Portland Sucks

In the past few months we’ve all been watching as, one by one, all of our favorite local radio personalities have lost their jobs. It’s an epidemic, and it’s all been made public enough where I needn’t even bother naming names. You can’t blame the iPod because it hasn’t just been the music stations. You can’t blame the Internet (too much) because one look at the current state of television will show you that traditional media models are still alive and kicking – if they can adapt to change that is. Radio hasn’t.

The “problem” seems really bad here in Portland. Some of our favorite radio personalities have been cut loose, literally overnight, and left to fend for themselves in an increasingly dire and desperate industry. Painful as that might be for listeners, I can’t imagine what it’s like for these folks themselves. Waking up with the realization that all of your skills and talents are more or less obsolete must cause quite a stomach ache.

What’s worse? The very same egocentric behavior that had almost the entire radio industry ignoring the obvious change in the air seems to have permeated its personalities too. In the past two months I’ve been in contact with three different ex-radio personalities – big names around these parts – and have offered to work with them to demonstrate the power and potential of internet broadcasting. After all, while traditional radio’s numbers are quickly heading toward zero, the opposite is true of podcasts and streaming programming. Case in point, I left my day job of several years to make my blog and podcast/radio show work and I make a good living from it, why couldn’t others?

Big mistake. I was met with very arrogant and callous reactions. People were turning their noses up at the very notion that they should “sink to that level” because they have “years of experience” and suggesting that what I do is “novelty”. OK, fair enough – but last time I checked, being the airheaded fuckbrain that babbles incessantly between shitty Green Day and Snow Patrol songs didn’t exactly require genius. What am I missing? I understand that you’re scared, hell, I would be too if I walked in one day only to find out that I’d been replaced by a glorified iPod – but to outright dismiss an entire (fairly) new form of media? Are you insane? Here I am, just some guy with a few goals, making a COMFORTABLE LIVING off of something I enjoy doing while YOU, the ex-local-radio-dick, are reeling at how hard it is to find a job in radio and YOU are telling ME that what I do is beneath you? I hate to tell you this, but the reason that traditional radio is dead (and it IS very much dead and gone forever regardless of how many out there refuse to let go) is that very same mentality. Yes, the very same mentality that didn’t adapt to the times and that didn’t accept that the world of media is changing. That same mentality that caused radio to stick its head deep in the sand. This is the same mentality that cost you your job dipshit. Wake up.

The irony here? One local radio personality that I’ve never been able to stomach has actually had the opposite reaction to all of this. In our personal correspondence he has indicated that he not only “gets it”, he sounds downright positive about the future. Go figure, the one guy that I had pegged as completely out of touch absolutely “gets it” and the younger, hipper jackasses don’t.

Radio as we know it is screwed.