Personal Essay of Joseph G. Perez, LSAC # (xxxxxxxx)
Few people can honestly credit the path of their entire career to a defective audiocassette player.
Undoubtedly, every high school has its own version of “that kid.” The one who knows how to fix the movie projector, the one who gets called up when a teacher has problems with their computer (computers were still new and scary then), the one who roams the hallways without a pass- a furrowed brow and a look of purpose sufficient for any teacher they might pass by. At
Some years back, a clever administrator at the high school had recognized this fact and decided to fill a niche. Since the school happened to possess a not inconsiderable inventory of publicly owned sound and lighting equipment, it was a natural fit that they become the town’s one-stop-shop when some charity organization or another wanted to stage a public event. The school collected a few dollars of much-needed funding, the customer got a bargain-basement deal. And since I had both the know-how and a car, when someone called up I’d load up my old VW Beetle and head out to the field.
And so it was that one afternoon as I’d nearly finished setting up for a community rally in the parking lot of the town auditorium, I found that the creaky old cassette player I’d been carrying around from one gig to the next had finally played its last. A ticking clock, several hundred people waiting, some broken equipment, and one very nervous 16 year old kid. It was a fortunate coincidence that a van from WKII, the local radio station, happened to be parked across the street apparently doing a live remote broadcast of some kind or another. Recognizing the possibility of salvation, however slim, I decided that I would beg and plead with whoever happened to be there in the hope that they’d brought along a spare cassette machine. In fact, as I ran down the street mentally rehearsing what to say when I got there, I had no idea just how fortunate this coincidence would ultimately prove to be.
Sweaty and nervous, I located the man with the headphones and the radio station jacket, and managed to sputter out a few words that summarized my situation. To this day I have no clear recollection of what exactly I said to him, but it must have been enough to convince this fellow that the complete stranger who stood before him, a kid no less, seemed sufficiently trustworthy to hand a hundred dollars worth of equipment to and then watch as I disappeared back up the road at a trot.
The performance went off without a hitch, and as things were winding down the fellow who had bailed me out came walking back over. He introduced himself as Harold “Hal” Kneller, owner of Kneller Broadcasting, and asked me if I’d like a job.
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And thus was set the mold for my path to date. Here I was, a 16 year old kid, “working in radio,” whatever that meant. I’d soon learn that it meant a lot of fun, but also long hours (often at night) and a fair bit of hard work. Nobody warned me that digging trenches and welding pipes went along with the free cruises and the celebrity mingling. Since this was a small operation, my tasks were simple; running the audio for night-time broadcasts of baseball games and driving the van (the very same one) to remote broadcasts. During those long evening shifts, in-between commercial breaks at the station, I’d bury my head in technical documents. In the transmitter room was a filing cabinet where the manuals for all the equipment in the station were located. I started with the first one in the drawer, and worked my way back. Apparently this was noticed, because before long Hal took me under his wing and started “showing me the ropes” of the engineering world.
What a power-trip that was. During the time that I worked at that station, I got to be “The Voice on the Airwaves” for all to hear, I was trusted to install and maintain equipment that cost more than the house I was living in, and I got to wear the badge at public events that let everyone know “Yeah, I’m with the radio station.” And all this before I was old enough to buy a pack of cigarettes. A person can develop quite an ego that way.
And so has been my course in life for a decade and a half. My undergraduate years at the University of Florida were occupied with part-time work at various radio & television stations in the Gainesville area, and after graduation I settled comfortably into a career as a designer with one of the titans of this small industry: Harris Broadcast, manufacturer of transmitters and audio equipment for the broadcast radio market.
My job is a bit unconventional, actually. For starters, I’m an engineer whose college degree isn’t in engineering. By way of offsetting this seeming contradiction however, my considerable prior experience in the user-end of our industry has made me a unique commodity on the supplier-side of the business. I am very much versed with both sides of our somewhat polarized market; the technological, yes, but also the human element.
It means that I get to spend much of my time interacting with people rather than machines, designing solutions instead of just circuits. I’ve worked with groups and stations spanning the whole gamut of circumstances; from tiny, financially-challenged community and public radio stations in small suburban neighborhoods to the largest corporate powerhouses such as Clear Channel Los Angeles and CBS New York. I’ve mingled with the likes of George Clinton, Rick Dees and Ryan Seacrest, but also with a lot of folks whom you’ve never heard of and probably never will, each of them struggling to get by in a cutthroat world and yet having a grand time doing it.
But while it’s been a highly rewarding experience, both financially and personally, I find myself consistently struggling with the haunting reality that mine may be an industry on the decline.
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The 1990s were in some ways a second golden age of radio. While the headlines were dominated by the rise of the internet and the so-called dot-com explosion, in 1996 a very minor and largely un-noticed change was made to Title 47, Section 73 of the Code of Federal Regulations, abolishing a long-standing limitation on the number of radio stations that could be owned and controlled by a single entity. Quietly, a feeding frenzy ensued as companies that few had ever heard of such as Entercom, Cumulus and Clear Channel began to gorge themselves at the banquet table of media ownership. In doing so, they created an artificial scarcity of supply, and one by one, small independent broadcasters saw their opportunity to cash in their chips by selling out to the highest bidder.
It was a period of great prosperity for those who manufacture and sell the machines of broadcasting as well. As quickly as these radio stations were bought up, they were to a large extent completely refitted as well. Whereas many had languished for years, under-funded and with aging and obsolete equipment, their new benefactors, realizing a great economy in consolidating the operation of many stations into one location, began to invest considerable sums of money into the construction and equipping of large, even palatial new facilities in nearly every new market that they entered.
But in very recent years, a disturbing new trend has emerged. A new generation is entering the ranks of the consumer, and they are one which has never known a world without satellites, cellular telephones, portable videogames, and a thousand songs stored in the palm of their hand. And with this shift, broadcasters have begun find themselves slowly losing their grasp upon the one commodity which for nearly a century has been their exclusive domain as if by birthright: an audience.
I suspect that the radio industry is not doomed to total failure. It has weathered many challenges in years past; mass-market availability of the phonograph, the widespread acceptance of television as a primary entertainment medium in the home, 8-track, cassette and CD players in the automobile, and the rise (and fall) of the Sony Walkman and all its many clones to name but a few. But one thing is certain- with audiences in decline and revenues following in step, the age of unlimited spending and expansion is drawing to a close. And for a person of only 31 years with an eye towards the future, this path that I find myself on no longer seems as rosy.