Posted by chicagomedia.org on June 30, 2008 at 07:52:47:
Lee Abrams abhors cliches in radio - and he's got a list a mile long.
The veteran radio programmer/consultant now in charge of breaking up the stone tablets of newspaper commandments at Tribune was famous for wielding his "cliche buzzer" back at XM - and he regaled the Conclave Friday afternoon audience with anecdotes from his radio past and a sarcastic take on radio's hoary clichés. Stuff like "Every station is 'the best' - it's BS, everybody can't be the best." And "'10th caller wins' - there's gotta be a different way to give away a prize." And "station vans... the van was supposed to be cool, but get a hearse, anything but a van." Also "Star Wars sound effects... Darth Vader's dead, can't we move on?" And "rock stations still being pissed off - 'we're better, we have to prove we're real men'... and the whole sex thing - 'We rock harder' was cool in 1981, but now? There's YouPorn - go get all you want." Abrams also gets practical about "radio's tuneout paranoia" - which discourages PDs and managers from taking a chance on something fresh. He decries radio's "deep-seated inferiority complex" and says "you don't sense that spirit, that pride" of winning. As for music stations, Abrams says "traditionally, radio has completely embraced and owned any music change", from early rock & roll up to Nirvana in the 1990s. But now "with consolidation, that hasn't really been important." But perhaps most salient --
"War has been declared on radio - you've gotta declare war back."
Lee Abrams is now on the payroll at Tribune, asking basic questions about how newspapers do business, and shining lights on the cobwebs, and he gets into the whole Internet thing by saying that "Google has declared war on newspapers, and then newspapers pulled out their World War I weapons." (That drew a laugh from the Conclave crowd.) But from there: "War has been declared on radio..., so re-take your turf, doing the things that only radio can do." That's the spirit and pride he was talking about, but also investing in the product and marketing: "Personalities - build them, nurture them. You won't find that on the Internet." Abrams says radio's gotten into "thinking of the audience as numbers, ratings... it's gotten so corporate, and that's come at the expense of the soul." Which leaves you wondering, does today's Internet radio have the soul and passion that terrestrial radio used to? Final thoughts from Abrams: "have enough belief in your brand to revolutionize it and move it forward." He says radio's forgotten that it's "coming from a position of strength - my advice would be to really take the strength seriously, and revolutionize yourself."
(Tom Taylor)