Some things are just pointless.  Like – you can wear sunglasses at night, or have a radio but never listen to it. Or you can have a radio station which plays music that’s already been played to death, and then to top it off – have a DJ talk once every few songs and say nothing at all.

I would understand if there were one or two stations like that, catering to a narrow niche of brain-dead drones who only want radio as background – or for those people who have radios but never listen to them anyway. But most intelligent people would probably rather have some content and a lot of good new music. With only a little bit of nostalgia thrown in here and there. All the polls I’ve seen (including some which I’ve posted) confirm this emphatically.

And yet an amazing number of radio stations believe that this “boring-playlist-minimum-talk” kind of thing is “quality radio.” Which is why they copy each other and there are now thousands of them everywhere around the world. They don’t invest in producing their own shows because, as one PD put it, their shows are “already produced by the best producers in the world: like the Eagles or Lady GaGa.” Now that’s genius!

So you hear one song and then the next and finally the jock comes on and says something like “did you know that on this day in 1937 something really boring happened?” And then he hurriedly adds “much more great music coming up!”

And I’m just sitting back wondering WHEN is it gonna come up? On this show? Or on some other station perhaps? And also, why does he even bother to speak? This kind of “interaction” doesn’t make a connection with the listener. If anything, it repels. It sure as heck repels me.

So I flip the dial.

Next station sounds just the same! Same music, same kind of voice. Wait a minute is this the same guy? Nah… just sounds like him. But wait! He’s got an edge here. He’s just informed me about something much more current – something that happened on this day in 1977. I bet his folks were very very bored that day. He’s living proof that accidents do happen.

I’ve been at this game long enough to know that it’s not really the jock’s fault. He’s told what to do and gets beaten up if he speaks for even 5 seconds longer than his script says he’s supposed to. As for that DJ you liked to listen to because of how quirky he was and the cool music he selected – well he’s long gone because he wouldn’t agree to being scripted. The one that’s replaced him has no balls and has been recently lobotomized. But it’s not the jock’s fault anyway. Yeah it’s the Program Directors again. These bright people who want to run stations at a profit, by minimizing costs, minimizing content, controlling everything right down to your underwear – and claiming that they’re thus winning loyal listeners. Brilliant!

But you kow that the Radio and Records industries are in a huge battle right now over unpaid royalties? Simplistically put, Labels want to be paid for airplay which the PD’s select for free – that’s their world-class production, remember? – while Radio insists that they’re doing them a favor by promoting their music for them. Yeah each side has their arguments and you may even nod your head in fleeting agreement now and then. But then it hits you…!

The vast majority of radio stations that do these pointless playlist shows and rotate brain-dead music ad infinitum do serious harm to the record industry! No wonder everybody complains that there’s no good music any more!  They also do themselves serious disservice. Name ONE person you know who thinks mainstream music radio is good! And… they also hurt their advertisers who regularly complain that their radio campaigns just don’t seem to hit their mark like they used to. These stations conduct “research” on what people supposedly want to hear and come up with results which translate as follows: “radio listeners are 60-year-old teenagers who hate to listen to presenters talk and hate ads, want to hear music they can listen to on their iPads anyway, don’t want to be disturbed by their radio programs – and therefore they love this station.” And if music radio fails – it’s not their fault. The research made them do it!

So why is it so? Why do unimaginative, non-artistic people insist on programming radio stations? Why do they reject any and all good ideas out of hand and settle on business models which are doomed to fail? Why go for short-term solutions which look good on paper (low production cost, streamlined sound, no surprises), instead of taking a chance on something less structured and more adventurous – and more engaging to the listener?

Is it the station owners? Or is it their PDs? Or is it, god forbid, the listeners who indeed give them this kind of feedback? (In which case can somebody tell me WHERE those listeners are? I’ve been looking for them for YEARS!)

I don’t know the answer, really. I think it’s basically no guts, no imagination, and lots of FEAR. All masquerading as prudence, caution and business acumen.

Let’s have your feedback please!