WARNING! PETER PRINCIPLE IN PROGRESS!!
I have always liked the premise of "The Peter Principle", which says basically that:
one tends to rise to the level of one's own incompetence. Nowhere has that effect been
in relevance more than the Radio and/or broadcasting business. It's apparent from
the recent news and rumblings of the sale of the nation's three biggest Radio entities:
IHeart, Cumulus, and CBS; that their incompetence or current business practices have
not served them well. At least well enough to make a profit or sustain themselves
financially....which is their primary goal isn't it? These broadcast profiteers do what so
many in the business world do-cut overhead by eliminating employees first-consolidate
various departments, then "water down" or homogenize your product. And of course,
hire upper management types who have little or no knowledge of the product that
they're charged with overseeing. Small wonder this business "model" seldom works...
..especially in Radio. This type of "Executive" usually only deals with share holders,
Wall Street, and the Bottom Line. It never seems to occur to this type of "Executive"
that the "Product" needs to be improved...in this case a radio station and how it sounds.
No, upper management will point to lack of advertising revenue nationally or locally.
Radio stations during the so called "Golden Era" never had this problem. These radio
stations were always exciting, interesting, thus causing large-loyal listenership. Back
then, advertisers wanted to be on these stations...they loved the fact that you were doing
your part to attract an audience for them to hear their advertisement(s). Makes sense.
When in the last 20 or so years have you heard anything exciting or ear-arresting on air? Where are all the great announcer/DJs? What happened to the big giveaway or fantastic sounding station contests? These "Peter Principles" don't know..or don't really care.
You see, since deregulation in the mid 1990's, radio corporations are nothing more than
large scale property buyers...investments for future sell offs and big, big profits. Hasn't
worked out that way for most has it? It's one thing to buy property, but you just can't
sit there and do nothing to the property; otherwise, it erodes, decays, becomes run down.
Like any property-house or building-radio needs the support to keep it up. This is the
very thing which today's large broadcast companies are not doing. Perhaps it's that the
large media conglomerates of today think much like our Federal government. Only the
BIG can do for the small. It seems to be that this liberal progressive idea works only
from the top..down. That the "Top" knows best...trust us! I'm not totally buying this
theory. I can only hope that when and if these stations sell, I hope they will be broken up
into smaller-more individually run companies.
Maybe lessons can be re-instituted from decades ago to restore local "glory". Maybe
radio can be lifted out of this FCC imposed "Peter Principle" penance it's been sentenced
to for far too long. That's my RadiOpinion...what's yours?
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