It's hard to hear people tell you all is well when you know all isn't exactly well. It's harder when you know things can be different.

This year's Conclave Learning Conference was a fine event with great people, and it's always worth spending a couple of days on the fringes of Minneapolis to experience. The mission of the conference is to help aspiring radio professionals achieve their career goals, and we need more of that. Yet, we also need more candor, and that's why I felt compelled to stand up and shoot my mouth off as I occasionally do at these things. This time, it was a panel of very smart radio people who I know would be receptive to discussing a question I have asked before; unfortunately, we ran out of time and they didn't get to respond in detail, but I'll ask the same question here:

The radio industry has always reacted to competition with a combination of defiance and fear. There's nothing wrong with what WE do, the industry seems to be collectively saying. The other guys -- they're deficient, not what people want, cheating, evil. All we need to do ...

The problem isn't that people don't want radio content, or podcasting content, or audio content, national or local, good or bad. It's not that there isn't a hunger for the shows and features and music you create. In fact, for creative people, this is the Golden Age, the ...

As I'm writing this, it's the last day for the secular format at WPLJ in New York (and Mix 107.3 in D.C., and whatever they were calling 106.7 in Atlanta by the end, and three other stations) before EMF takes over, and I'm not going to use it as an example of, well, ...

Maybe the way to go is nonprofit. Hear me out. I'm not talking converting talk radio into public radio. Public radio does just fine as it is. I'm talking philanthropy. Community service. Preserving, or rebuilding, a source of news and opinion for the public interest. ...

In retrospect, we could have seen it coming decades ago. You radio geeks will remember. It was when FM finally took hold and we got the kind of format separation that is now industry-standard. No longer did listeners have to put up with Top 40 stations that played ...

It's closer. I suppose I should define what "it" is. It's the day when radio loses its strategic advantages of ease of use, ubiquity, simplicity. The playing field's getting a tiny bit more level. You knew it was coming, and it's not quite here yet, but it's one step ...

Why do people use your product? That's a simple question that anyone in business needs to ask of themselves. For the radio industry, there's plenty of research to indicate the answers -- it's always part of Jacobs Media's Techsurvey, for one example -- but it came to ...

Things change. You know that. Radio hasn't changed. You know that, too. That's, um, not a good combination. You know that. One of the things that kept coming up at the recent NAB show is the industry taking another crack at redefining the competitive market for ...

While I was watching the Sixers beat up on the Nets Thursday night, something strange started happening. Right in the middle of plays, the cable system to which I subscribe would abruptly go into a local commercial break, playing promos for the system and cheesy local ...