When Dinosaurs Roamed The Earth

When not a broadcaster I am a teacher ... for over 20 years at Belmont University. The college students today were born in the '90s. I still have Winter coats from the '90s! When you show these future music industry leaders some things, they look at you like you just dropped in with a Transformer.

My theory ... learned from someone along the way: There are very few truly original ideas. Star Wars was a space Western if you use your imagination. Early music on television seems so primitive toda,y but it was so powerful. Society-shaking in fact. To somehow harness that energy today would be so exciting.

I showed my students some Dick Clark, Ted Mack, Ed Sullivan and Lawrence Welk this week. These four men were as pivotal to the music world as Bill Gates was to computers. They moved society's musical tastes, opened eyes to issues of race, changed fashion, changed culture.

Showing Lawrence Welk might have been the most shocking to the students. He is hard to explain but what a music businessman! Ted Mack's simplicity made way for America's Got Talent and all the rest. Dick Clark was the Noah of Rock n Roll. He brought all the animals together in one place. Ed Sullivan was PT Barnum. The kids saw and hard to say what they thought when they saw the raw talent of a fresh-from-Memphis Elvis Presley or the fantastic four from Liverpool.

It would do you all good to take a trip down memory lane soon for a refresher course or even a reboot. Right now seems to be such a lost time for radio, TV and even the movies. The ideas seem poor retreads of past greatness.

Go back and listen to some of the airchecks for the Imus/Stern days at 66 WNBC or Robert W Morgan/Real Don Steele at 93 KHJ. The energy jumps out of the radio. Compare, contrast but nothing around today communicates they way they did. It was exciting. You had to take it with you or you would be missing something too critical to live without. Or so it seemed.

It relates to the music business and all of media today. Is there really a sense of urgency anywhere but Twitter and Facebook? Radio stations as a whole seem so canned, like a computer-driven jukebox. Like a Pandora stream. Is that really the secret of success? Has the whole been neutered to the point where energy and urgency has been replaced in some reefer laid-back fog?

Social media is the wild west of today. Even the terrorists get it. Some real smart people need to study social media and transfer that knowledge to broadcast and the music business -- and hurry before we all go to sleep.

Jason Aldean and Tyler Hubbard of Florida Georgia Line got the tongues wagging this week with the new brides-to-be. Romance as a topic is hard to beat. The secrets of what makes us all tick is very basic. Like James Carville said, "It's the economy, stupid." Money and sex ... put them together and you get attention. Music, at its best, has them both. Love or the hope of love it is third ingredient. Look at the big success stories and the sex drives the money and the eyeballs are transfixed.

People used to watch people dance. People love animals. They love the innocence of children. A Bill Drake or someone ought to be able to create a today's format. The immediacy of social media with the excitement of musicians. I will not accept that the audiences of today want a faceless, emotionless hard drive and chip creating their memories. We need some stay-up-all-night kind of folks who thrill and make the days better with their presence.

In a word ... the business badly needs a Chuck Barris, Quinn Martin, Quincy Jones, George Lucas ... yes, Dick Clark and Sylvester "Pat" Weaver.

Creators who were not afraid to try something new.

To discovery the future you sometimes have to study the past. Look at the top nonfiction books on the NYT chart. Look at the top album this week ... BS ... Take a break ... study the past and come back and see me.