The Digital Transformation of Talk Radio: From Airwaves to the Algorithmic Age

KOP welcomes Michael Harrison, the Founder of TALKERS Magazine, discussing his influential roles at TALKERS magazine and "Radio & Records," his pioneering work in progressive rock and "Album Oriented Rock" (AOR), and his transition from on-air talent to trade publishing.
We tackle the critical challenges facing the radio industry today, and the profound shifts in talent recruitment, noting the decline of the traditional farm system and the new reliance on digital platforms and college radio for fresh voices.
The financial burdens and inherited debt of major radio corporations are also examined, with Harrison acknowledging the difficult circumstances current leaders face. The potential impact of proposed FCC rule changes on media ownership is debated, with Harrison asserting that radio's cultural and financial value has diminished, rendering it "largely obsolete" compared to its 20th-century importance, though still possessing a role in the evolving media landscape.
Despite these challenges, Harrison emphasizes the necessity for radio to reinvent itself by prioritizing quality content and creating engaging programming rather than resting on past laurels. He advocates for personal responsibility in media creation, stressing that new opportunities exist for individuals to build their own platforms.The discussion also touches on the competitive environment between public and commercial talk radio, with Harrison suggesting that public radio may need to adapt to fewer resources.
Finally, they address the commercial challenges in radio, particularly the impact of lengthy ad breaks on listener retention, proposing that the industry could learn from podcasting's advertising models, such as authentic host endorsements, to better monetize content in the digital age.
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Episode Transcript

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):
The state of talk radio and what podcasting and talk
radio can learn from each other.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
The King of Podcasts Radio Network proudly presents to the
Broadcasters Podcast. Here is the King of Podcasts, and.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
I am thrilled to go ahead and welcome to a
special guest here on the Broadcasters Podcast. My next guest
is one of the most influential figures of modern radio,
a pioneer in both talk and music formats, and a
driving force and industry trade publishing. He's editor and publisher
of Talkers Bagat, who are just celebrating his thirty fifth year.
Widely recognized as a leading authority on radio communications and
public opinion, and the career, which we'll get into very shortly,

(00:49):
goes back to the coining of album oriented rock or AOAR,
shaping progressive rock radio, a legitdary stations like wlr FM
and WNWFM in New York, launching groundbreaking talk shows, serving
as the first managing editor of Radio Records, appointed by
the United Nations as UNESCO's Executive Advisor to World Radio
Day twenty twenty four, he's a passionate advocate for the

(01:11):
First Amendment and a critical voice shaping the future audio media.
I'm here with Michael Harrison. Michael, thank you for being on.
I'm so glad to have you on the program.

Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yeah, I'm glad to be with you forore. Hey, thank
you for inviting me. Looking forward to us.

Speaker 2 (01:24):
It is my pleasure and there's a lot to go
and talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Now.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
One of the things I can say is that going
back to your time in New York City on radio
initially so originally it was Long Island, New York at
wl R, moving to WNEW and the story of where
you were able to go and you and Richard near
the long time coherd of yours made it into the
WNEW and he put in his book the book called

(01:48):
FM The Rise and Fall of Rock Radio. I've read
it twice, talk about free form ethos and creative freedom,
and again that's a different time altogether, but I feel
like some of the freedom and the creativity that's being
that was on radio. You know, those been years ago.
You still see today, but it's now on the internet.
But now in those pioneering days, Michael, how much of
the DJ's success was tied to artistic expression and deep musicnology,

(02:09):
because I mean, that's what was the fabric of what
made great radio, just to you know, encompass what the
music was. Being the taste maker and also being the
person that guide you into great music and getting a
good explore together.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
We had tremendous respect for the music. We we we
were radio guys, we were young, we were college kids,
but we had we had extraordinarily high regard for the music.
We didn't consider rock music as as the sixties progressed.
We didn't consider it to be you know, for kids.

(02:47):
We didn't consider it to be you know, trite. We
considered it to be heavy duty art, a conveyor of
the culture, if you will, a sign of the changing times.
There was that kind of electricity in the air. So
this new kind of radio that we developed, meaning the
people within that school of broadcasting that I was part

(03:09):
of and was influential in, we took it very seriously
and developed a new way of targeting young people based
upon the presumption that they were intelligent, just because we
were aiming it, and we were aiming it in eighteen
to thirty four demographic and there were a lot of

(03:32):
college kids in there. They had opinions about the war,
they had opinions about politics. There was a whole social
change taking place. It wasn't just you know, the innocent,
somewhat insipid love songs of the fifties in the early sixties,
which were good. I mean, rock and roll was great,

(03:52):
but they didn't deal with guests and freedom and justice
and history and all of the things that the music
began to reflect.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
And Michael's the of what you had in new technology
with FM radio, you know, still kind of early on,
you're still giving people to go and adapt and adopt
into that format. Plus it was just that pionting that
was there because it was trying to go counterculture to
what was fifties and sixties Top forty radio. And you know,
even the some of the folks that you had come
into the space such you know, a wide spectrum of

(04:24):
voices from Jonathan Schwartz to Scott's soul music coming from
Top forty into the station. And then you know, thinking
about Alison Bird and night Bird, Alison Steele and just
I got to hear airchecks that people have put up
on YouTube in places to go ahead and get a
feel of what that station was and just how amazing
it was at that time, you know, even at the
time having competition because you had w ORR just the

(04:46):
other way, which then flipped because you know, the stations
went ahead, companies change, you know, formats to go more mainstream.
But one of the things was that that was what
WNEW gave live concerts. You when you're going and doing
things where it's just completely open the format and then
just the opening of all the artists that would come
in that you would go ahead and get to encounter
and talk to on a regular basis.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
With me right well, as Chris Chrisofferson wrote in Me
and Bobby McGhee, freedom's just another word for nothing left
to lose. The powers that be in the corporate radio world,
the ones that own the big am radio stations, in
the top forty stations, they didn't sit down one day
and say, let's do something that's going to you know,

(05:28):
push the culture and great radio forward into the future.
It was what are we going to do with these
FM signals we've got, now that we're able to simulcaster,
now that we're able to do something different on them.
Suddenly they realized they had these these venues so they
hired old DJs that they considered to be washed up

(05:49):
from with all due respects at Scott and me, me, and
they gave him an opportunity at a very low salary
to do stuff. And they didn't have a lot of commercials,
and album tracks were becoming popular seven minute tracks, you know,
like light My Fire and things of that nature. So
this format is developed out of it was accidental, but

(06:10):
they ran with it, and the and the and the
cast of characters that you mentioned at any w f
M were very inspirational to me and to U to
my friends in radio out on Long Island. And we
started a station w l I R to emulate that
form of radio, but to do it focused on what
I what I coined in those days, the Long Island culture.
You know that, Hey, the kids on Long Island, they

(06:32):
don't need to have w n W represent them. We've
got we've got night clubs and coffee shops and boutiques
and headshops and and all the all of the stuff
that you know marked that culture out here on Long Island.
And we created a Long Island version of w n
w f M, and it was just as good, if

(06:52):
not better, And they wound up hiring me and Richard Near.
Richard Nere was was uh kind of my partner and
putting thing together and it was very successful on the island,
and we both wound up on wnews very quickly within
one year of launching that format.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
And there was after you had changed the format and
I forget I think it was it was classical something
else was more collectic, but it was almost like that
wkfpre in Cincinnati kind of feel from just like you know,
comfortable music into rock and rolling, just complete culture shock
and a big change to all that. But now in
that same book, Richard's book, he also makes the point
where he talked about where you go after to be

(07:30):
anyw because then you started becoming really good at you know,
the real personal one on one interviews. You're talking about
Bruce springste you got to know him very well, of course,
you know, and then going to like what George Harrison's
house in England I think it was, and just the
people you got to go connect with and that would
lead you into being moving to Los Angeles. Subsequent roles

(07:50):
managing editor of Radio Records, a real shift in your
career and you know, away from Honor talent and shaping
industry metrics and data. You know, at the time, that's
when you had competitive publications. You still had cash spop.
I think Record World mod have still been around the time,
and then Billboard is still today. But the thing was
in the music today because I want to get your

(08:10):
music take on what's going on today with music, because
the balance between quantifying music has success through charts and
data like radio records did, like Billboard has done, and
preserving the organic creative lister host connection. So what you
did at WLR, what do you did at WNW. There's
a stagnation now on the Billboard Hot one hundred music labels.

(08:31):
Record labels can't really do much. They don't want to
go ahead and take the time to invest and promote
major artists and put something out there because they feel
like they can have a long shelf life with certain artists.
Let them have a song on the chart for up
to a year. Because the methodology about Billboard Hot one
hundred has not changed in a lot.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Now it hasn't. As a matter of fact, last time
it really changed was when I changed it. I was
involved Circle nineteen eighty and helping Billboard redesign their charts.
Prior to that, I had a publication called Good Phone Weekly,
which I sold to Billboard around nineteen seventy nine nineteen eighty.

(09:11):
Before that, I was managing editor and inventing the charts
with a good team. Bob Wilson was the publisher, a
genius in these matters, and I owe him a lot.
We designed a very new way of doing charting at
Radio and Records, all geared to the way radio played music.
The three publications you mentioned, Billboard, cash Boxing, Record World

(09:35):
were trade magazines that they tipped the hat to radio,
but that was all they were based on, being record
industry trades. When Wilson started Radio and Records, he created
what he called the Tiffany of tip sheets, and it
was we didn't know what it was. It was originally
called the Industry Newspaper, and it was a combination of

(09:55):
a trade journal and the philosophical blog, even though there
was no digital era back then, and it had a
tremendous impact. So that, yeah, that began everything. But I
also was at km ET. I left New York City
to take on the role of program director of ktr

(10:16):
I in San Diego because they allowed me to use
the term AOAR, and they allowed me to do some
of the principles of AOAR that I had been already
developing when I was at WNEW in New York and
then KTOR. I became a tremendous success in San Diego,
and R and R was building big, very well. I

(10:37):
was in San Diego when we started R and R
in l A, and I eventually left San Diego, came
to LA, became managing editor of Radio and Records full
time job, full time career, and was offered airwork and
advisory work as a consultant at Natural Media's k and
ET and so I started an eleven year career at

(10:59):
k e ET as a talk show host of DJ
and as a behind the scenes consultant. I continued to
be managing editor of R and R for about five years.
I became a syndicated radio personality with Westwood One and
CBS and those and I did that out of LA,

(11:22):
and eventually I wanted to be involved in talk radio,
so I bought a station in Springfield, Massachusetts, WSPR, left LA,
moved to Springfield, never left New England, and have conducted
my career since then. I started Hawker's in nineteen ninety
thirty five years ago. So I've been on a lot

(11:44):
of tracks. I have a career as an air personality,
as a program director, as a syndicated personality, as a syndicator,
as a trade publisher, trade editor, columnist, and I still
do this. I still I'm still doing all that. I'm
in radio now for sixty for fifty nine years, fifty

(12:08):
nine years. And you know, I don't work as hard
as I used to, but I still work pretty hard
and very active.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
But You've been able to chronicle basically the entire generation
of talk radio that we have today. So let's say, okay,
really for me, I know that talk radio made the
big c change with the WABC in eight nineteen eighty two,
which is from Top well is now more like a
more adult, re oriented Top forty to Talk Ross Wilson,
Ross and Wilson. You had doctor Joyce's brothers and others

(12:35):
coming in and if I would change and eventually other
stations around the country. And one of the things that
I noticed with yourself, like you said at k ET,
you did have a one of the first FM talk
shows with Harrison's Michael k Et and oh yeah, one
of the things I want to make. As you mention
is that it's one of those things where just like yourself,
it's somethink about the transition for those that were you know,

(12:57):
playing records, being DJ's and music and making the switch.
And of course some of the biggest names in talk
radio did that. So Sean Handy came from music, Rush
Limbaugh came from music. You know at the Glenn Beck also,
remember what it came for music was the warning shows,
and all these folks would have menagined you to make
that change over and was able to go. They were
able to go and translate themselves with the entertainment that

(13:18):
they have, you know, knowing how to go to that,
but then also letting their political opinions come out however
it was if it was really theirs or not. But
you know, would never make that point. But don't think
about that path. Tell me about that part you felt like,
did you understand that from yourself making the transition for
music to talk and what the bigger names in talk

(13:40):
radio that we've had in our career have done the
same thing.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
Well, I mean I believe that the future of radio
was talk. That's why I bought a radio station to
turn it into a talk station and invested my time
and money in that because I thought that that was
going to be the big thing in the nineties. Even
though I was involved in Alba or anti rock radio.
We did interviews on Albert More anti rock radio. We

(14:06):
dealt with politics, we dealt with culture, We dealt with
things other than just you know, frivolity and the most
superficial things, which is what they did on Top forty radio.
And we created a counter culture in the business as
well as on the air targeting. Yeah, we targeted hippies,

(14:29):
and then the hippies got older and new generations came along.
You know, nothing stays hip and nothing stays young for long.
Everything everything moves forward, and yesterday's underground becomes tomorrow's mainstream,
and then it becomes passe, and then it becomes retro,
and then it becomes underground again. There's a cycle to

(14:50):
these things that you start to pick up on and
you say, I've seen this before, it's happening again. But
I would think that the most important person finality to
come along during this period of transitioning from music oriented
radio to talk radio beings hit, to talk radio being
pop culture, and to talk radio making money, getting ratings,

(15:13):
and expanding in terms of station by station across the
country and syndication. I think that you cannot have that
conversation without paying deference to Rush Limbaugh. Rush Limbaugh was
the George Washington of the whole thing. I would say
the two most instrumental forces in talk radio emerging in

(15:34):
the nineties as the cultural and industry and communications phenomenon
that it did was Rush Limb Law and Talkers Magazine.
Now I won't say me I started Talkers Magazine, but
Talker's Magazine quickly took on a life way beyond me,
and it provided a venue a community, documentation, journalism. It

(15:58):
chronicled and encouraged and defended this new format called talk radio.
And Rush, of course, he was the eldest Presley, He
was the Beatles, He was the big Tiger Woods. He
was a big talent that you know, the trends go
where the talent lies. Politics play a role in it,

(16:18):
but politics didn't emerge until much later when it became
fractionalized and audiences were selected based on their potential. They
were targeted, and today you have a whole different type
of approach to audiences where politics is part of the
criteria that you choose to tell people what they want

(16:39):
to hear and then get them to like you and
get a big number.

Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well, it's in the market of what we heart right
now in the way that music, that radio is right now.
With all the networks that we have, public opinion have
had the chance to go ahead, and people have had
the money to go in put off stations, put out
hosts of whichever side of the political spectrum that you are,
and conservative as basically to dominate for the most part
in that space. But the other part is in the nineties,

(17:04):
the eighties into the nineties, we also did have a
general spectrum of interest in other formats besides political because
you had doctor Laura, you had because of course the
coast coast to coast AM has been around for so long,
and that also comes in the realm. And then you
think we're on the FM talk side with Howard Stern
or tomcas and you know, I would think of Phil
Henry also going on the comedy side. We had a

(17:26):
lot of wide ranging entertainment and you know, enjoyment on
those stations, and I think you've on the localand well,
you know that's on the nineties so you know, local
talk really dominated as well, and I would think of
Neil Rogers or Andy Rose here down the w IOD
and just having a great time and just what we
had in terms of just a load of choices and

(17:48):
talk rated are going to go to. But now we
are at the point where, you know, in the twenty
twenty five we see that, you know, there's corporations that
are the major syndicators right now that really they are
in charge of programming a lot of stations, no matter
what size market it is. And the path or radio
talent to come in now it used to be from

(18:09):
regional powerhouse rising through the ranks. I feel like there's
been a bit of an actue fit of an in
because I also think there's sometimes I will think, well,
it's might be who you know that makes your way
up the ladder into a syndicator or get a syndicated deal.
Obviously that's the route of what all these talk show
hosts now that are trying to work their way up.
But I feel like the pipeline, the recruitment that we

(18:29):
used to have a bullpen, if you will, it's kind
of changed because now it's not necessarily coming from within radio,
but it's coming from outside. When you see lay Travis
a buck Sexton, or you saw Dan Bongino for a
while come in, or you know Charlie Kirk, it just
feels like we're getting it from outside and it's not
the normal pipeline that we have. What is it about
that you think that change with radio and why we're

(18:50):
not going from within like it used But we don't.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Found local stations like we used to, so we don't
have a built in farming system where people would work
their way up to larger markets, from a smaller market
to a medium market to a larger market. That whole
paradigm doesn't exist anymore for many, many reasons that defy
a quick answer, but let's just say you did a
good job in explaining some of the reasons why that's happened.

(19:16):
The passage of time changes things. It changes the people,
it changes the demographics, it changes the culture. And we're
talking about a tremendous amount of time has gone by
in terms of monitoring and following the evolution of radio
and of music and of the generations. I mean, we're
no longer dealing with baby boomers as being the youth culture.

(19:37):
They're the old culture. We have the exers who are
not sure if they're millennials or what they are, and
you have the millennials, and now we have Generation you know,
Z and G and B and A and Alpha. I mean,
it's crazy to try to attach sensibilities that were popular

(19:58):
in nineteen eighty five to twenty twenty five or nineteen
sixty five. So it's been enormously challenging. Fortunately, a lot
of smart people have been in both the talk and
the music end of radio following all this. But that's
basically what it is. We now recruit from the internet,

(20:19):
we recruit from podcasting, and we recruit from real life
because we don't have that many young people going into
radio wanting to work their way up. And what we've
recently done talkers is we've started to turn our attention
to working hand in hand with college radio because where
are you going to find young people interested in radio.

(20:39):
You're going to find them at all the campus stations
around the country, and their audiences are people that are
young people listening to radio. So I think that the
radio industry has to pay a little more attention to
what's going on in the communication departments at universities colleges
and even high schools around the country to keep fresh,
fresh blood and talent coming into the business with fresh

(21:01):
new audiences interested in what they have to say and perform.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Now, Michael, I try not to be. I have been
very critical on my podcast about the corporates on the industry,
and I've had made no bones about that. Yes, I
think where when you have radio companies, several of the
largest radio companies right now in the country that are
holding on to millions of dollars a debt or billions
of dollars a debt for that matter, for iHeart and
Odyssey and going through private equity and going through and

(21:27):
you know, having people that might not have that radio
savvy to really know what they can do to help
make all their stations operate, bring in a lot of
advertising revenue that would offset are and pay down their
interest or what their leans there are. The thing is
is that at radio itself, within the larger stations that
own all this, so premier Radio might be able to
put all their stuff out there, Salem, but they only

(21:48):
have so much revenue that's coming in and so much
support coming in for all these talk show hosts to
really build to go and you know, build above ground
and if you want to go ahead and build a
new syndicated show and get it up there, it's like
there's not much help coming from them. And I think
that's one of the things where to have, you know,
program they can be in there that are not so

(22:09):
much worry about, you know, checking the logs and trying
to make sure whatever as are being pushed and kind
of mean deferred away from what they're able to really do,
which has helped to enhance and coach and train the
next set of talk show hosts instead of having to
go outside talk to me about what the communications have
been with the you know, like the Bob p Eppits

(22:30):
of the world of the you know they wod field
the world and just what they're saying right now about
what to do to help support talk radio, because I
feel like they're kind of restricted on what they can
do and that's not helping.

Speaker 3 (22:43):
Well the corporate powers that they are stuck, you know,
in the reality of having to generate revenue, has to
please their stockholders, have to deal with new competition for
radio from the digital era, generational divides. UH taking some
very bad choices during the era of consolidation and investing

(23:04):
in radio stations at prices that were off the charts
in terms of sustainability. Now they're stuck with a holding
the bag of debt. And they're not evil people who
went about trying to destroy radio. They just wound up
inheriting a lot of bad decisions and a lot of
bad debt that their predecessors kind of accrued for them.

(23:28):
The people that are running these radio stations now, they're
well meaning. They're just in many ways drowning in circumstances
and doing the best they can. In some cases, because
of the economics of scale, we have more radio than
we would have had had they not done that. Many
of the stations that were mom and pop stations and

(23:49):
were eventually consolidated, they might have gone out of business
had it not been for the consolidators. So there's more
to this than canting blame that somehow the guys that
are running today's corporate radio stations are not doing their
job of protecting radio and you know, not being altruistic enough.
They've got a lot of challenges and it's difficult to

(24:11):
doing the best they can. The question is what.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Want to I honestly believe you make a great point
with the fact that there's an inheritance of what was
a situation that came into and they're trying to go
and work their way through it. But it's not that easy.
And again even for those some of those stockholders right
now that you know, they've had stocks for some of
these companies that have been delisted or threatened to be delisted,
and now they're trying to go ahead and take care

(24:33):
of trying to go and pay back for those that
got in on initial public offering that might have come
back from Bankercy. There's a lot of things going to it.
That's not a great situation to get into. But I
mean I I you know, will respect the fact that
they got a really bad situation on their hands. They're
trying to do their best.

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Now.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
Consolidation in the nineties. Now we're going to come back
to that again because the SEC right now under Brendan Carr
is considering significate changes to media ownership rules. So the
deleted legally initiative going through right now, they're going to
get a public comment. But their dealers, as you said yourself,
broadcasters are now competing with the Internet, not just amongst themselves.
I don't know if I agree with that myself. But

(25:12):
if you're opening up ownership rule so that you know,
whatever radio stations if they get encompassed by other media companies,
and it could be just a free reign of what
mergers and acquisitions could come at this point. If that
opens up where there's no more of an eight station cap,
the ownership caps get dropped, is what the plan would be.
So what would this mean about if it's going to

(25:34):
accelerate consolidation, diminish localism, exacerbate talent pipelines that we've already
talked about. When you're looking at this and you've been
following the story, what do you think about what could
change of the industry if the SEC dropped the caps.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Well, you're basing the entire question on a premise that
radio is forever going to be a major, iconic platform
upon which so much of society's communication takes place. But
you're not taking into account is that the platform itself
is in many ways obsolete when measured by the standards
of the twentieth century. Therefore, it is not a given

(26:13):
that radio could ever go back to what it was,
because what it was has no foundation in the present paradigm,
the fact that there are so many signals and such
an easy path to participating in the industry. There are
no barriers to entry as there were back in the sixties, seventies, eighties,

(26:35):
in the nineties, before the twenty first century started to
really become digital and podcasting and online and satellite radio
and all that. The point being, radio stations inherent value
culturally as an iconic platform, and financially as a result
of being so important, the value of radio stations has

(26:59):
come down tremendously. Therefore, it's not as big a deal
list how many stations can somebody own, because you're going
to own a thousand stations and it doesn't have the
same impact that in nineteen seventy five, owning five major
market radio stations would have. So we're dealing with the
times have changed. It's like arguing over you know, covered wagons,

(27:22):
who's going to control the covered wagon business. In the
twentieth century, you know who's going to control, you know,
buggy whips. Radio stations are largely obsolete. They still though
have a role because things don't end in one day.
Things fade and blend into other things. And what we're

(27:42):
seeing now that.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Would be positive. This is where I'm going to push
back a little bit only because this is where the
part of me is a radio as a radio file
all my life. I like to look there's a positive
I see sunrise in the uplands, if this possible, because
I think there's a couple of things that radio can
withstandnumber one, I don't think AI can be a factor
with radio. I don't think it can. I don't think

(28:04):
you could replicate trying to go and say, okay, this
brings back some Let's go and get Paul Harvey's voice.
We're gonna clone him and put back rest of the
story or Casey cases America to We're I gonna go
back to the dike. And yes, you're right about you
know where there's certain things that are not going to
go back the way or were. I still think that
if record labels were smart, they don't want to go
ahead and deal with the small amount of money they're
getting from streaming services, even though they might be invested

(28:26):
in a Spotify, they might have, you know, a couple
of points in the game. Either which way. I think
if music, if music radio, if music labels would work
with radio stations again, go back to working with each other.
Because if you can promote an artist their concerts, promote
if they actually have other merchandise or vinyl or just
something else that's a physical copy, get back to somebody

(28:47):
that will create a physical copy of widget, whatever it
might be that doesn't have to be bought online. You
could go back to that. And with talk radio, I
think there's still a dynamic if talk formatted, if talk
shows go get back to a real lie feedback. Now
that doesn't mean we had to go and have the same,
you know, batch of callers, the same one percent of
people that like are just kind of bland and you know,

(29:08):
monotonous coming on the radio. But I think there's something
to be said about if you did have live feedback,
not from you know, social media posts or tweets or
you know, other emails or texts or whatever it might be.
I think if there was a way to get back
to something where the real time formatics of it, and
I think it can be done past efficient. I don't

(29:28):
want to. I'd like to go and think we're not
The radio is not obsolete. I think it just needs
to find its new purpose.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
What do you think, Well, I never said radio is obsolete.
And I never said anything that your pushback is pushing
back onry. I'm simply telling you. I'm simply telling you
the reality of the situation, and you're telling me your
opinion of what it should do. The two very different things. Yeah,
you're right, it would be nice if they did that.
Go get them to do that. Have fun. That's your opinion.

(29:54):
But the fact of the matter is is that I
there are a few people in this country that are
more pro radio and boost radio more than me. I mean,
we Talker's Magazine remains radio centric, even though there are problems.
But you've got to face the problems. And I cited
the problems that radio faces based upon your premise that
somehow radio could go back to its glory days as

(30:18):
a platform among a handful of platforms. There were movies,
there were magazines, newspapers, television and radio and that was it.
You know, those were the big ones. Now we have
all these exotic fractures and fractions of platforms that overlap.
I mean this questions as to the future of audio.

(30:41):
Can audio exist without video? The number one platform for
podcasting right now is YouTube, and YouTube is a television
oriented platform. And then the answer to that is, well,
people are going to sleep at night listening to the
audio content on YouTube videos, you know, so what do

(31:02):
you do with the video?

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Now?

Speaker 3 (31:05):
What makes a movie? What makes cinema? When television isn't
television anymore and you have streaming services and they're creating
entire seasons of ten shows, twenty shows, twenty three shows.
These are twenty hour movies that they're making and they
call it television. But do they get an Oscar or

(31:25):
do they get an Emmy? The boundaries? You know, what
makes a newspaper anymore? Do you have to be a
newsprint to be a newspaper? The changes that are happening
in terms of the media landscape are so profound. And
as technology changes, so does sociology. As sociology changes, so
does business. So the business the making of money, the

(31:48):
targeting of audiences, the selling of advertising, the selling of subscriptions,
the whole paradigm is going through tremendous accelerated change. And
it's mind modeling to almost everybody involved in it, including
the audience. And that's the reality of what's happening. I

(32:09):
appreciate your love of radio, I share it, but radio
does has to in many ways reinvent itself. It has
to have an operational scale that makes sense in terms
of what the business environment will support, and it has
to do programming that will be appealing to the audiences

(32:30):
that it wants to regain. You can't just tell them
how important radio is. You should be listening to it,
and they and all they hear is long commercial breaks
and programming that doesn't satisfy their desires the way they
can do with their smartphone and their Bluetooth and their Spotify.

(32:50):
You know, it's it's a different time now.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
I do want to say this to you, and I
did not mean to go ahead try to put any words,
you know, saying that you were so obsolutely I just
remember that just ring on her the word and it's
might be an opinion that other people might have, but
I didn't want to try to say that was you.
And I'm not trying to go and try to say
that was yours. I'll make that point clear. But yes,
it is something i'd like to It's a pipe tree,
I know, but it's one of those things where I

(33:14):
feel like it can be done. If I was a
program directory at the radio station, give me, you know,
give me a station to go and operate. I'll sit
in there, I will live in that space, and I
will figure out how to monetize that.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
No, no, no, no, backoff, back off. Let me let let me,
let me give you some pushback. Now, Hey, give me
give me a station that I can operate. I'll do that.
No one's giving you anything hard. Hey. My my answer
to you is go out and buy one. Go out
and create one, go out and start one. Don't don't
start your your your revolution by saying give me who

(33:46):
is giving this to you? Why you? Who the hell
are you to demand that some program director give you
a station?

Speaker 2 (33:54):
Well, believe it. I actually did have a chance, you
believe it or not. There was a fall market station
that I had a friend of mine that was running
ethic programming but also had a couple of stations of
different formats. He let me come in because of my expertise,
and there was a rare occasion I got to do that.
So it's a slip of the time. Yes, I had
to go buy it.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
I I'm just said the buckstops here. I've heard every argument.
I've been doing this a long time, and it's very
easy to complain about what other people are not doing that.
My back. You have to look at my background. My
background is we never asked anybody to give us anything.
We did it ourselves and it can be done. As

(34:35):
a matter of fact, there's more opportunity now to recreate
a radio platform and a radio paradigm now than there
was back in the old days, when there was gatekeepers
and and there was boundaries, and there were obstacles to
being part of it. So I certainly didn't mean to
argue with you, but I want you to see clearly

(34:57):
a different point of view on the topic of constable
for this well Asian every person that thinks it could
be better, I can't expect somebody in the establishment to
give them something. Here, you do it like like there
are those that have and those that don't have. The
people that have are bankrupt, but they're fighting for their jobs.

(35:17):
I'm fighting for their existence.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
Well, the thing is Michael's I've had a number of
interviews with with a few people with radio experts, obviously
with more expertise than I had, and I do love
the fact I get this learning experience of just saying, okay,
I've been barreling on podcasting about some of these things.
Hear about radio and for somebody to go and give
me the insight and kind of put me back into
a certain space to understand better. This is something I
need more of. But I'll tell you this too. I

(35:41):
just wanted to do a quick segue because one of
the areas I think you talk radio. I don't know
how much of it you do on talkers about this,
but I have been very fascinated by the fact that,
you know, National Public Radio and American Public Radio for
that other matter, there's a lot well they've done when
they embrace the podcasting space, Serial This American Life, those

(36:01):
kind of programs coming in. Plus you know the fact
that they don't have they don't run so many commercials.
They have the underwritings and not so many of those,
so a lot more time for content. Now we have
the recent decision cuts by Congress next two years coming
up Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which would been allotting what
one point one billion dollars over two years to these stations.

(36:21):
Now has led to cost cutting measures because now we're
seeing where money's being from the national site going to
local stations. American public media, I'm having to make cuts
the public radio landscape, Michael and the talent pool house
being affected, and how that changes a competitive environment for
talk radio, And what do you think will happen now
because MPR has to make some significant changes. I guess

(36:43):
how much effect this really was about the public funding
and not having that what changes about that? I still
think as a podcasting platform they do great work. But
I think there's room now for talk radio to really
go ahead and take advantage on the private own side. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
I see basically public radio and private commercial talk radio
as extensions of the same thing, two sides of the
same coin. Especially when people say to me, how come
all of talk radio is so conservative and there's no liberal. Well,
there's a lot of liberal on public radio and public
radio and chopped Liver. It's big, it's radio. It's the
same dial, it's on the AM, it's on the FM band,

(37:23):
it operates with the same technology. You can hear it
on the same devices, and they talk politics. And when
you look at radio as a whole, it covers left,
middle and right. When you take public radio into the equation,
I don't see public radio as being holier than now.
I don't see them as being a sacred cow. I
just see them having a different fundraising model, and as

(37:44):
the years have gone by, it's becoming more and more
like commercial radio than ever before. They're going to have
to learn. Public radio is going to have to learn
how to put a radio show together with instead of
having twenty five people on the staff of a one
hour raideo show, doing it with two people, which is
what commercial what commercial radios had to do for many,

(38:06):
many years, and it won't necessarily hurt the quality. It
might even enhance it. So I think in many cases
this has been a debt and a bill that has
had to be paid that public radio has gotten away
with a tremendous amount of elitism, arrogance, and waste of money.

(38:26):
But I do like the idea that they're there. I
do like the idea that they cover subjects and points
of view that may not be covered on the commercial
side of the dial, because I think that all of
it's important and one of the things I stand for
is variety, diversity, and different ways of fulfilling the umbrella

(38:49):
category talk radio. To me, talk radio does not mean
conservative news talk radio. It includes it, but it also
includes the conversation on public radio. It includes sports talk radio,
It includes relationship, radio finance, radio radio as a first
responder during disasters. I mean, there's an endless array of

(39:12):
genres that come under the talk radio umbrella in terms
of my view and talkers magazine's point of view. But
you know, everything in life is a battle of ideologies,
battle of genres, a battle of interest groups. And they said,
it's a it's a commercial enterprise. Whether you do it
public or private, it's still about money. It's always about money,

(39:37):
and and and it's it's about money. It means it's
about clicks, and it's about eyeballs and ear drums and attention.
And that's where we're at right now. Everybody's going look
at me, listen to me. What are your numbers? What
are your numbers? How are the algorithms treating you? There's
an obsession with audience size, and that bothers me and
you as a as a cool podcaster, it should bother

(39:58):
you when when when you say to somebody I host
you know, the broadcasters podcast, the first thing some people
probably say to you is how many listeners do you have?
As opposed to who's listening? Maybe you have five listeners,
but their influencers, maybe they're important. Maybe you're just doing it.
You want to do a good podcast for the people

(40:19):
listening to your podcast to come away with something. That's
what I suspect is the case. But no, it's all
become now you know how many subscribers do you have?
And that's not what it was supposed to be. It
was supposed to be about narrow casting. It was supposed
to be about specializing and increasing the range of topic

(40:40):
matter that's covered. Not had everybody fall behind Joe Rogan
and try to emulate that, be the next Rogan or
the next Limbaugh. What do you think of that?

Speaker 2 (40:49):
Well, I'll tell you this, Michael, when you you know
the criticism I might have had by taking the thing
I do podcasting. I've told the story before, but the
Donna Mike Show, it was right after. It was right
at the moment when don Anna Nicole Smith had passed
away and I had called into their show, and of
course they always want to know who their callers are,
and I mentioned that was in podcasting, and I remember
Don Gernald was specifically saying, well, that's just as good

(41:11):
as you working in McDonald's, kid, and then they hung
up on me. But you know that's okay. That was
a badge of honor I took, and actually I got
to be a promo on the local station here where
they were. I was affiliating the show. But you know,
one of the other things I want to make an
invention of when it comes to public radio is that
I see, at least there's a couple of things when
I try to point out something good. There are some
things I like about public radio. I do like that

(41:31):
some of their stations are doing music discovery. So there's
you know what k e XP or kut X, and
there's these kind of stations that are at leased. They're
doing like the the move of just trying to lease
introduce new music, trying to open our ears to something
different and something new to hear in so and maybe
in some way that's like their own forge version of
free form that might have been what you were programming,

(41:52):
you know, in the seventies. But at least it's there,
and I'd like to see more of that. If stations
don't think that they're monitoring, they're not monetizing what they have,
let's sign something else different we do you have to
stick to the same formats, maybe we can find something else.
But there's a way to get into a younger audience
and bring more people. That's my thought of it right now.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
One of the responsibilities in this big equation that you
and I are talking about falls on the record companies
because they're corporate too. And back in the day, you know,
I can talk about it. I was there. You probably
weren't born yet, But the record company's nurtured new acts.
They had a department called A and R Artists and Repertoire,
and the A and R director would would they'd sign

(42:30):
somebody or a band. Everything was band oriented. Then it's
no longer that way. Bands are not as big as
they were back then. But a band would be looked
at for its potential and they would sign a four
record deal and they wouldn't expect to be profitable until
the third or fourth album. Now they won't even sign
a band unless the band already comes with one hundred

(42:51):
and fifty thousand subscribers on their YouTube channel.

Speaker 2 (42:55):
And put on there, unless they got a social media
post that gets a lot of views.

Speaker 3 (42:59):
Yeah, yeah, they want They want the musicians to carry
them as opposed to carrying the musicians. So you can't
just blame the radio, the record companies have screwed up
the music industry terribly. I mean really terribly, and I
hold them accountable for a lot of the problems facing

(43:21):
modern music based upon the question, and here's the question,
is music today better than it was back in the
day or is it worse? And that's that's an argument
that you can go around and round on that one
for days.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
But you know what I think part of things with
the record labels right now is they just realize, well,
we can make money on the catalogs, and they've been
doing that for a while, but I haven't seen them
go up against the NAB, a very strong lobbying armor
of radio and say, okay, you know what we want
the music modernization that we want royalties paid the radio
state from radio stations now proper, because we're not making

(43:55):
enough on streaming. And you know, if they were able
to get that kind of money, then they would go
and play ball. But the thing is then that would
probably make changes to the radio stations because if some
of those one hundred thousand WAT stations had to go
and start paying you know, the royalties they might be
asking for, they're not gonna be able to go ahead
and continue to hold those stations. They're gonna have to
sell them.

Speaker 3 (44:11):
All exactly exactly. The water has been polluted. The game
doesn't work well anymore. And it's unfortunate because it was
a nice balance back in the days, you know, back
to the start of our conversation, when I was managing
the editor of a publication called Radio and Records, the

(44:33):
industry's newspaper. The assumption was that the radio industry and
the record industry were two sides of the same industry.
They were so they were in such synchronized harmony. They
had such a symbiotic relationship that it seemed to be
written in stone. No one would believe in the sixties
and seventies that there would ever be a rift between

(44:55):
the record industry and the radio industry arguing over royalties.
The record indust street did whatever it could to get
radio to play its music free, and in return, radio
had this free content that brought it listeners and and
got it ratings and uh and and and that just

(45:16):
broke down because of greed or shortsightedness, or a combination
of both on the parts of both industries, which became
overly corporate. Which is your which is your problem? And
and and and and rightly so overly corporate and not
dedicated to the other side of the equation, which is

(45:36):
to do something that supports the arts, something that's good
for the audience, something that's good for the public. That
that became capitalism went a little bit over the top
in terms of the greedy side of it and the
inhuman side of it. And no system, if operated with
with bad intentions, is going to save the world. Bad

(46:02):
capitalists are bad.

Speaker 2 (46:05):
The narratives to radio and records which you were managinge
of I think that was, you know, just to go
and put a little caveat to this conversation. Radio and
records need each other. They need to work together again.
They got to find a common ground. And I think
that's that's really where radio becomes a very relevant And
the record labels don't have to go and just milk
on their catalog because they only can go so far
with those. They need new content. They have to go

(46:28):
and put new records out to go and continue to thrive.
They newer generations. They might go and adopt the new
older music, but it's not gonna be like that. They
have to ask something. News gotta be something I want
to get the podcasts over you, Michael, we haven't had
a chance to get really touch except for the fact
that we know that we had. You know, some shows
that have might have found their way in the podcasting
space and they've been given a chance to go into

(46:49):
talk radios. Happens with that. But one of the things
I've always thought about when it comes to podcasting and
becoming I got the work in radio first. I worked
at the w J and O Briron but was my
programming director there. You know, A still those hosting shows
at the b AUDI and things like that, and so
I still catch up with the time to time. But
the thing is I got the work in the top
radio format there, board operating, producing things like that and

(47:11):
why it's always been a radio even college radio. I
got the work, you know, talking to marketing promotion representatives
from all these major labels and doing the phone calls
them every week and all that kind of stuff. So
getting that whole field. I think with podcasting, you're a
free form, open format, let's go and just talk about
whatever's on our minds and just kind of shoot the breeze.
But I think there's something about structure that is missing

(47:34):
that I've always said here that radio could people can
learn from radio about the structure of how programs are.
I always said, like, like for me, right now, Post
to Coast AM, you get the twenty five minutes twenty
five minute segments of talk. You know, a couple of
commercial breaks in between. But it's like you give a
time frame. People know how much time you're you're giving.

(47:54):
You're being smart enough about the time you're getting from
the listener and spending with them. Maybe I'm going to
have the retention to go ahead, listen to a whole
three four hour show. What do you think about the
part of where podcasters could really be learning about what
talk radio does, where structure should come into play a
little bit more.

Speaker 3 (48:11):
I've always been I've always been a fan of structure.
I agree with you completely. I think that any conversation
about the arts comes down to the balance between form
and content. It comes I call it the stick and
the stick. The stick is the stage. The shtick is
the performance, framing things, describing things, giving something structure, a blueprint,

(48:40):
a plan. Otherwise, when you do free form for its
own fake the medium exists for the people participating in it,
not for the audience. And once a medium exists, you know, hey,
we get to play whatever we want. We get to
express ourselves. Me me, me, me me. When it becomes
me and not you, when it comes me and not

(49:02):
the audience, then it's lost its way, and the and
the and the and the structure capsizes and form becomes content.
We're freeform. Well, what does freeform mean? Does it mean
you play good music or bad music? Is the music
better if it came off the top of the head
of some DJ who doesn't know anything about music? I mean,
at what point is the title free form irrelevant? You know, well,

(49:26):
we don't play it off of a list. Does the
listener care if the song they're listening to was on
a list or not? There is so much focus put
on the people doing the radio formats and not on
the people listening to it or the people investing in
it as advertisers. So you need when you when you

(49:49):
write a book, when you make a movie, when you
when you lay out a newspaper, when you design a
program such as this as you did having someone like
me it's a guest on a show with someone like you,
and all that you need to put together a structure.
You need to have a plan. Otherwise, what the hell
cares about you and me talking to each other. If

(50:09):
it's all about us clapping our guns and exercising our egos,
I'm obsessed being on this show with you for an
hour to say something that your listeners will benefit by.
I'm not doing it for you. I'm not doing it
for you to tell me what you think. I'm happy
to hear what you think. But if the two of

(50:32):
us can do something that makes the people listening more aware,
more enlightened, then we're successful. And here's the final point
of that observation is I don't care if there are
five people listening or if there are five thousand people listening.
They deserve the five people deserve an explanation they're spending

(50:54):
the time somebody's listening to this. I mean, it might
be your brother, it might be your friend, whoever it is,
I don't care. I'm going to give them the best
shot I have at teaching them what I know, and
they can decide whether I'm full of it or not.
But you get the drift. It's got to be about
the audience, and that's where the structure comes in. It's
for the audience, not for us. The radio was not

(51:17):
there for DJs to have fun.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
No.

Speaker 2 (51:19):
But the thing is is that the people that are
going to be controlling, they're going to be the master ceremonies.
They're going to go and host this whatever, this show
is going to be, whatever it's going to be. When
it comes to you, Michael, you know, if you want
to go and talk about whatever artists you might have
played at the WNEW if you would talk to you
want to play Ozzy Osborne or Bruce Springsteen. You talk
to them, You interviewed them, you got one to their concerts,
you know the records back and forth. Because you're a

(51:42):
proper fan and you're well knowledge and well read on
all this. So your expertise has to be important to
go and have that to make you for the credibility
for your integrity, reputation of what the host is supposed
to be. And podcasting. I also say the same thing too,
is that I don't want to go and listen to
a show just because you had this guest on. It
doesn't matter if you're a good interviewer and you know

(52:04):
how to get something good out of a guest and
it's a consistent thing every week. I want to make
sure that everybody comes back because I'm doing a good
job as a host, giving good content, and it's not
just the content itself that maybe we'll get lucky that
something comes out of the interview or whatever information comes out.
I want to make sure I'm presenting myself and hosting
at the best possible way that I can do this show. Now,

(52:27):
when it comes to what radio could be learning from podcasts,
we all have a thing about the spot breaks. There
is something to be said about where, Okay, if I
got to hear an other commercion of our home depot
or some other eight hundred number for something other service,
and we've heard these conversures over and over, or some
PSA have heard over and like the time, the ad
breaks are still locked into space, because well, we're gonna

(52:50):
get eventually get those spots filled. That's what the salespeople think,
but sometimes they don't. And since they don't, I'm wondering
if there's something that we're podcasters. You know, they're doing
live reads. There's not a lot of there's something a
lot of produced out of here, and they only do
so many reads out of what they have. Could radio
reconsider maybe, you know, I mean, I understand they got

(53:10):
to have advertising, but a different way to do this
maybe if they had the authenticity of the hosts that
are being built up to do that part. And you know,
they used to be the ones that would go out
on location and go to an event or whatever it is,
or they would least who had endorsed products. If you
had more of that going on and less of the
what's filling the long ad breaks? What can we learned

(53:33):
from that?

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Well, first of all, they are doing that. They sell
talk show host endorsements or they call them live reads
at a premium. When somebody has a following and talk
radio people trust them, and so the feeling is they'll
also trust them when they say, you know that someone
sews delegates and makes the best tune of sandwiches in Peoria,

(53:57):
you know, let's go get it because you know, my
favorite talk show host told me to do it. So
that actually does exist. Right now, what you're touching on
is a bigger problem, and that is the biggest problem
facing commercial radio is the is the commercial that in
a world where people don't like spending money for things

(54:17):
that they're getting for free on the internet or they
think they're getting it for free. They don't feel like
spending money, and time is money. When you're asked to
sit for five minutes to a commercial break, well it's
free radio. We're paying our bills with the commercials. You know,
people's time is money. If you're expecting somebody to spend
two thirds of their commute time listening to commercials and

(54:37):
not hearing you know, entertainment or programming, that's asking a
lot of people. So the biggest problem facing commercial radio
today is the institution of the commercial. Does it have
to be sixty seconds? Can it be ten seconds? Do
we have to have long chains of commercials that can
go five, six, seven minutes per break? There's got to

(55:00):
be a better way to do it. Should we separate
the commercials from the actual linear radio station by putting
it on a subchannel, or putting them on air, or
or having some other way of doing it. Maybe nobody's
come up with this answer yet. So one of the
biggest glaring negatives to listening to commercial radio is to
have to put up with the damn spot breaks, when

(55:23):
in fact a podcast may not have that, or you
can control the real time flow of a podcast. You
can't control the real time flow of a live and
local radio station. Radio's got these problems to deal with.
You bring up a good question. I don't have the
answer yet. If I did, i'd be the most influential
programmer in the world. But it's a hard problem to overcome.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
And when I say the ads, yes, there's always been
There've always been live reads out there, and I think
some have always done better than others. Is the reason
why Howard Stern can do live reads over and over
and it's like, you know, it's the relaxed read, not
so much screw, but I wish it would be the
same read over and over, so it's not. I mean,
I think it's part of it where if I could
just hear the post, do the ad and just have

(56:11):
it to be something random, it just goes into the
mix of their show and not necessarily have to be
recorded re recorded beforehand, any thing over and over. I mean,
that's one of the things I think that with podcasting,
it's always where it goes into the flow of the conversation,
not just being added in as a spot. That's where
I come from with it.

Speaker 3 (56:27):
Yeah, yeah, Well it knocks on the door to a
thing called product placement. You know, at one point, does
the does the live read become a subliminal message? You know,
you know when my girlfriend and I went to the concert,
we stopped on the way home at John's you know
burger joint. Wow, they make great burgers there, and blah
blah blah blah blah, and go w into something else.

(56:49):
So that's a commercial, but it's it's more like product placement.
They're trying everything to monetize this thing called radio, and
it's it's very, very challenging, that's all I'm saying. It's
challenging because you can't do this without money. As I
said before, it comes to if you don't like money,

(57:11):
or you think that it should be done for the
public good without anybody getting paid, well you're dreaming. It's
a nice thought, but it's just not going to happen.
The key to greatreat radio has always been the kids
like me who went into it, who understood that it
is a carefully, carefully balanced relationship between art and commerce

(57:35):
that you have to take into consideration the art and
the culture that it directly targets and works with, And
you also have to take into the equation how do
we make money doing this or how do we at
least break even so that we can pay for it all?
And that is that's always been the issue in the

(57:57):
arts in a free marketplace. Yep, it's and it'll always
be that, and it's the best we can have. Anything
better becomes restrictive and has diminishing returns.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Michael, I really appreciate it being you'd be so generous
with your time. Thank you so much for being on
Talkers dot Com is the website Talkers dot com. Go
ahead and subscribe to newsletter if you haven't done so,
please do that now, and also check out some of
your programs programs as well. There's the Michael Harrison Interview,
theres Uh, there's a we.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Have we have a bunch of stuff. We have a
bunch of stuff there. If people find it interesting, that's great.
So it's far on.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
I saw that's also your YouTube. You have a YouTube
channel as well, so there's a lot go and get
into right.

Speaker 3 (58:41):
Hey, I'm joy talking to you. You know, you and
I are basically in agreement. We both love radio. It's
just a matter of figuring out how to keep radio
alive without being in the denial of the changes that
we are facing. As I don't know how old you are,
but I consider myself an immigrant from the twentieth century.

(59:01):
And you know, this is a brave new world, this
twenty first century. It's extremely exotic, extremely different than the
world that many of the people that listened to radio
grew up in. And radio my main message to radio
has been learn how to maintain the magic of the

(59:21):
twentieth century, the show biz, the information, the education, the enlightenment,
and all of the wonderful things that radio was in
the twentieth century, while integrating into the digital era in
a way that makes sense and keeps it relevant. That's it.
That's been the job, and that job is not done yet,
and I'm enjoying being part of us. Thanks for having

(59:43):
me on the show. Orge, you did a really nice
job and it's been fun talking to you. I hope
we get to do it again.

Speaker 2 (59:47):
Absolutely once again. Michael Harrison, editor and publisher of Talkers Magazine,
thanks for being on The Broadcasters podcast.