Career Building

Why It's Necessary In A Restructuring Environment

In response to many of you who have e-mailed me recently, we are going to take a look at career building. In an age of social media and the proliferation of blogging, cutbacks and news aggregators, programmers once considered indispensable and brilliant have joined old friends who have been forced to retire, been laid off or otherwise put to pasture. As the economy tanks, sales drop and staffs are cut to the bone, others crank up the salesmanship and hope for the best. National agencies, as well as local retailers, are scaling back their advertising and looking for less expensive promotional opportunities.

How broken is the Urban radio business? The good news is that when the dust clears from the recession, analysts expect that most stations will be poised for a recovery. The bad: It's largely because they've fired at least a quarter of their staffs and the business model is still badly broken. Recently, there have been fundamental restructurings in certain types of businesses. The growth of Wal-Mart has driven hundreds of thousands of local businesses out of the retail business. Wal-Mart does very little advertising on Urban radio.

These declines are the result of a mixed bag of economic forces. A sluggish economy, increased Internet competition and a diversified array of other forces have caused many to re-think radio as a career choice. You may be one of them.

Despite the fact that the radio and music industries, as well as our overall economy, have seen years of decline, they have somehow managed to hold on. For example, when we look at today's radio industry, we find a different, constantly changing picture. The change began with deregulation and continued with consolidation. Today the industry currently faces economic challenges no one could have forecast.

And it's not just radio. A quick look into the busy labyrinth of roads that crisscross America's new media landscape reveals some scary things. Hundreds of jobs and many artists and support people at labels suddenly found themselves on the outside, some for the first time -- not only without a career, but also without hope.

The New Entitlement Generation

There are some who are fortunate enough to still have employment, yet seem to have an unusually inflated sense of entitlement. This group is part of what I like to call "the new entitlement generation." They believe they are entitled to have good jobs, decent salaries, perks and benefits -- and seemingly have forgotten that the journey to the top is a long one. Most aren't prepared for the reality that, even though they may be well prepared and ambitious, they're lucky to still be employed. Hopefully, they will have many years of hard work ahead of them. We say hard work because those left standing are often overseeing and responsible for two or three stations.

That pattern is likely to continue even after the recession is over. Something else that is not going to change is the voicetracking, syndication and shift stretching that this economy has fostered. This is something that the entitlement generation will have no control over.

The entitlement generation believes that maybe it's time for the "old heads" to retire or move over and let them have their shot. While a young employee's promotion can be great for a company, it can often lead to alienation among older workers who believe they have put in their time and paid their dues. They, too, want their entitlements.

Some smart organizations are tackling the entitlement problem by identifying high-potential workers. These firms will frequently have a multi-pronged approach toward leadership development so that there's a program geared to young, promising talent ... and there are programs that are generic for high potential or that address separate subsets. Employees -- regardless of age or how many years of experience they have under their belts -- are simply judged on performance.

Most companies today are always interested in promoting internal people who are carriers of the company's culture. Younger people often bring energy and creativity, and in the age of the Internet and tremendous globalization you need people at the top who are comfortable operating with blurred barriers when it comes to race, gender, age or tenure.

Now, let's examine today's Urban radio world. Formats have fragmented and Urban radio is being squeezed, not just by the music, mergers and control freaks, but also by a system that demands playlist additions dictated by callout research (when it's available), non-traditional revenue, and rules and regulations that have nothing to do with audience tastes. To make data simpler to process and easier to control, radio has been reduced to the lowest common denominator.

Innovation, imagination, creativity and style -- once characteristics most sought after in our business -- have been stifled because of costs. No longer are overnight or even weekend shifts given to talent with potential.

What's Really Important

Building your career and reaching for higher ground today requires a keener understanding of just what's really important. The future of the format lies in programmers, music directors and consultants making playlist decisions based on what's right for their audience. Sales executives have to be retrained to find innovative ways to sell younger demos. They have to quit apologizing for representing stations they don't listen to, audiences they can't relate to and formats they don't understand.

What we all need to understand is that in today's advertising world, where youth and sex are used to push almost every product and service, Urban radio, which often epitomizes these traits, consistently abandons its strengths in a vain attempt to be older and more mature. There are Urban Adult stations that have forgotten their younger demographics. Their listeners still want a radio station that is fun to listen to. And then there are straight-ahead Hip-Hop stations that still simply play to the "shout-outers." They think they are "keeping it real," seemingly oblivious to the fact that there is people over 19 who are listening, who want to be recognized and have their listening needs met.

While we're in career building mode, it's important to recognize that the climate is ripe for change. It is time to find innovative and improved ways of accomplishing our goals. With this mandate for change comes responsibility. We can no longer sit and complain about the way the game is being played. If we're going to be "true players," it's up to us to really study the game and its changes, so that when it's our turn, we're ready. Certain things may seem to be progressing at the pace of a tranquilized turtle, but slowness is not the same as stasis.

Word.