The Agenda

Your description of how BRU worked before Abrams changed it all comes pretty close to how things worked at my very first station. It was pretty chill, but then a new PD came in and shook things up by tightening up the rotations. It wasn't anything like the choke-hold you describe Abrams putting on BRU, which is to say it wasn't 100%, but there was some tightening that some of us chafed under. I had some heated discussions with the guy, but looking back, I want to say that I genuinely liked him, and still do, and I also learned a lot from him, much of which proved valuable early on.



Anyway, that guy went on to a very successful career, and is still sucking Clear Channel's cock to this day. Well, good for him. I followed a different path, and I wish well for both of us.



Having said all that, I still disagree vehemently with various notions that seem popular in most of radio, such as this notion of consistency in sound. I think that's bullshit. I give listeners much more credit than that. If you want consistency, load up your iTunes and sit back and don't expect to be challenged. Any radio station that makes all their listeners happy all the time just isn't trying hard enough. Radio should educate, inform, and challenge, not just entertain.



I've long described radio as the most squandered medium in history. For all the incredible things it could do, it's staggeringly depressing how little of that it actually does do. I expect that almost any given teenager's iTunes library is better than just about any commercial radio station.