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April 9, 2021
Looks Good On PaperThursday morning, sometime before dawn, someone drove down my street, paused at the foot of my driveway, and flung a copy of the Los Angeles Times in the general direction of my front door. Shortly thereafter, I emerged from that door, retrieved the paper from its resting place by the front wheels of my car, brought it inside, and dropped it on a desk in my office. As of Friday morning, it is still there, further untouched, the string holding the double-folded sections together still intact. It will remain in that state until Sunday morning, when I will remove the string, take a very cursory glance at the headlines, and combine it with the Sunday edition in a stack I will deposit in the recycling bin. This is a sequence that has been recurring for several years.
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April 2, 2021
The New VersionEverything old is new again, and so we had a fairly pointless debate this week over whether radio has been reinvented. I'll spare you the details, but this all came about when a media reporter, enthusing over Spotify's acquisition of a social audio company, tweeted about ...
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March 26, 2021
The Producer And The ProductIt's been a long time since radio program directors -- we're not used to calling then "brand managers" yet, are we? -- actually had time to listen to everything that goes out over the air. Most are juggling multiple stations and all kinds of additional responsibility, ...
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March 19, 2021
The People’s ChoiceAre you in touch with what radio listeners want? No. No, you are not. Okay, you might be, but I bet you're not, because you're in talk radio and you think like a talk radio person. You think people want to hear nothing but politics, and angry guy politics at that, so ...
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March 12, 2021
Only In It For The MoneyIt was, of course, always a fantasy, the idea that there was a firewall between your show and the sales side of the business. It was a NICE fantasy, the idea that creative content was pure and the sales department couldn't interfere and all was right with the world. We ...
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March 5, 2021
Revising The RulesIt kind of creeps up on you, the realization that there are new things happening and you just can't wrap your head around them anymore. This has been the case forever. Your parents hated your music, your hair styles, your culture. Their parents hated theirs. Some seniors ...
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February 26, 2021
Live, Local, Late-BreakingSomething happened around here the other day. Perhaps you heard about it. Of course you heard about it. Tiger Woods' car crash was international news, and it happened right here in my town, literally just over the hill, the prominence of the driver escalating it from a ...
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February 19, 2021
Who’s NextWho's going to be the next Rush Limbaugh? That's the wrong question to be asking. In fact, it's a little late, and beside the point. You -- the talk radio industry -- shouldn't be looking for the next Rush Limbaugh. You should be looking for the first of someone ...
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February 12, 2021
Career DayWhat did you want to be when you grew up? A lot of you are going to say "disc jockey." A few weirdos will say "talk show host." (I wanted to be "something involving radio and/or television and/or writing and/or maybe sports, I don't know." By that token, I succeeded. The ...
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February 5, 2021
On The Clock"I don't have time for this." That's my response to practically everything these days, which is, I admit, an odd thing at a time when the pandemic has, it seems, given others plenty of time to do all kinds of things. Binge-watching TV shows? Baking? Doing hot yoga in ...