Talk Radio As A Craft – Why Andrew Wilkow And Mike Church Are Endangered Species

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “If you work in a field like radio, you come to love it.  Ask Andrew Wilkow why he keeps doing what he’s doing.  He’ll tell you, number one, he’s got a family to feed, but, number two, he loves it.  He loves sitting down in that chair every day in front of that microphone.  I love it, too.  I have a great affinity for it.  It’s just tragic that in the very near future, very few people will be accorded the opportunity to work at this craft.  This craft is not alone.  This is what this consolidation – it’s not just in radio.  This is just one example.  This is what it has done.  See our conversation yesterday about Common Core and about herding and farming everyone into these menial tasks that don’t require any talent, creativity.  The only discipline it requires is you have to get up at the same time every morning and you have to show up on time”  Check out today’s transcript AND Clip of The Day for the rest….

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Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I was talking to my old radio mentor last eve.  I won’t divulge his name.  We’ll just call him Bill D. for argument’s sake.  Bill used to own a chain of radio stations back in the day.  I worked for Bill.  Bill was very good to me and we’ve remained friends for a long, long time.  He’s one of the wisest radio guys that you’ll ever meet.  We talked a little bit about radio last night.  We had a phone conversation.  I said: Bill, what have they done to our beloved industry.  I caught myself and I said: No, Bill, scratch that.  Bill, what have they done to our beloved craft?  That’s what broadcasting radio is; it’s a[private |FP-Monthly|FP-Yearly|FP-Yearly-WLK|FP-Yearly-So76|Founding Brother|Founding Father|FP-Lifetime] craft.  This is not to say that what you’re doing right now is not also a craft.  When I say craft, I mean it’s partially a work of love.  It is principally a work of devotion and discipline.  What has happened to it?

If you try to listen to local radio – and this is not a knock on local radio or local radio guys.  I love radio.  I love local radio.  I’d love to work in it again someday.  I’m not going to get the chance to because it’s probably not going to be around.  That’s what we were talking about.  How was that brought about?  Was that brought about generically and organically, that people just got tired of listening to radio stations and morning shows like Eddie and the Breakfast Flakes and what have you?  Or was it brought about by some other exterior force?  I can answer the question.  It was brought about by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that Republicans in Congress pushed through, got the FCC to sign off on it, and then Clinton to sign off on it.  Consolidation is what they called it back in the day.  It has destroyed local radio.

Look, I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know.  What has survived, in the rare instances where radio has survived, it’s survived mainly because of sports.  If you live in an NFL or MLB or NBA or NHL city, you still have local radio because that’s how people get games when they’re in their cars or not in front of a television or computer.  Of course, radio even in that manner has to compete with the internet today and with broadband broadcasting.

So it was the Congress that intervened, passed the act, and basically ended the craft of radio.  Obama came along and, in the first year of his presidency, via executive order with the help of Nancy Pelosi and company, basically outlawed the practice of interning.  This is how young people would get into practicing.  You’d sign up to be an intern for a show like this.  I wouldn’t pay you or just a stipend and that was all, or Sirius XM would pay you a stipend.  You’d get to watch how it’s done.  You’d get to learn.  If you still liked it, then you’d get to practice it.  You might start working on weekends or overnight or something like that.  You guys that work in trades with your hands, you call that apprenticeship.  We’ve basically done away with the concept of apprenticing, too.  We’re just eliminating crafts.  Radio is just one.  This so that we can all do what?  Sit in front of computer screens, which is where the elites want us, and do what the paradigm says we ought to do.

In a few rare instances where crafts are practiced, and there are some rare instances, they’re practiced by people that aren’t sitting in front of computer screens all day long doing what the paradigm says.  How fitting is that?  There aren’t very many – I’m trying to think of a craft you could work at while sitting in front of a computer screen.  You could write literary novels, history, I guess.  You could record audio.  That’s craft.  You could record video.  That’s a craft.  What else is it limited to?  Some might say that computer programming is a craft.  I think that’s more of a science than it is a craft.  I think craft there’s an awful lot of adlib in there.  There’s a lot of creativity.

In any event, Bill D. and I were both of the same opinion that when the current generation of men and women that are on radio, or talk radio as we call it today, when we expire, there’s no one to replace us, or there are few to replace us because there’s no farm league.  There’s nowhere for anywhere to go and get talent or to go and practice and be trained.  This is why there’s a lot of noise.  That’s not a knock on those of you that are doing this.  Doing something like radio or television or working in front of a wood lathe, making cabinets, making furniture, requires discipline, rules.  You need rules.  Rules are good.  Rules give you frameworks within which to work.  That’s how you practice a craft.  It used to be called a discipline.  You’d work inside the rules of the discipline.  Yes, there is lots of room for being creative and for being artistic, if you will, but you do that inside the rules.  All these guys and gals out there doing these podcasts and all these internet forums, if there are any rules, I don’t know about them.  There’s no one around to manage anyone.  There’s no program directors, no one around going: Hey, some formatical things that maybe you ought to think about and practice.  It’s just tragic.

If you work in a field like radio, you come to love it.  Ask Andrew Wilkow why he keeps doing what he’s doing.  He’ll tell you, number one, he’s got a family to feed, but, number two, he loves it.  He loves sitting down in that chair every day in front of that microphone.  I love it, too.  I have a great affinity for it.  It’s just tragic that in the very near future, very few people will be accorded the opportunity to work at this craft.  This craft is not alone.  This is what this consolidation – it’s not just in radio.  This is just one example.  This is what it has done. [/private]

See our conversation yesterday about Common Core and about herding and farming everyone into these menial tasks that don’t require any talent, creativity.  The only discipline it requires is you have to get up at the same time every morning and you have to show up on time.  Is that really a discipline?  It’s sad, folks, it really is.

I was always told don’t talk inside baseball radio on air because you’ll bore people to tears, and they don’t need to know it anyways, and it does this and that to our business.  I think from time to time that’s one of the things that are missing.  I’ll put it another way.  Why are there special features on DVD discs now, for what reason?  Because some people may be interested in how the artists or artisans that make motion pictures, how they made them.  How did they do that?  You may be interested in the process, in the discipline, if there is any discipline left in that industry today or in that craft.  I like the word craft.

End Mike Church Show Transcript