Locality Switch

Radio must be one of the most effective communication technologies out there. It reaches so many people every day. It can be left on in the background all the time, or be turned up a little to become the focal point of the moment. And it costs next to nothing to listen to!

Behind the radio set is a team of people making it all run. It’s not always an easy job. It can be expensive. It can test your relationships with people when things go wrong. Making radio work day in day out can take a long time to get right, and when you finally get it right, technologies change and you’re back to square one.

Every radio station has three distinct groups of people:

• Management
• On Air Talent
• Technologists

Sure, this may be a very broad generalisation on my part, but I think it’ll do. In community radio, the line between these three groups can be blurred (everyone love to dabble!), but one very distinct division usually remains in tact. We end up with the following two groups:

• On Air Talent / Management
• Technologists

This isn’t to say Technologists can’t be on air, but when we are looking at the way groups join together, we generally see that management will join with the On Air Talent, rather than help out with the technology side of things. Why do things pan out this way?

Is it because management sees radio as a creative business rather than a technical business? I think this is what many people see radio as – you can’t really blame people for thinking this way! After all, who is it that can be heard on the other side of the radio? The talent, of course!

This division in the ranks can lead to trouble down the tracks. If you put all your energy and resources into building a programming committee and developing the skills of your on air talent, then what is left to build a team of technologists? And what then happens when the transmitter fails? John Maizels sums it up nicely in his article in the CBX Magazine [November 2008]:

So why should you focus on building a technology team? Well, Broadcasting is a technology business. Without technology – and the technologists to make it work – when you turn on the microphone, nothing happens. Your creative juices go precisely nowhere.

So, is radio a Technology business, or a Creative business?

My answer would be: both. One cannot function without the other. Well, I’m sure a devoted team of technologists could build some clever automated machine which has a computer voice announcing the weather and all the tracks coming up, but that wouldn’t make very good radio!

If you’re in management: make sure you balance out your focus between the Technology and the Creative. That isn’t to mean you have to know how everything works and how to fix it yourself, but you at least need to take time to give your technical team some attention, and provide them with the support required to do their job well.

If you have the right people doing the right jobs at the righ time, then you will have a fantastic radio station!