Sunday night! Any night! Five hundred channels to surf on cable TV and the only wave available to carry your overworked mind is a primetime repeat or badly produced car or skin product info-mercial.
Syndicated programming may be a money maker for local channels, the actors and directors but to television viewers it continues to prove how modern settlers of an entertainment frontier gone awry can’t stop accepting second, third and fourth best.
We’re no different than being an innocent child strapped to a highchair with a parental figure shoving bright orange smooshy squash between our gums.
How I Met Your Mother, 2 ½ Men and this fall The Big Bang Theory hitting the air five nights a week is no different than owning burned out movies on DVD. There was a Betty White Hot in Cleveland marathon two weeks ago. MTV wouldn’t stop playing their movie awards. Family Guy, American Dad, Futurerama, the freshest thing on the flat screen is Sunday morning religion and Joel Olsteen later in the night.
A radio guy demanding better variety…talk about an oxymoron. The Ipod took over because investing in a fifteen dollar compact disc was a bigger gamble than a weekend trip to Vegas. Car stereo foreplay dissolved in the 80’s and 90’s making antenna driven entertainment on the go something the older generation did.
Rarely do you meet the listener that spent more than seven minutes with your four hour program.
Is it lack of content or laziness? I can’t answer that question. Once you’ve been introduced to the wizard behind the curtain broadcasting is the cheapest thing since the blue light special at Kmart. A program director once said, “I’m tired of hiring radio people because the new breed believes our industry is the next best thing to putting in eight hours at Taco Bell.”
Depending on what book you read…a lack of content has been the main focus for every outlet. What is the secret ingredient that holds a television viewer longer? How can radio present itself to listeners so they don’t injure an index finger punching scan?
Please don’t say Pandora! Every conversation I dive into is based on how easy it is to hit like and dislike. We’ll take our eyes off the road to dislike Tom Petty. Love Lady Gaga tell the long distance music maker from universes from afar and you’ll get more creative writing…until the day Mother Nature blasts your workday with paradise and because you’ve disliked so much…the thought of adding Mary Jane’s Last Dance is farther away from your personal planet then the nearest Burger King.
Our new culture in American Fad is to be where you are at the present then mysteriously combine it with a past you can’t change and a future refusing to be predicted. Therefore there’s tremendous confusion causing outages in creative departments from Hollywood to local newscasts at four, five, five thirty, six, six thirty and eleven.
ABC has pulled the plug on two daytime dramas because viewers aren’t there anymore. Extremely popular radio shows have suddenly disappeared. Captain Kirk was wrong; he wasn’t on a voyage across the final frontier…who, what, when and how you think is the new space and getting to it has nothing to do with light years and the speed of sound but rather a desire to participate with your everyday.
Car dealers should stop trying to sell and begin the process of sharing ideas on how to keep the vehicle moving forward for the seven to ten years we’re going to keep it. Educate the community on the differences between fossil fuels and electric. Give consumers a reason rather than a price as to why a new age in energy is required. If the nation has elected to stop buying why not fit into the lifestyle of the new consumer and not revert back to the old habits of shoving mooshy squash between our lips?
Where is all of this coming from? A tiny way out of the way restaurant in nowhere America that quietly made their way through a campground promoting their lunch and dinner specials. When asked why their prices were so inexpensive the owner calmly replied, “There are a lot of people unemployed…when the economy gets back on its feet we’ll return to normal.”
Guess where I had dinner Saturday night? I’m not a cheap freak! I love content and they sold me without having to rely on old tricks of the trade. Less than twelve hours later I did what few do in America today…I watched an entire commercial on television only to see the most brilliant writing…30 seconds of finding reason to visit the smaller towns and parks of North and South Carolina.
Fresh is in the commercials. Maybe its time we DVR past the reruns and dive into the 15 and 30 second messages radio and television are slipping between the laughs we’ve already burped up on our bibs.
After a while your Ipod will start playing the same songs and how many times can you stand to hear Jimmy Buffet playing live in Chicago on Pandora? I found myself looking forward to a 15 second dry vocal about Target only to realize what I was truly looking for was relationship. Damn if I didn’t turn my back on Pandora and take up I Heart Radio picking up Gen X which plays 90’s music…rap, alternative, pop with a touch of modern because the content on this station didn’t take my eyes off the road. When they hit a commercial I accepted it knowing they’d soon be back with more variety.
Stick around for the commercials…it’s amazing how many American businesses will keep their doors open when you know the message. There’s something fresh in the middle of the music and television shows...do something different in your life by locating newer places to go by listening to the commercials.
I will always believe in you first…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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