time. He still doesn't now he's heard one hundred
sizations around the country. You have him doing Family Feud,

(17:17):
which is now gonna be I think it's what sixteen
years now on the air. Maybe a little bit more
than that. I'm not sure. I thought it was two
thousand and nine. I think he started, I forget, but
he's been doing that show forever. He had his own
talk show for a while until he let that go.
But another person again has this line of suits, has
the different things he's doing as well, just in general,

(17:40):
he's writing books, multifaceted, and of course Steve Harvey, except
for that one little mistake of you know, that was
the wrong person that missed universe, otherwise he was doing
just fine, you know what to do. Nick Cannon was
another example to just put that out there, okay, because
you know, we song for a while doing America Scott Talent.

(18:02):
But before that, you know, he was he also doing
radio too, did morning show. I think he still does now.
I forget if he still does it or not. I
think he does over in New York still. But some
people just have a way to go ahead and be
able to communicate and do that. But people that came
from radio beforehand were always multi faceted and able to
go ahead and entertain, educating and form. They were able

(18:23):
to go ahead and present. They could be in front
of a camera in front of a microphone, and they
would know what to do because we knew how to
adapt with theater of the mind. Because all you're doing
and podcasting is listen. If you don't have anybody else
working with you, you don't have any guests to rely
on or a lot of information to grow and rely on.

(18:46):
A radio presenter, much like a podcast presenter. To be
a great podcaster, you can be in front of this
microphone and not have anything in front of you for prep.
Like right now, as I'm recording this episode, I looked
at one of us that one clip from Radio Today,
the one page I guess got up there and there's

(19:07):
an ebook which I got to go and bring up
in a minute. But for the last fifteen minutes, I've
just been off the cuff. I ad lipped. Because you
got to be able to go and have a way
of talking because you're disciplined to it. You have to
know what your format is. I try to stick myself
to a sixty minute format of this program. If you're
in radio, you have to support the commercials that are

(19:28):
gonna be on the air. You have to support the sponsors.
You have to be able to go ahead and make
sure that you keep the ship running because on top
of the fact that you're hosting, many times you're doing
other things behind the scenes. You might be producing the program,
you might be taking callers or taking a feedback whatever
there is, doing emails, or you might be doing some engineering.

(19:49):
Who knows what you might be doing. But in radio,
if you're coming into the space, the reason why all
those people came in and look, if I want to
talk about like the past of people, think about all
these shows that we've had on that have been working forever. Right,
We had game show hosts that all came from radio.
That Clark came from radio. You had Bob You, Banks,

(20:11):
Wing Martindale, Pat Say Jack, They all came from radio,
Alex Trebek, they all came from radio. And if they
didn't come from radio, then you have to comes from
somewhere where you have to be able to know what
to do on the fly. Comedians are always good to
go do things like that, but it still comes down
to the fact that if you're doing radio, if you

(20:33):
are funny, if you're insightful, if you're entertaining, if you
can keep an audience listening to you for minutes and
then hours on end, they'll stick around and listen to
your sponsors, listen, run to your content, and you not
reliant on what the content might be that you have
to go and get prepped for, or other people having

(20:53):
the gun to be there to bounce off that you
could talk to, or having guests. If you could do
it on your own and model and you can be
able to go and have a good show and people
will go ahead and listen to that on a regular basis,
then you know how to podcast, and it all comes
from doing radio. The radio component is you learn to
learn in a structure, because podcasting can be free form,

(21:15):
but the best podcasters out there kind of have a
format in place and they kind of know what they're doing.
In terms of the structure. You stick to it kind
of like around the same amount of time the con
that you're doing. You just want to make sure that
you're not wasting people's time. You get to the content,
you want to get to what you need to go
and talk about, what you plan to talk about this topic,
and then when you're done, you're done in this program.

(21:38):
When I do this, sometimes I don't go hour. The
plan is to do that, but I don't need to
go and stretch to an hour. Now in radio, you
do need to stretch to whatever time frame you have,
most likely an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours.
So for talk radio, which is a different beast than itself,
you really have sports talk or you'll have political talk,

(22:01):
and that's different. It's a different bag to go and
go through because in politics, you do you need to
go and you know, you have to have identified what
is your stance. If you're doing sports, you got to
be able to know at least something of what you're
talking about in whichever sport you're talking about. And for
sports radio, I mean, if you're in a major market,

(22:24):
you should be aware and be very familiar with all
the sports that are playing in that city. So that's
why there's some people that will talk about the fact
that when you're watching people on television trying to go
and talk about sports and all these different studio shows,
yeah they're not so knowledgeable, but put them on radio
they're probably good. Because if you get people that are

(22:45):
coming from radio, you got to be knowledgeable, Like if
they can do it on their own, they must be
able to do something. And of course there's people in
radio that are not the best in the world that
you know, especially coming out of sports or affroming from
you know, politics, there are people that just they just
know how to go ahead and fill time, fill a
program with the same kind of thing that everybody's familiar with.

(23:08):
And then people just know how to go ahead, listen
to and taken what there's what's being talked about. That's
it in the ebook itself. Okay, again, this is Sound Advice,
a guide to navigating careers in the modern and future
radio digital media landscape. So in the book they tell

(23:31):
you talk about the evolution of the radio industry that
has transformed that modern radio stations are now home to
a wider range of professionals AI specialists, data analysts, podcast producers,
and social media strategists alongside traditional rules like producers, copywriters,
and management teams. That might be a different story in
other markets outside of the US, but there are not

(23:51):
that many people that are working in these particular tasks
in there are not jobs that are just made for Okay,
here's somebody that's an AI specialist, it's a full time job.
Or detal analysts, that's a full time job. No, some
of this is quite outsourced, Okay. But then also at
the same time, you probably have somebody that's in there

(24:11):
that's working as a bit of a lackey. But they're
very useful because they're multi faceted, multi skilled, multi talented.
That they might have to be an AI specialist, they
might have to be a podcast producer, a social media strategist.
They might have to produce, they might have to copyright,
and who knows, they might have to manage other people.

(24:33):
I mean in my department when I worked a clear Channel,
I mean I was a board operator, but also as
a producer, I had to go to help out in
coordination with other programs. I had to go and work
on commercial management and inventory for commercials that were coming
in for network that we had to go ahead and
honor things like that. There was quite a bit I

(24:54):
was doing, and also managing other stations and making sure
those stations were operating and stay on the air. I
can work with other people, and I had to go
know an idea of what I was doing, because that's
a lot to go ahead and take on. Now a
lot of it was oversight, but for the most part
I did that and when I was offered, okay, can
I do some commercial voice overs? Sure? Can I do

(25:14):
anything in terms of producing a show that because we
have a broken show on, we have a show that
is being paid for, a paid program, or program is
being brought on because we have a sponsor on it. Well,
I have to be able to go ahead and know
what the host or whatever that client is asking for
in the program to make sure everything is all set.

(25:35):
So if I got to make sure you're a phone screener,
to produce on the fly, to queue the host on
what they're doing right then and there, to get their
clips played, all of it. I mean, morning shows might
get a lot of staffing because it's just you know,
they got the money for it. But I can tell
you many times where I had to go ahead and
work basically what might have been three or four jobs

(25:56):
in one sitting doing something for a radio program to
make it sure it's all being taken care of and
done now. In this book they also talk about the
specific role that there are certain core themes prevalent across
most positions. You need to be adaptable, multi skilled, technologically savvy.
You have to be motivated for self education, cross cultural storytelling,

(26:19):
maintaining a human connection. Yeah, you got to be knowledgeable,
you got to be able to network, but you also
need to understand that when you're coming into the environment
of the people that you're working with. There have been
some people that have been in the radio business that
have gone through and they remember what it was like
when they first came into business and how enjoyable was
or just the excitement of being in the business, getting

(26:43):
to be creative, going to be a little bit more
into things. But the more and more we have people
that are not working in radio or not radio minded,
that are operating these radio stations only for trying to
make a profit, and they don't even do a good
job of that. They don't know how to manage radio talent,
the people to actually help them make the money. Besides

(27:05):
the sales staff that will bring the money in, they
got to have somebody that they got to pay attention
and take care of the talent and the staff that
are actually doing the work in between. Because the commercials
only stand for what ten or twenty minutes of an
hour long program, so somebody else has to come and
do that. For a talk radio station, you might have

(27:26):
a three to five minute segment of news. Sports might
have the same thing, maybe have a weather check or
with traffic check whatever. But then there's also forty five
minutes right there that somebody's gonna be fill that time.
And not all those shows are syndicated. You gotta have
somebody that knows what they're doing to be able to
fill the gap. That is the biggest gap. You got

(27:47):
to take care of those people. But I just got
to tell you, in the corporate environment, just like any
corporate environment, you don't get appreciated bunch, but the exposure
of where you're going to be, you know, if you're
smart enough to know, okay, this is a transitional place
to be. Like if I'm in this market, in this station,

(28:08):
in this format, in the future, I can put on
my resume I work for this company, this market, work
for these stations, and move the ladder. Because eventually, what
you're trying to do is you're trying to make yourself
that your talent is so important, that you're irreplaceable, and
that you are so profitable to the company. Then they

(28:30):
will bend over backwards to keep you and spend on
you and invest on you, especially if you're doing a
lot for them more than beyond and then you have leverage.
You just got to be able to go and push
hard to say listen, you are nothing without me, and
you make yourself irreplaceable. In radio, you can still do that.

(28:52):
There are people that can still find their way to
do that because they are working their way up, but
it's a very limited amount of people that they get
their radio shows to be very popular. They can get
their radio shows to expand to other audiences because one
of the things that radio companies do want to do
in this corporate age is they want to be the
go ahead and make it where they don't have to

(29:13):
go ahead and program for every local station they have.
They want to be able to syndicate. They want to
be able to have programming that will resonate in different markets,
so they don't have to go ahead and pay for
other talent that come in when they get somebody to
go ahead and that will satisfy the market one market
that they're based out of, and that same kind of

(29:34):
format will resonate on other stations regardless of location, regardless
of maybe the cultural change whatever there might be. So
they go in the roles of diverse career categories. Programming
is what I know best, but they talk about who's
there now. Program directors, which which I am a program

(29:54):
director for Cannabisradio dot com and WMR dot fm. But
I've got to do the that job for a long
time and there's a lot of plates to spend working
in those areas on our talent, which of course everybody
wants to go and become, but you have to work
your way there. You have to work in the grueling,

(30:15):
grunt type jobs of production or promotions or something else.
You got to work your way up. If you might
remember I played the interview with job Partavilia Portavilla that
where he went through was, you know, he went into
college and then he found his way through an internship
and he found himself on in the big, biggest market
in the country just because you will look, go and

(30:37):
connect himself with the right people network and he found
a way to get liked and get noticed and said,
well somebody will being along because what happens too very important,
especially in the corporate environment too. Radio is really big
about when you get in with somebody of somebody of
importance of strokes that has real leverage. They know a

(30:59):
lot of people, They can make major decisions, they can
help influence decisions. And you know, my friend Louke Pate
will going to tell you this, which I'm gonna probably
go on with him tomorrow. He's gonna be broadcasting out
of Philadelphia. I'll be on that show with him tomorrow
for an hour and I'll take that interview and what
I can take from there, I'll go ahead and play
it back here on the program. I'll put it up

(31:21):
as a podcast for everybody here as an extra, as
a bonus. But with Lou Paid he says the same thing.
And many many radio people that have been the in
veterans into business, they'll tell you it's not what you know,
it's who you know. But it also works in corporate
as well. It is who you know. You have to
create rapport, you have to create relationships, maybe with people
you might necessarily bond with really well, but for the

(31:43):
sake of business, you need to go and leverage, you
need to go and get close to and you need
to build a go ahead and create a bond because
as always, certain radio professionals that have some kind of leverage,
that have some kind of status within the company, they'll
always bring people along with them that they like, almost

(32:04):
like a nepotism. It's really like that. There's also news
and content roles, which just that's not as much as
there once were. But I mean there is some things
where if you are trying to gather information and you're
using AI or using other sources to go and gather
that information, and you need to make sure to go
ahead and compartmentalize whatever news or information you're going to

(32:25):
use into a program on radio, somebody's gonna be able
to do that. Then you have engineers that are behind
the sound. Now, when it comes to chief the engineers
or technical managers studio engineers, I will say this is
that you're not necessarily going to have a lot of
those jobs as well, because I can tell you that
some of the people I've worked with, if you're an

(32:47):
engineer in the radio space, yeah, if you know how
to go and work on antennas and towers and you know,
work on compressors and limitters and all the back end
into a grid servers, everything like that, those people, you know,
there's only so many of those spots available. But if
you're that knowledgeable and you're able to go have that

(33:08):
technological that technical savvy, yeah you're gonna get a lot
of work. One of the guys I remember working with
it was not just that clear channel. He worked for
other stations across the board. The guy had access to
one of the major towers that carried a lot of
radio stations called the Eiffel Tower where I am as
Palm Beach, a five hundred foot tower. And this guy

(33:31):
was pretty good at being able to go ahead and
take care of all these stations, plus the Christian radio stations,
plus the public radio stations, plus subcarriers so much more.
But he's doing pretty well. Now he has a bit
on call, and there might be times dan and night
he has to go ahead and work out on something
that has to be done, but the work is there
and he's doing pretty well working on that. Then of

(33:53):
course there's other roles in radio salespeople and then you
can move with the management. But again management it just
depends because you're gonna be pencil pushers. What kind of
things will management allow you to do when it comes
to the ownership, When it comes to the regional directors
or the other directors are going to be overseeing clusters

(34:15):
of stations, Like there's program directors and there's also operational
managers for clusters of stations because a lot of times
these big corporate companies, they have all the radio stations
in one building, all in one spot. Then there's somebody
who's gonna be able to answer to the corporate brass
about everything that's going on. And then all the directors,
program directors, music directors, whatever they might be, they're all

(34:37):
going to answer to this operations manager, to the regional
say the regional manager, then up to the top, and
that's how it works. They also about digital and emerging
roles in the book, and that's digital managers that orchestrate
the online experience across various platforms, which we've been web
masters back in the day, but now it's something much

(34:57):
different with the websites. You know, a lot of them
are just very cookie cutter and templated and they all
look of the same, especially on corporate sites. But websites
are not the big thing for some of these stations.
What it is for the digital side is that making
sure that you have a live stream that's going out
there and being promoted in programs when you have social
media and the platforms you have therein that you know

(35:20):
people will know and be familiar with those radio stations,
so you might get a bit of an audience so
social media, and the one thing is you just got
to learn if you're able to go and incorporate real, organic,
lively viral content on social media, and you can repurpose that,
you can make it so that you create a gateway

(35:42):
of connection to the radio station. And I like, everything
is all about can you get something back that the
radio stations for people to go and listen to. That's
the part you got to figure out. But in radio
that's not that much out there. It's very difficult. So
some of the things that were picked out in this book,

(36:02):
some quotes that were pulled out from this book, I
want to go and bring up They said, first fall,
if you're picturing just a DJ behind a microphone, you're
in for a surprise. It is far more than just that,
absolutely correct. You're not just going to get to be
on the air and talking. It just doesn't happen that way.
I mean, it's very rare. Is gonna have the opportunity

(36:22):
unless they're really good at it. Now, back in the day,
it used to be a thing where i've had a
good voice and you knew how to talk, you might
get a chance to go on the air right away
and you might have some help somebody producing the show
for you. But now it's a much different story. You
need to know more than just being able to talk.
You have to be able to do that. They say,
the world the radio is more dynamic and full of
opportunity more than ever before. Well, there's podcasting, there's other

(36:45):
ancillary things that the radio station has now that try
to continue to keep their relevance because you now have
to do much more than just try to bring people
to listening to the station in their car, because it's
much more difficult that people from you would listen to.
You might get them to listen to their smart speaker,
which is what they've been trying to do. You might
get them to goun and stream the station on the

(37:08):
company the corporate companies app, whether it's iHeartRadio or tune
In or whatever, or the Odyssey app like. You might
be able to do that, but the thing is you
have to be able to draw people there. You got
to be able to have social media savy. You gotta
be able to have promotional savy. You we don't have
the contests that used to be out there where money
and trips and prizes were given out that would be

(37:31):
a long standing practice for radio stations to keep people
listening to their stations. They're not there anymore. So where's
the incentive for people to go and listen in. You
gotta be able to find them on social media. And
the other thing too, is that with all these good
podcasts out there and all these different programs that are
out there that are long form, using social media to

(37:53):
go and put something that's piecemeal, that's small, that's easy
to go ahead and absorb to the draw them to
listen or watch something that's much longer, just like trailers
to movies. You gotta have something that's gonna make people
confess to the fact that, Okay, I'm gonna put money down,
I'm gonna go ahead and invest watching or listen to
this content, this long form content, and there's much more

(38:16):
besides the clips that are teasers I'm listening to that
I want to listen to. They also said that the
most successful people in the industry has tried different roles,
learned from various experiences, and eventually found their perfect fit. Well,
but you don't you don't know where you're gonna come from,
how you're gonna get there. I can tell you people
from promotions have absolutely made their way up into on air,
and many people have gone different ways to get to

(38:37):
where they need to go to get on air. If
you are in radio or you have been in radio,
sometimes you're fascinated by how certain people that you see
in the building, how they're able to go and move
themselves to on air or to doing something else within
the program department. How do they get there? They had
to do something. It's not even so much that you

(38:59):
need to have high school or college to You don't
even necessarily have to have a college degree or go
through a broadcasting school to do that. Of course there's
broadcasting schools, of course, areas like that. The Connection School
of Broadcasting has done a great job of the fact
that they can go ahead and bring people on board
to pay a certain amount of tuition for a six

(39:21):
week course. But what they're doing is they're basically setting
up a recruitment hub for companies like iHeartRadio to say, Okay,
we'll bring on interns, but we're only going to take
people from this place that went through this pipeline, and
that's it. They won't take off anywhere else. Because if
you're not going through a particular recognized and familiar route

(39:46):
to get to radio. It's very difficult, and I tried
everything to get in the radio. I remember somebody giving
me the idea of like, Okay, you want to put
your resume into something that will grab the attention to
somebody to look at your resume. Put your resume into
an old shoe box, put the old shoes in there,
and send the resume in like that. Or put it

(40:07):
into say something Manila folder. Put it in there was
something else, just to grab the attention of the program
director or where were you trying to get to read
your resume. And I went through every different way of
trying to get every program director in the state, in
the city to listen to me. I took interviews. I
would try to get into the building district, go and
talk to somebody. I tried. The one way I got

(40:29):
in after all for myself was I went to a
job fair that I a radio was actually a clear
channel was actually hosting, and the sales team was there
and the sales general sales manager was there. Forget I
forget his last his first name, but it was the

(40:50):
last time was Brady, I'm pretty sure, And I remember
I shout him my resume and I talked to him.
I was like, you know, I'm trying to get in
talking to somebody within the company, and I told him
the program directors. I was trying to talk to Jim Meadworks.
I tried to Jordan Walsh, I tried to you know,
I talked to everybody trying to get into and tear
in there, and I couldn't get anybody to hear me out.
So I tried, and I took interviews, and of course

(41:14):
I got humbled by some of those interviews. I talked
to Les Howard Jacoby that you know, when I showed up,
he checked on an air check of mine that I
put up together to get on to a radio station,
and I was like, you know, he gave me some pointers,
but he did kind of humble me. At the same time,
Tony Banks down at WYAWAE hundred, I got to go
and visit the Claire Chittele Cluster in Miami, Florida, and

(41:35):
you know, it was nice to get down there and
to get just familiar with the building and just see
what would happen with it. But I tried to get
in with certain people to see. Oh, Steve Lapp I
talked to as well, that's right. He was very over
again at WOVV back of the day in ninety five
point five. WOVV it was a top forty radio station.
I tried to get into there as well. And these

(41:57):
were either small ownership or all companies, or they were larger.
But over the nineties, I tried everything to try to
get into a radio station. I tried everything I could.
It was so difficult to get somebody on the phone
as well. That was so difficult. But that choice of
going to the job fair, which was not that busy anyway,
which was a good thing. Talking to that general sales manager.

(42:20):
He gave my resume to John Marino John Manns. Excuse me,
Oh my goodness, Chris Marino worked at wild John mann
supposed I talked to who's had quite a career for himself,
and he's the one who gave me a chance. He
let me work on the board operation on the on
the board to go and operate syndicated programming on Saturday nights.

(42:46):
And I got someone that was, you know, has been
always been very good to me all these years. That
helped me train me into learning the profit software to
get myself familiar and then you know, I got to
work in there for four years plus a couple of years.
I was doing part time for about six months, and
then things just happened, like the overnight shift was opened

(43:07):
up because the weekend's one guy, you know, he got
like oh, and the other person left. And for a
while I was working seven days a week overnights. And
then I went ahead and helped to train the next
person that would work weekends with me take those two
nights off, and then we were set. And then I
said I was only going to be for a couple

(43:27):
of years. I got into the podcasting where I've been
at right now ever since. But then I also went
back to radio because I still needed some of my income.
Like it was nice I was working where I was at,
but I still need to make more money coming in.
So I went back to Clear Channel and Brian mud
who had been there and he's still there today working
as a program director and doing quite a bit of

(43:49):
work there for a long time. But I'll tell you
for me, I got a chance to go back there.
I did board off work and had some production a
little bit of here and there, and it was still
nice to be behind the board and being in that environment.
Like it's still at the end of the day. Was
something that I really enjoyed and I learned a lot

(44:12):
from it because everything I got from radio helped me
discipline on how to go ahead and handle programming today,
timing presentation, Like I now have to go ahead and
manage talent that comes in people that are not completely
familiar with doing podcasts or can do anything radio and

(44:33):
an intimate setting like this to train them. And there's
a lot to it. If I had to go through
everything I'm doing right now in order to train, coach, educate,
and help build a radio show from nothing to being
very successful, it still happens today, Like there's still one

(44:56):
show we did. It was on Psychedelics that it was
two hosts bouncing back and forth. But also I had
to go and make sure I manage their expectations. At
the same time, I helped them like kind of figure
out what they needed to go and do to make
their show better, you know, not stumble around the words
to what they were talking about and what they could
be talking about more looking at the stats and seeing

(45:17):
what topics work better than others, and it would help
to build the shows to become big. And there was
one show I did with them that you know, in
six months, tens of thousands of downloads overnight, and they
got it. And I worked with them for a year
and they decided to go continue to do the show
on their own. But still we help them get to

(45:39):
that point and I was a big deal. It was
it was satisfying to go and do that. But it's
a normal thing for us because in radio we work
like this. Like I mean of the podcasting company that
I work with right now and then networks, we operate
everyone that's working on right now in this format. They've

(46:02):
all worked in media, they've all worked in radio. I mean,
it's what we do. It's embedded in our brain. We
just know that this is something we took from there
and we brought it in a few more quotes that
came from the cbook, The future radio is digital, dynamic
and full of opportunities for innovative professionals like you. The
thing is is that in today's environment, you need to

(46:26):
know that if you're a content creator influencer, people don't
learn how to go ahead and kind of figure out
their ground and how to eventually learn their niche. I mean,
think about it for podcasters of the ones that are
very notable. Remember they all went through changes, Like Joe
Rogan had a bunch of people on this show at
one point, But I mean, how many years did it

(46:46):
take for him to hone the craft of being a
better interviewer to hosting a show and having a format
that people really resonate with. Saying thing with Alex Wagner
call her Daddy wasn't an overnight sensation. It's just like
it figured things out. She was with a different outfit
and she had a co host back then, and they
just kind of figured out. They took the raw content

(47:06):
they were putting together and they put it into a
way that worked. And remember how many of those that
we watch on YouTube or listen to online all have
taken things from radio. Because remember when when you look
at the format of before Joe Bergan, we had the
Howard Stern format. The reason why everybody's being feeling comfortable

(47:30):
with having a microphone in front of them like they
do not having a lava leer where you just like
pining on you and it's not that visible. No, Howard
Stern was the one thirty five years ago that we
saw with his microphone in the studio watching him do
his show, and everybody saw all the environment that was
and it was fascinated by the fact that it was

(47:51):
a thirty minute format. We saw it all chopped down
and it was great and it was a great gateway
for people to go and listen to this four hour
plus show every weekday. But many people still follow that
kind of format. They might see what, you know, the
old Tonight Show might look like, are the current late
night show set up as as well. People figure it
out and there's a couple of different ways that people

(48:14):
are going to do podcasts again a certain set, but
if you are in radio, you also do that. Plus
we also know that certain radio shows still do well
as a podcast. Breakfast Club is a great example. That's
a morning show out in New York City and we
see it as a podcast and how it's presented out there,
and they're doing more content as well. But it's like, okay,

(48:34):
it works. Charloman the God, he also does the shows.
I mean, you know it once to go on and
be a pundit on a news station. He can do that.
If wasn't going somewhere else, he can do that too.
But everybody figures it out and you find a way.
When you're doing these radio shows, you find who you are,
you find your voice, and then you get an audience

(48:57):
and you find a way to retain that audience sponsors
them because those sponsors. How many times are you getting
a commercial that these sponsors want to come in and
sponsor your program. We're not hearing commercials necessarily that are
all fully produced in the zoom zam, all these different
sound effects and things like that, not anymore, because the

(49:18):
commercials we're hearing out there on podcasting, it's people, you know,
the person that is they're doing a live read or
as live read of what it is and you do it,
and it's the reputation, the integrity of the host that
sells the sponsorship, sells the advertising to folks out there.
And how many times are they getting a sponsorship where

(49:40):
it's following a promo code which means it's based on
cost per click or cost per measurement. They need to
be able to know these companies they're not just going
to put a price out there. They're going to go
and pay you scaled on cost per measurement because they
can do that too. It's all this here. They also

(50:04):
say now that The industry needs fresh voices, news perspectives
and innovative thinkers. But you got to find the envent
where you can do it because there's not a lot
of stations that are very enterprise worthy. You have some
local owners that are coming into the space to buying
stations and that's great, but even they are still looking
to go and make a profit. How much creativity is

(50:26):
being allowed in radio because the creativity is necessarily in radio,
but radio needs creative people once again. People need people
need to come to radio if they can come in
the radio that can entertain, that are competent and be

(50:46):
able to go ahead and program in music format and
maybe bringing on hosts or guests, you know, and bringing
on people that will go ahead and come on the air,
be on the microphone and be able to engage an
audience twenty four to seven and do live reads for sponsorships,
or go to an event and broadcast on location, things
like that. If you're going to do all that, I mean,

(51:10):
you can make yourself a pretty decent living in radio.
And also you become popular, you become famous. In some cases,
many people in radio become famous, at least locally or
at least people will recognize who they are. The peers
in the business will know who they are. It happens
like that. But to close out the discussion here about

(51:33):
getting a current radio, it makes you very competent to
do a lot of other media. You can absolutely do it.
You might not be great at but you'll be competent
at it, and you can at least get into doing
YouTube videos or TikTok videos or whatever, and you find
a way to go ahead and integrate what you already

(51:54):
know in radio and take it to another medium. And
there was many times where or radio people got to
learn how to be on television because there's a lot
of people now that come in the radio that are
camera worthy that they are attractive to be on camera.
If they can find their way to go and work
in radio and then they get noticed through their social media,

(52:16):
through whatever else so doing, then eventually they can find
their way into doing something else that will further their career.
That radio can be a stepping stone, a launching pad.
So there's a lot to overcome in terms of obstacles
in the space, but at the end of the day,
you can get there. Radio can give you that room

(52:39):
to get there. If you can do it, but you've
got to understand the environment, the corporate environment that's out
there of the companies that are operating stations. Maybe you
have to find a way to go and get to
know somebody, to know somebody and you find your way
to move up the ladder. It can be done. Or
you have to build out organically, which is very difficult
but can be done. I'm not going to dispiss it.
It can be done now, being in the business as

(53:04):
long as I have. Of course, they don't let me
be cynical. And let me tell you, there's a lot
of people in the radio that are very cynical and
they just have a way of mindset of how things are.
You know, we have our opinions on our chest. We're
not afraid to go and express them because we're in
the radio business. We're in the communications business. We're not
afraid to go. I mean, you can know what to

(53:25):
say on the air and know what you're going to
be able to say within the rules and parameters of
the sec but then off the air, oh you'll say
whatever you want. We're very brash, bold, very outspoken people,
and we can also be very entertaining at the same time,
just make that point clear too. So there's the ebook.
Like I said, I'm not getting anything out of this,
but go to Radiocopywriters dot com and you can find

(53:49):
the book Sound Advice, A Guide to Navigating Careers in
the Modern and Future Radio digital Media Landscape. So interesting,
forty page read. Check it out for yourself, see what
you think. And I hope that some of my comments
might help, you know, give a little context and a
little bit of background to what's going on here. So
I thought it'd be a little bit more negative, a
little more cynical, but I wasn't. I think I was

(54:10):
being very constructive. I think it was the best way
to go and handle this, though. Good. A couple of
stories I want to bring up before were going to
wrap things up, specifically, go to the SEC bending car
right now. He talked about in South Dakota when he
traveled there, about the Build America agenda for the SEC,

(54:33):
so focusing on the high speed Internet and freak out
spectrum for wireless services. You also talk about the first
votes and the ongoing Delete, Delete Delete initiative, and that
the Commission has already been eliminating obsolete cable regulations. The
long relevant or even applicable in today's modern marketplace, and
there are rules of the books that are trying to

(54:54):
go and get rid of and clear up. So there
have been seventy seven rules or requirements, eight forms, twenty
seven pages and almost twelve thousand words taken out of
the rule book for the SEC for operations. The National
Association of Broadcasters are welcoming of Brendan Carr's focus on
updating media regulations to reduce burdens on broadcasters, so meaningful

(55:19):
regulatory reform. We know about the ownership caps. That's one
of the things where I was worried about more of
that than ever, So it's being worked on. Just keep
an eye out for it. One of the story I
want to make sure to bring up in California there.
We talked about it a few weeks ago about how

(55:39):
there's a lot of movie and TV production that has
been going away from California because the cost that we
are going to produce film or TV. Even if you
might have a lot of existing staffers, a lot of
existing people that are behind the scenes that can work
in the space because they live there, it just costs
too much. No matter if there's a convenience to it,

(55:59):
But there's been a new bill that's been passed right
now to expand film and TV tax credits eligibility. So
Assembly Bill eleven thirty eight has expanded the eligibility rules
and benefits for California's film and TV tax credit program.
It passed the state Senate signed the law by Governor
Kevin Newsom on Wednesday. This was past four days before

(56:23):
the next round of applications for TV productions looking to
receive tax credit opens, expending the types of productions that
can apply for the incentive, including half hour series, animation,
and large scale competition series. The new program includes a
base rate for tax credit from twenty to thirty five
percent and raised a pre production cap of one hundred

(56:43):
and twenty million dollars. Credits allocated for independent productions have
now tripled from twenty six to seventy five million dollars,
and the overall cap of this grant program has now
expanded from three hundred and thirty million dollars to seven
hundred and fifty million dollars. So we heard it was
going to be like this, but now it's coming to law.
It's now finalized, so now people can have this here

(57:05):
that we might start seeing more film and TV production
back once again in California. So that was done. That's
a good thing. Well, story of stall, well another story
of saw that it's been talked about a lot. I
haven't talked about it much, but AI music on Spotify
and there's been a lot of talk about this. I
haven't really gotten to it much because there's a lot

(57:25):
to get into about it. But there are plenty of
examples right now, especially on Spotify, where there's AI generated
music being released by fake artists and it's rapidly growing
in popularity on music streaming services. And they talk about
some of the artists here from music business worldwide, about
some of the artists that have been named that are
available on a range of streaming services like Apple Music,

(57:47):
Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and Spotify. There's an outlaw Country
Artists called and then this that was very fun on
Spotify with over a million listeners. So, for instance, this
particular AI artist might have been created with a product
like Sooner or Udio, and I forget which record company

(58:07):
right now is already suing one of those companies right now.
I think go soon though. Right now, in an important
lawsuit about trying to go ahead and curb this kind
of AI piracy right now, this AI behavior that's going
on right now. Because the music to the layman's ear,
they're not gonna know this AI or not. They can't

(58:28):
tell the difference, especially if it's sound, they won't know
if it is or not. And of course then there's
also the sundown that's also gotten a lot of play
as well, with over five hundred fifty thousand Spotify monthly listeners.
People will never hear these people in concert. They'll never
see who it is. They might see names or faces
on these particular pages of profiles on Spotify wherever it is,
but they're never gonna know who they are. They're just

(58:51):
gonna come in and do something. So all this here
is getting to be a big thing, and it's across
very genre, so keep that in mind to it's happening now.
I might just do a show just on this, but
I mean, it's got to be much more. I want
to get into where I can talk more about it.
I'm waiting for some more stories to come out that

(59:11):
will focus on this more, but there are some now,
but I might get down the line where I might
actually going to talk a little bit more Speaking of
court cases, there is a case that went in front
of the Supreme Court where the Supreme Court agreed to
make a major challenge to the legal president that Internet

(59:32):
service providers are liable for piracy by their users. There
was a Virginia jury in twenty nineteen that awarded record
labels Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music
one billion dollars and a lossit against Costs Communications. It
was later overturned by a federal appeals court upheld finding
that internet providers are at fault for refusing to terminate

(59:54):
connections that have been previously used for copyright infringement, but
the amount of damages awarding the trial wasn't justified. So
the case is asking who's responsible for the piracy by
the rights holders. They think the internet providers are liable
for future infringement once they're aware of at least two
instances of piracy and they're refusing to throw a home

(01:00:17):
or business off the web, essentially facilitating illegal downloading. So
Cox Communications went back and they took their case all
the way to the Supreme Court and they got a
petition set for review. So the US Supree Court is
going to address these significant copyright issues that could jepidize

(01:00:38):
Internet access for all Americans and fundamentally change how Internet
service providers manage their networks. So for Cox Communications, they're
talking about the development from the supremee Court supports their
goal of protecting consumers, preserving open Internet access, and ensuring
that broad bendermans are reliable resource for the communities we serve.
Big story. Keep an eye on it because there are

(01:01:01):
still court cases. There's still the one in South Dakota
orree in Minnesota about ownership caps with the SEC. We
don't know what's going to go on that with the
radio stations or media companies in general. This thing right
now with AI, with piracy, there's still a lot of
things which is all contributing factors to the digital disruption.
As we talk about over and over, it's there as

(01:01:22):
prominent and you need to be digitally savvy across all
areas of media. If you're gonna work in radio, need
to be digitally savy through social media, through streaming. You
just got to know it. It's very important to go
and be a part of that anyway. Kingopodcasts dot Coms
week I find on my content of course, like I said,
I'll be on with Lupaid on WPHT tomorrow afternoon or

(01:01:45):
tomorrow morning when I record this, but I'll just play
the broadcast and put up for your listen to over
the weekend. Have a great Fourth of July. Remember the
content as king, and the control of your content is
in your hands.

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