{"id":159,"date":"2005-09-28T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-28T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=159"},"modified":"2005-09-28T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2005-09-28T08:05:00","slug":"broadcast_gypsies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2005\/09\/broadcast_gypsies\/","title":{"rendered":"Broadcast Gypsies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ted O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Reilly, the Toronto broadcaster, answered my flippant question in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/archives\/2005\/09\/freds_still_ahe_2.html\">yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s posting<\/a>: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t these broadcast people stay put?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Station owners\u00e2\u20ac\u201dall have risen from the sales department, or got their money the old-fashioned way, inheritance\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwon&#8217;t let them.  An ever-deepening lowest common denominator, combined with a desire for an ever-raising bottom line drives owners to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153greater efficiency\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, meaning \u00e2\u20ac\u0153put in computers serviced by pre-digested content providers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<blockquote><p>Greater Efficiency has never benefited consumers (and certainly not employees), only shareholders.<br \/>\nIndividual voices are driven out of the market, more and more to fringes.  That may mean a larger city, and certainly a marginal-niche station.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I was attempting to be sardonic. I know the life. In twenty-four years in radio and television news, I changed cities eight times,  jobs nine times.  Luckily, each move save one was to a greener pasture. Ultimately, that one turned out well, too. But that was before the corporate MBA mentality governed by quarterly earnings reports to shareholders gripped the broadcasting business in a stranglehold that has resulted in increasingly deeper cuts, greater homogenization, devaluation of experience, lower quality, and confusion about the difference between news and entertainment. Otherwise, everything is perfect.<br \/>\nDo I miss it? Oddly, yes, sometimes. When we have major events like Katrina and Rita or a significant betrayal of the public trust by the highly placed, the fire-horse reflexes kick in. Generally, I come back to my senses after a day or two.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ted O\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Reilly, the Toronto broadcaster, answered my flippant question in yesterday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s posting: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t these broadcast people stay put?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Station owners\u00e2\u20ac\u201dall have risen from the sales department, or got their money the old-fashioned way, inheritance\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwon&#8217;t let them. An ever-deepening lowest common denominator, combined with a desire for an ever-raising bottom line drives owners to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153greater [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}