“Hello Honey, it’s me. What did you think when you heard me back on the radio? I am the morning DJ, on W*O*L*D, playing all the hits for you, wherever you may be.” (Words and music by Harry Chapin, “W*O*L*D”.)
Once, not long ago, radio, AM stations and FM, was special. Always entertaining, radio found new music and DJs told us about what the new. Always, radio made listeners wonder and it’s hard to accept how far radio has fallen.
Jerry Del Colliano knows the acme and the nadir of radio. He lived the height of radio success and watched its horrific descent into nothingness. When he says the end of radio is now, not tomorrow, you must believe him.
Knowing Jerry Del Colliano, as I do. Reading his blog, “Inside Music Media” and speaking, with him, I sense I’m sitting Shiva for an old, trusted and loyal friend – radio. Radio is not yet dead. Still, we’d be foolish to believe radio wasn’t near the end.
I talk to men and women who love radio, but want to murder the messenger. They say Del Colliano sells doom. “Why doesn’t he focus on the answer to save radio,” they ask, “rather than focusing on failures?”
Del Colliano has answers. His answers speak to the future of radio, not its past. As any unknown or uncertain terrain, the future is sketchy and scary for most of us. Many try to stop his message.
Most important, Del Colliano inspires thought. Inspiring thought is his greatest gift. Converting thought into action is our job, not his.
Del Colliano is a polarizing figure. Many years ago, I learned not to pick a fight, with someone who buys ink by the barrel; that is, the media. By exposing the sins of media consolidators, Del Colliano takes aim at those who buy ink, figuratively, by the barrel.
“You haven’t made it, in Hollywood, until somebody wants you dead,” is an old saying. Radio consolidators and corporate owners want Del Colliano silenced. He must be right.
I spoke with some of his harshest critics, recently. The irony is rich. Off the record, they speak with great respect, even admiration. For the record, they defile him.
Radio is on life-support, slipping into and out of a coma, unlikely to see the light again. Del Colliano beats this drum loudest, but he’s first to beat the drum, most loudly, for a new radio day. Radio, he says, is in the delivery business, using Model-Ts in an age of spaceships.
The big record labels, such as Warner Music Group or EMI, are along for the ride into a void. The labels cling to ways that didn’t work yesterday and won’t tomorrow. Is it a fluke, how radio and labels are crumbling together?
Del Colliano urges we look to the future, not to the past. Listen to the young, mimic what they do. Get a grip, he says, it’s not back to the future, but into the future. Click here to radio the complete Grub Street Interview, with Jerry Del Colliano.