Brian Lambert interviews the newly-named Current PD, Jim McGuinn, over at mspmag.com. He’ll begin overseeing things in January. While commercial music radio goes down the tubes, Jim’s hiring restores my faith in terrestrial radio’s ability to find the path back to BROADcasting; not NARROWcasting.
Some highlights:
“There’s no doubt commercial radio is in trouble,” said McGuinn, who is approximately twenty years younger than I am. “They’re all dealing with the customization of choice everyone is struggling with. ["Customization of choice." I like that.] That struggle is what The Current is built on.”
“The commercial stations I worked at had been hit with cost cutting so many times that really the only thing left on their minds was asking, ‘What’s the least amount of money we can spend on programming and still make it viable enough to sell to advertisers?’”
Touche’, Jim. In the Age of the iPod, it’s insanity for terrestrail radio to continue it’s “niche” approach to programming. Hopefully, the Current can keep the bean-counters at bay with Jim’s appointment.
Latest comment — Fygar: Mornings on the Rev was Steve "tevo" Nelson, the outgoing PD, and Brian Oake. It always seemed to me like they were having actual, genuine fun. ...