People

Just sayin’.

by

We’re drowning in a river of words: blogs, emails, text messages, tweets, comments, speeches, oratory, rhetoric, verbal engineering, commentary, and spin, spin, spin.  Sure, we contribute our fair share right here on Scanning the Dial, but our contribution to the torrent hopefully sets just the right tone, is just clever enough and feels just right. *wink*

There are good words, hate words, and comic words. When you think of good communicators, who comes to mind? President Obama? Jesse Jackson? Jon Stewart? What kind of words tend to capture your imagination? Depends on our mood and needs, doesn’t it.

Continue Reading

WUOL in Louisville, For Example

by

Those of us in the biz have studied at length how classical radio can survive, or even thrive, when its main proponents are in serious decline.  Alex Ross posts a scary graph in his Feb. 3rd article in the New Yorker. 

Every classical organization in America should print out this graph, pin it on the bulletin board, and ponder what is to be done. If the light-gray line doesn’t reverse direction in the next ten years, those organizations may begin to fold.

Continue Reading

Kicking the tires of philanthropy.

by

To give or not to give, that is the question.

Not-for-profit radio stations around the country are entering into the spring fund-raising season, facing the same challenges as last year and the year before that, and the year before that. The perennial challenge is engaging the listener in a conversation about the relevance of the station in peoples’ lives and the need for voluntary contributions to cover the station’s expenses. There’s a cause and effect dynamic at work. Programming causes listening, good programming causes loyalty, loyalty causes giving. In theory. Is that all there is to it, do the best we can with creating content and then ask for money – and we shall automatically receive?

Continue Reading