Mark Kassof Quotations of Chairman Mark

I’ll never forget the NBC studio tour when was 11.  What impressed me most was watching the WNBC radio morning show.  The studio was big, with a lot of people working in it…behind the scenes stuff — very cool, I thought!   WNBC’s morning guy was Bill Cullen — who also hosted the The Price Is Right on TV.  “Imagine that,” my hard-working, blue collar dad said, “getting paid to sit on your ass and talk!”

That made a big impression on me.

Or maybe it was Larry Lujack’s start on WLS in Chicago.  He had come over from working overnights at WCFL and even as a teen I understood that this was a real opportunity…kind of like being called up from the minors to start for the White Sox.   I hated Lujack that day. I thought he was blowing it.  He made a lot of mistakes.  There was a lot of dead air.  He was snarly and sarcastic — not smooth and smiley like the other ‘LS jocks.

A week later, I was hooked.   And I didn’t just like Larry Lujack…I wanted to be him, or at least where he was, doing what he was, at that moment.

Larry Lujack was the reason I had to get on the radio.   Didn’t just want to…had too.   I didn’t want to miss a minute of his show. I would constantly tell my friends about the crazy things “Superjock” said.

This isn’t just my story.   I suspect it’s your story too.  Many of us got into this business because there was a personality they idolized and identified with.

Here’s my question for you: Who are they identifying with now???

Let’s flash back to a more recent memory.   It was the ’90s. WNDU-FM — “U93″ — was my client when it was owned by Notre Dame.   As a favor to them, I would drive to South Bend once a quarter and talk to a Radio-TV class about radio.  Actually, my one-hour talk was the only radio part of the so-called Radio-TV class!

And that was probably appropriate.  Because,  invariably,  few or none of the students raised their hand when I asked who was interested in a radio career.

Radio isn’t glamorous any more.   It’s more like a utility.  Still important and valuable, but I don’t see kids aspiring to work for Detroit Edison!

Some of this was inevitable given the explosion of technology and new media.  But radio has helped it along by watering down or flat out eliminating the most unique aspects of its product…the very things that make radio radio and not just a succession of songs.

Our personality “gene pool” has been in a death spiral for decades.   I was inspired to go into radio because I idolized Larry Lujack.   But I wasn’t as good as Larry Lujack, and not as inspiring to the next generation of would-be radio personalities.  Still, there were a handful of kids who hung around the station to work “gofer” jobs for free they thought it was the coolest place they could possibly be, and wanted to be like me.

Unfortunately, most weren’t even as good as me.   So as time went on, personalities as a group weren’t as good or inspiring as the ones who came before.  Fewer and fewer kids even thought about radio as a career.

And because “personalities” weren’t as good, they were put on a tighter leash so their ability to screw up was limited.  Some who had potential never got a shot, since owners increasingly turned to syndication to cover shifts and slash expenses.

So, today, at the very time radio needs great talent to compete with all the other sources of entertainment available today, it has instead a handful of aging stars and no “farm system” for replacing them.

Who am I to complain about this, you might ask.  I’m a research guy…aren’t we the ones who tell stations to “shut up and play the music”???

No!  We sometimes tell stations they’re perceived to “talk too much.”  But shutting jocks up is the knee-jerk response and usually the wrong one.  Instead, how about coaching them to edit their bits?  How about encouraging them to talk about things that entertain and relate to listeners? The issue isn’t literally the amount of talk…it’s if it’s worthwhile. (Few complain that Bob & Tom talk too much, and they talk all the time!)

Radio must rebuild its farm system.   It must refocus on its local communities.   It must start giving budding personalities opportunities to grow, succeed and even fail sometimes.   It must take some chances, even if it’s on an HD-3 channel at 3 in the morning.

Radio must do this because if audio entertainment simply comes down to who plays the most tunes a listener likes best it will lose.  Radio has to be more, and in most cases, personalities are a big part of that.

Rush Limbaugh started out as a journeyman jock.  Howard Stern sucked when he started out.  Larry Lujack’s first show on WLS was a nightmare.

Where is the next generation of Limbaughs, Sterns and even Lujacks coming from?

Who wants to be in radio???

Fifteen-plus years ago, a friend came to visit. We had worked together at a media research firm in the early ’80s. Then, he was Promotion Director for an NBC affilate on the East Coast.

“In five years,” he told me, “the evening network newscasts will cease to exist.” He said shows like NBC Nightly News (at that time, hosted by Tom Brokaw) would succumb to 24-hour cable news and the exploding use of the World Wide Web.

Now, with the perspective of time, it looks like my friend’s prediction was just a little premature. NBC Nightly News, along with The CBS Evening News and ABC’s World News are still very much with us, thank you.

Now, it’s absolutely true that these shows are not what they used to be. These days, the three network newscasts garner around 20 million viewers…half as many as when my friend made his “visionary” prediction. But then, what shows are generating the kind of numbers TV used to? The Super Bowl? American Idol? It takes less than five fingers to count them.

The fact is, we’re taking society’s time for information and entertainment and slicing it into more and more, tinier and tinier pieces.

What’s the point of this story? That the predictions of radio’s demise are similarly way ahead of themselves. If you listen to some pundits, radio is already cooked, over, done…, a “dead man walking”…ancient technology shunned by a new generation in favor of texting, iPods and self-programmed information and entertainment on demand.

I’m not buying it. And hard data says it’s wrong. Arbitron Radio Listening Trends shows that radio’s 12+ cume rating was 95.3 in Fall ‘98 and 93.3 in Spring ‘07. It’s AQH rating went from 1630 to 1400 during that period.

A decline? Sure. A meltdown??? Hardly.

And honestly, how could radio not decline giving the tsunami of technology-driven time-wasters — err….innovative sources of information, entertainment, social networking, etc. — that keeps coming?

If anything, the fact that radio has held up as well as it has reveals the remarkable resiliency of the medium…

Not only has radio been challenged by new choices, but at the same time it has been battered by (mostly) horrendous management, led by mega-groups that ran up debt, increased spot loads and slashed programming to pay for it, and in general, miserably failed to serve listeners and communities. Great radio stations, always the exception, are now an endangered species.

Now is not the time for radio to abdicate what still are its significant strengths. For example, just a few days ago, I had an online discussion with some smart radio people who suggested that music stations should shift their information efforts almost exclusively to their web sites. Certainly, some should! But what about music stations that are also the information leaders in their communities? How many listeners have seamless, touch-of-the-button Internet access with text-to-speech software in their cars??? Do you???

When I was programming CHR stations, I learned early on that it was a mistake to get ahead of my audience. I learned that songs I was already sick of were ones that listeners were just beginning to become aware of.

In our quest to cope with the brave world of new media, let’s move to the future. But let’s not get ahead of the audience.

Here’s my view of radio’s future: One or more of the mega-groups goes down. Local stations are again taken over by locals and well-run, smaller groups, run by radio people who know that serving their local communities is the way for stations to remain relevant and viable.

Certainly, online content will be a essential aspect of this future. For example, who better to deliver local information online than stations that have decades establishing credibility in their markets?

But, don’t turn off that transmitter just yet…

I have long thought that radio is underrated when it comes to its power and influence in listeners’ lives.

Radio’s power has been demonstrated once again in recent weeks with the controversy around Rush Limbaugh.

Limbaugh drew the attention of none other than the new President of the United States.He told Republican congressional leaders that “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.”

Then, GOP congressman Phil Gingrey of Georgia defended congressional Republicans against criticism by Limbaugh. Quoted in an article on politico.com, he stated: “I mean, it’s easy if you’re Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh…to stand back and throw bricks. You don’t have to try to do what’s best for your people and your party. You know you’re just on these talk shows.” The next day, after being inundated with phone calls and emails, Gingrey then went on Limbaugh’s show to beg forgiveness:

GINGREY: Rush, thank you so much. I thank you for the opportunity, of course this is not exactly the way to I wanted to come on. … Mainly, I want to express to you and all your listeners my very sincere regret for those comments I made yesterday to Politico. … I clearly ended up putting my foot in my mouth on some of those comments. … I regret those stupid comments.

This past Saturday, Limbaugh closed the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual meeting in Washington As Fox, CNN and C-SPAN carried his speech live. Later in the day, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele appeared on CNN’s D.L. Hughley Breaks the News. Hughley referred to Limbaugh as “the de facto leader of the Republican Party.” Steele objected…

STEELE: I’m the de facto leader of the Republican Party….Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh, his whole thing is entertainment. Yes, it’s incendiary. Yes, it’s ugly.

Limbaugh fired back on his radio show Monday, and by that night, Steele backtracked: “My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

I guess we now know who the real leader of the Republican Party is!

The fact is: Limbaugh is on 500+ radio stations. Tune around AM any weekday between Noon and 3 (Eastern) and you’re likely to hear him at multiple places on the dial. He boasts 20 million listeners, many of whom call themselves “dittoheads.” He is their source of information and opinion.

Whether this is good for the country or the Republican Party is something I’ll leave for political pundits to comment on. But I know one thing for certain…

It’s good for radio…

and Rush Limbaugh’s numbers.