Elsewhere on the Web • Federal Communications Commission

It's finally happened. Radio & Records , the prestigious Radio trade newspaper, has hammered the last nail into the on-air employment coffin. Up until recently, R&R featured several different sections listing radio jobs: National, East, South, Midwest, and West. The reason it featured these sections was because there was a time when radio jobs were so plentiful, it was reasonable to divide up the opportunities to make it easier for job seekers.

This week, I went to the employment section of radioEARTH to check the link integrity of the page and oddly, the R&R pages were coming up as errors. They were just gone. I was surprised, to say the least. These links to R&R's job pages had been active and unchanged since I put radioEARTH on the web in 1994.

So, I surfed over to R&R to see what had happened. Was their website down? Was it having server problems? No. On the contrary, the online version was still there as if nothing was wrong. But plenty is wrong. Jobs have vanished so consistently under consolidation that R&R has finally eliminated separate geographical sections for openings. Afterall, what's the point? They're right! Now, all the job openings - and the useage of "all" is generous here - are consolidated themselves on one page. You can easily scroll down the page and quickly view everything that's available. Sure, it still has individual headings on that one page like "East", "West", etc. but, that's for looks. Or maybe it's their effort to try and maintain some sort of self-respect.

Think of it this way: if the backbone of an industry is its workforce, what does it say about an industry whose workforce has been cut by 50%, 60% or more? Maybe the message is that the industry has become less important. I believe Titans of commerce require masses of people to create, distribute and maintain great products. Compelling and entertaining radio is a product whose quality depends directly on the talent who create it - air personalities, music directors, program directors.

If you believe the quality of radio has degenerated since consolidation, then you understand it is directly related to the thinning of good talent in the industry. Radio is no longer a Titan. Rather, it is a hollow remnant of Congressional foolery and a victim of corporate rape.

Radio & Records' move to consolidate their employment listings is symbolic of the state of affairs. To eliminate the headings of "West", "East", etc. would be an admission of the paper's smaller significance in the industry it serves. Yet, they are really no longer needed. They are simply there out of vanity. But, I understand this vanity. All of us who have been in this business the last 10, 15, 20 or more years have observed a painful metamorphosis.

None of us want to let go of the Radio we knew.

All of us know something very imporant has been lost.

- Corey Deitz

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