Volume 10, Number 1, 2001


From the microphone to the editor's chair

I remember the first time I walked into a radio station. It was WXDR-FM, then a 100-watt station with studios on the third floor at the University of Delaware Perkins Student Center. It was the fall or early winter of 1979. I was a sophomore, a kid who had arrived at UD the year before with the idea of studying engineering....

I had found that my abilities were in words rather than hard-core numbers, so I switched to a communication course of study. But, I hadn't quite figured out what kind of communicating I wanted to do. So, that day in 1979, as I reached the top of the stairs and came into the hallway, I could hear music drifting from the open station door in front of me. Inside the little office, I could see posters and papers stuck on the walls, everywhere. Rows of LPs peeked out, beckoning, friendly. Through a double-paned window on my right, a DJ was spinning alternative music and working the knobs on his mixer. (It was a Collins board with rotary pots, but I sure as heck didn't know that at the time.)

I took a deep breath, crossed the threshold and asked the first person I saw if the station could use a volunteer. They could, and before long, I was doing weekly early-morning newscasts, learning that a career in radio often means a career of getting up before the sun.

Then, I was running the newsroom, covering Blue Hen baseball and women's basketball games, serving on the station's student board. I was the one who opened the envelope with the notice from the FCC that our power increase had been approved....

WXDR taught me to appreciate wide forms of music and musical tastes, to work with student volunteers as well as with long-time townie jocks whose shows had been on the station for years.

 This reminiscence is excerpted from a column, "What Is It About a Radio Station?" by Paul McLane, AS '82, of Alexandria, Va., who serves as editor of the national trade publication Radio World, published 26 times a year.

"Radio World is the most widely read newspaper in the radio industry," he says, "containing news analysis, commentary, feature stories, profiles of influential people, technical reviews, product announcements and other information of interest to people who run radio stations."

Part of the magazine's responsibility is to address issues that will affect stations and their listeners, including digital radio, which many believe is the next generation of home and automobile entertainment.

According to McLane, "The year 2001 is going to be a big year for digital radio. Americans soon will be able to buy satellite radio service for their cars that offers 100 channels of entertainment at a subscription cost of about $10 a month. These services hope to do for radio what satellite TV did for television. Companies have built massive studio facilities in New York and Washington, and they have a lot of investor money riding on their plans.

"Meanwhile, existing 'terrestrial' broadcasters--the AM and FM stations we are all familiar with--are also pondering digital technology that might let them transmit better audio, plus new data services, to our car radios on their existing channels," he says.

While his own college radio experience was memorable, McLane advises students interested in careers in broadcasting that the industry's ever-growing range of opportunities has expanded well beyond that of a disc jockey sitting behind a microphone.

"Students entering the workplace should know the variables," McLane says. "Consolidation of radio ownership skyrocketed after the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That's the most important recent event of all in our industry, and it has produced 'supergroups' like Clear Channel and Infinity that own hundreds, or even more than a thousand, radio stations across the country. Gone are the days when one company was limited to owning seven AM, seven FM and seven TV stations.

"Many of these new groups are multimedia entities; radio is but one of many channels they use to conduct commerce. Many of them also use computer automation and wide-area networks to share workloads and staff resources. That's good for business, but it can be bad for job opportunities in traditional areas," he explains.

"The best job openings in radio in coming years will be in sales, computer network technology and Internet-related skills. The radio industry also is hungry for good engineering and technical talent," McLane predicts.

American consumers, he says, now have far more options for their time, putting radio into competition with a wide range of recreational activities and media diversions.

"Until now," McLane says, "radio has pretty much had the lock on us listeners in two places--the car and the office. Now, that's changing too, with Internet streaming audio and video to our desktop, and satellite companies coming into the car, and eventually broadband wireless."

Despite changes, the ability of radio to have a real impact persists, and that, McLane says, is the greatest satisfaction that he has as editor of Radio World.

"I'm happy about our paper's willingness to disagree with strongly held opinions among our advertisers and readers if we see things differently on controversial issues. And most of all, I'm really very proud that I've helped to create an open forum where lots of viewpoints can be discussed."

Although McLane no longer works on the air, he still has the performing bug. He made his professional acting debut last summer and has been cast in three recent productions in the Washington, D.C., area.

--Ed Okonowicz AS '69, '84M