johnbasalla said:
There is so much negativity out there about the business.
I don't thrive on negativity so it pains me to daily read the "negativity" that gets expressed by people discussing radio.
Many of us got into the business while radio was still "The Winder Child"... one of the few industries in a home town that offered a young person with a technical bent, a love for bells-and-whistles... a place to learn and stretch. And it was a growing business so even those with only a limited skillset could find a place to be. And though the high-mobility of the workforce has always been seen as a negative, the good news was that it let some of us move up the ladder in small steps if that was a capability, rather than leaps and bounds.
Apparently the radio "market" has become a MATURE business. New industries have their wild heydays of growth and then they reach maturity. (Computers? Cellphone base station equipment?) Many young people choose careers in mature businesses. Barber shops and beauty shops? Automobile repairs? Septic tank pumpers? Farming? Fixed Base Operators at airports? College professors? A career does not have to be in a BOOMING, SKY-IS-THE-LIMIT field.
Downside: Though the radio "market" has matured, we might argue that the radio "business model" has not matured. Neither management nor the worker bees seem ready to accept that broadcasting is no longer the whiz-bang leading-edge-of-technology world that set our dreams from say 1935 to 1975?
When the Federal system set about to execute Timothy McVey for the Oklahoma City bombing, all the reporters showed up in quiet, quaint, non-spectacular Terre Haute, Indiana to cover the event. The reporters began grabbing people on the street for local observations and one interview I heard was very profound to me. Wish i had heard the concept years earlier. The person being interviewed said: "This is great town to grow up in. A great town to raise a family. We have a strong economy. The catch is: We have a plentiful supply of JOBS, but virtually no CAREERS." Let that one soak in a while. You can get out of college, get a job at the bank and maybe rise as high as Branch Manager. Great JOB. Want to move up and make banking your career? You will have to go to Indianapolis and then on to Chicago or somewhere if a CAREER is what you want.
So. Here is my muted, slight amount of negativity for today: If you really want to be in the radio business, as of today you have to be Smarter Than The Average Bear to make it a career rather than a serial collection of jobs. Find yourself some mentors and beat that topic to death: How do I make this a Career?