The theme of this kind of convention is "what can you do for me?" That's what a lot of conventions are like- it's about the schmooze- but this one's had some especially egregious examples. This morning, the PD of a very big talk station walked by me- nobody else around- and I said hello and congratulations (he just got a big promotion). His reaction- he looked at my badge (he knows me- we've met several times), and he wordlessly walked away. No nod, no grunt, no nothing. But he doesn't need to be friendly, because he invented radio. And he doesn't need me.
There's a lot of that attitude- Al Franken has apparently invented liberal talk radio, judging by his speech and the reaction to it this morning- and a lot of badge-staring. I get some "oh, YOU'RE Perry Michael Simon," which I'm not sure is a good thing, and some blank stares, which I'm pretty sure is not a good thing. At the Arbitron panel, a corpulent gent in a blue suit preparing to sit in the seat in front of me stopped, looked directly at my badge, and, with obvious disinterest and a sniff-n-sneer, turned away and sat down. Then again, I'm not the Inventor of Radio.
At one point, I ran into Joe Kelley of ABC's Midnight Truckers Radio Network show and he said "you know what word I haven't heard once here? Blog. Nobody's mentioned blogs here." He was right- eventually, Sean Hannity mentioned bloggers near the end of a long list of people involved in bringing down Dan Rather, but it was hardly an endorsement of the form, and he didn't exactly give them the credit they deserved. (Al Franken gave talk radio the blame for the Swifties' "lies"- nothing about bloggers, although I get the impression that Al uses a manual typewriter) Later, WTOP Washington's Jim Farley mentioned podcasting and we marveled that nobody had brought that up, either. And then Randy Michaels, accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award, went ahead and spoiled everything by laying out the future of wireless broadband and podcasting and streaming and the inescapable fact that the future lies not in the delivery system but in the content- anyone can send music out, anyone can download and playlist their own music, but not everyone can create a compelling, interesting, entertaining talk show.
And that's what's really happening to talk. All the panels and presentations and schmoozing were beside the point- not exactly whistling past the graveyard, but really more relevant to the immediate future than the long-term or even mid-range future. Technology is rendering the gatekeepers irrelevant. Just as I don't need a newspaper or publisher to reach a worldwide audience with this thing or the All Access column, there won't be a need for a transmitter and antenna to reach people's radios. You won't even need to reach a radio- the iPod, cell phone, some form of computer, PDA, TV, all of those will merge. Some already have- wanna see my Treo?- and much of the technology exists today, needing only to be miniaturized and made efficient and practical to use. It's coming.
But there's a future for the radio companies and syndicators, too. They have the production and sales and marketing expertise. It's one thing to say you can download a Howard Stern podcast or a Rush Limbaugh stream, and another to sell you on downloading Joe Blow's show or anything else of which you've never heard. And if Joe Blow wants to make a living with his podcast, someone will have to sell ads or sponsorships.
All of that is in the future, of course, but it's closer than you might think. In the meantime, how did they get through a three day conference without mentioning blogs? You'd think that... ah, no, you wouldn't. But there were several points at which panelists and attendees lamented the inability to find new talent, and bloggers were never mentioned. At least someone out there is listening, but nobody at the convention is. They're too busy inventing radio and ignoring my existence. Somehow, I think it's better for me this way.
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