Plato? Didn't He Do Middays At Q-109?

Lately, an e-mail mailing list for my college class has started to become active again. It was formed a few years ago for a reunion year, and, to be honest, I'd forgotten I was even on the list when it flared back up. It's back, though, and while my classmates were bantering back and forth about birthdays and vintage postcards (let's just say they and I tend not to share too many interests), one of them proclaimed this:

"I always felt that graduates of (our college) should assume the mantle of Platonic Guardians; they possess the Intellect, Morality and Passion to make the right decisions for the rest of Society."

All right, I'm not going to get into the political implications here, nor the pretension ("Look at me! I read Plato's 'Republic' in Philosophy 101!"). What I'll focus on is the idea that he thinks that he and his college classmates are somehow the elite, that we're smarter, that we know better than anyone else how people should live their lives. Yes, we know better.

But we don't. And by "we," I'm not just saying me and my classmates, although I fear that if society were indeed ruled by the self-styled "intellectual elite" with whom I went to school, we'd be headed for even deeper trouble than we already are (while driving a Prius to Whole Foods, of course). It's the same in radio.

It's always been that way. You can especially see it when a station changes format, hires or fires someone, or does anything that could be considered a gamble. It won't work. It's terrible. They should have gone Oldies, or Top 40, or AC. Radio used to be SO much better.

You can debate that, of course, but it's beside the point. What the radio experts, the veterans, often forget is that the economics have changed, and, more importantly, the public's demands have changed. Younger listeners DIDN'T grow up with classic Top 40 AMs or free-form "progressive" rock stations. We, the pros, the "experts," are well-versed in the way radio's been for decades, but the old rules may not apply anymore. That may seem scary. If you've been hewing closely to the classics -- repeat those time checks and call letters, do those time-tested contests and promotions -- you may realize soon that the PPM alone has made some of that obsolete, and there are new generations of listeners who are comfortable with audio entertainment that sounds very different from radio as usual, from podcasts that follow no format and last as long as the host remains into it (and end whenever he or she wants) to streams that don't have ANY jocks involved and tell you what's playing right there on the screen. There's still a large audience for the way things were -- look at how well some Oldies/Classic Hits stations do -- but there's also an audience for other ideas.

And that's my point. There is no one "right way" to do radio anymore, assuming there ever WAS one "right way." The rules are changing. Now, especially with different measurement and different delivery systems and different audience expectations, there are opportunities for... different. And you get "different" by throwing aside assumptions you've carried since you started board opping or doing college radio and not be afraid to try something new. Be open to different ideas. Listen to everyone, even people who aren't veterans of the Good Old Days of Radio The Way It Used To Be. You don't have to be one of the exalted experts to do good radio anymore.

Of course, you could end up doing bad radio, too. But if you make it entertaining and/or fun and/or informative, you can't go too far wrong.

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This week's All Access News-Talk-Sports Talk Topics pile of material waiting to help you do your show is led by a story about Lindsay Lohan's mother getting into a dispute at a Carvel ice cream shop, and the item is primarily notable because it reveals that Carvel -- home of Cookie Puss and Fudgie the Whale -- has a special VIP card that only 75 people carry that gets you, oh, I don't know, extra crunchies or free Flying Saucers or something. I don't care what you get, nor do I care that the Carvel in this area closed a few years ago. I want that card. I mean, Lindsay Lohan's sister has one. The bar isn't set THAT high. Also awaiting you at Talk Topics are stories about how New Yorkers are turning their apartment balconies into "catios" for their cats, a man who went to jail for blowing a bubble in court, how you're paying for a bridge for squirrels, a horrific charity waxing stunt gone awry, a 74-year-old woman accused of condiment-related vandalism, what pickle juice can do for you, a waitress fined for showing "too much buttock," a woman who wants her cell phone company to pay for inadvertently revealing her affair to her husband, why some "experts" (there's that word again) want kids NOT to have "best friends," some unfortunate uses for poop, a (small) comeback for old-school full service at the gas pump, a place where swearing in public could get you an instant fine, how the insect world is providing karmic retribution for Goldman Sachs, and some very loud and insistent dogs. Plus hundreds more, including oil spill stuff and sports stuff and economy stuff. Really, if you're stuck for ideas, you'll find something here.

Don't miss this week's provocative "10 Questions With..." KTAR-FM/Phoenix evening host Joe Crummey, either. And you know about the rest of All Access, with complete radio and music industry coverage, charts, job listings, ratings, columns, and other resources to help you do your job better. But there's also... oh, yeah, we have an Android app! You have an Android phone, perhaps the Evo or the Droid or a Nexus One? You do? Then click here for the all-new All Access Android app, designed by jacApps and waiting for you in the Android Market. And it's free, as is the All Access iPhone app, which you can get by clicking here. Which you should, assuming you have an iPhone or iPod Touch.

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Oh, by the way, I didn't want to leave the impression that I don't like my old college classmates. Some of them are good people, even the megalomaniacal ones. I'm still not ever going to a class reunion, though. Facebook's more than enough of that for me.

Perry Michael Simon
Editor
All Access News-Talk-Sports
psimon@allaccess.com
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