In the Clouds

You’d think that Aircheck would post more stories about radio. No!

Previous blog entries have had nothing to do with the industry at all. Traditional radio peaked long ago and has begun a terminal decline. That doesn’t really bother me at all because 16 years ago I noticed certain trends that led me into an unrelated field completely; never regretting my decision. I am fickle by nature and have gone through many cycles in a love-hate relationship with broadcasting. Right now, I see myself as a retired deejay and programmer who started as an adolescent with an aptitude for electronics, particularly audiophile grade gear. I figured an entry into the whacky world of radio was a necessary springboard onto a recording engineer career. Not so!

I was shocked to find that nearly every person that I encountered in radio over the years—particularly sales people—were either clueless or had no interest in high fidelity sound at all. To go out on a limb, I’d say no one I ever worked with was an audiophile, chief engineers included. My assumptions at the time were shattered by both the lack of knowledge and the apathy, contempt even, for ultimate audio quality. Initially, I wasn’t in radio to be on the radio (or even make money); rather, I was enamored with its technical magic. Crazy!

In fact, eons ago, while in my early 20’s, my capricious interests veered to the radio engineering field. I was easily thwarted by our chief engineer’s impatience with my constant questioning about emerging developments in audio that I had read about only in magazines. He was visibly peeved by my passion for all things audio and was quite dismissive, “Where did you hear about that?” He’d say. To him I was just a snot-nosed kid who shouldn’t be asking for his pearls of wisdom. (In truth, he was embarrassed by a kid who seemed to upstage him.) Lesson learned. Often my audio hobby clashed with the middle-aged sensibilities of my much older associates. Granted, my head was often in the clouds. If I had spent more time on the practical side of the business maybe, just maybe, I’d still be involved. Nah!

That’s a discussion for another day.

Stay tuned.