Public Radio Dreams

Unsettling Dreams

I've had a series of unsettling and recurring dreams about my radio experience. 

The first one was based on true events. They were in commercial radio. The dream would revolve around not being prepared for the next event. In most cases the first stop set and beyond. What would happen in my dream was at the end of a music set or news segment. Nothing was prepared to go beyond that point. No music was pulled. No stories were set up to run. None of the spots for the stop set were pulled. This actually happened at two of the stations I work for. On my first shift, I was shown the board, the log and left to my own devices. The first break was a nightmare. The result was a really unsettled air shift for at least the first hour as I struggled to get ahead of the breaks.

The solution, I learned, was having the previous shift pull at least an hour's worth of material for the next shift. In some cases more than that. A great idea! I implemented the policy as soon as I moved up the management ladder.  I also required talent to show up an hour before their shift. That policy generated a lot of resistance. There are many who don't want to put in the effort. I still dream about getting in front of the control board and nothing is ready to go.

Nobody's Calling

Dream number two deals with on-air fundraising. In that dream I've spent weeks preparing for the fundraiser, setting strategy, tactics, goals, produced content (on-air and off-air) and lined up talent. The drive begins and nobody calls. Again, the dream is based on experience. In those early days of fundraising the audience was fractured and disloyal. Because of that, there weren't many listeners who qualified as core listeners. as a result, the on-air requests for funding would become more desperate as it became clear the goals were not going to be met. Reasoning and rationality outside the dream state revealed two problems. The programming created barriers to listening and so did the fundraising. I knew this, but that didn't stop the dream from recurring. I stopped dreaming about this after I stopped participating in pledge drives.

It's Baaaack?  

Recently I've had this dream where audiences are falling away. Public radio is losing its audience. Stations are going dark. Millennials and Boomers are listening less and as a result are less willing to support the programming. The core is getting their information fix from other sources, and they expect it to be free. Social Media is fracturing the audience. Creative people become discouraged and move on. The content, for the most part, is still great, but nobody is listening. 

Good thing this is only a dream. Like in the first two dreams, this is still a fixable situation. Like before, collaborations, partnerships, and creative solutions will allow public radio and media to continue to serve its audience and the community.