I was on my way to a Las Vegas radio station this week to be interviewed as the host of a new talk show. The station loved my idea, loved me and I thought I was on my way to a new career as the voice of reason when they casually asked me who I was bringing in as my sponsor. Me? Can’t I have some of your sponsors? Why of course not. I could pay for the show out of my own pocket. Isn’t that a great business model? Goodbye KRAP.
Radio was drained of its revenue when entertainment switched to television. AM is all talk now, and talk is cheap. If you want music it’s on FM. When I listen to AM now it could be 1953 or even 1943. It’s still weather, news and sports with sponsors coming and going to the accompaniment of horns, buzzers and whistles, but today with a very crooked spine.
I listened very carefully to the Mike Huckabee Show: out with Obama, lower taxes, kill all liberals, everything said in generalities. You could get a better political discussion in a bar and certainly in a college bull session.
Marshall McLuhan, the guru of media, called radio “the tribal drum”. It’s not for literate people and it’s not a thinking medium, that’s why it worked so well for Hitler. McLuhan added that this is in the very nature of the media to turn people and society into a rigid echo chamber of their own thoughts. That Hitler came into political existence at all is directly owing to radio, McLuhan said, and that goes for Rush Limbaugh as well.
A line from Romeo & Juliet sums up today's radio: "It speaks, and yet says nothing."
No comments:
Post a Comment