Mars Needs Women, And Radio Needs Geeks!

As much as I love the movie "Sixteen Candles," I resent it for subverting the term "geek." A geek came to be known as a loner, a loser, an outcast. In reality, "geek" was a circus sideshow term for a (mentally impaired is assumed) performer who would live in a pit and do things like bite the head off live chickens. Ozzy Osbourne was perhaps the best-known geek of the modern era. In high school, pre-Sixteen Candles, I used to call my friend Chris "geek." Not because he was a loner, loser, or outcast, but because I envisioned him someday working in a pit biting the heads off poultry while drunken town folk egged him on and threw coins in the dirt.

Of course, there are other meanings for geek that go back generations. In radio, where most of us were loners, losers and outcasts to begin with, "geek" referred to someone who was a radio junkie. A lifer. A person who, from day one, had a burning desire, an unquenchable need, to be in this industry.

One of my favorite PDs is Mark Jackson. He started his own radio station broadcasting to his neighborhood in his basement when he was 15. (Geek!) Jodi Wilber, who is now with Universal and was the morning person at Kiss 102 in Charlotte, was DJing at a little station in New Hampshire when she was 14. (Geekette!) The midday guy at the old WLOL in Minneapolis and now a voice guy to about 100,000 clients, Jon Drew, started on the air in North Dakota when he was 16. (Geek!) (Hick!)

At any given time there are a handful of pundits on forums like this chiming in on what this industry needs. More funding. Better corporate leadership. New technologies to keep us competitive against the ever-evolving music delivery systems in the marketplace. Me? I think we need more geeks.

Radio geeks had passion. And it's pretty hard to beat a business or industry with an infrastructure that is passionate about it. Lives it and breathes it. Hank Hill is a Propane Geek.

About 10 years ago I started to hear a disturbing trend from the stations I consult through Clifton: The intern pool was drying up. Instead of just sitting back and waiting for the applications to flow in, they were having to go out and flier college communication departments. This was the end of the era of having so many people dying to be a part of a station that we literally had to beat them off. (Wow. Sounded WAY better in my head.)

Radio has stopped being a lifestyle to aspire to. It's just a job. One of my favorite promo people, Gretchen Rosenberger from Clear Channel in Portland, just went to the Cancer Society. Kristen Ghere is leaving Channel 96.3 in Wichita to work for a charity event. Chet Whitmore bailed out of Saga in Norfolk and is working at a suburban Marriott in the Twin Cities. These are not isolated incidents. These, put together, are evidence of a condition. Like melting glaciers, confused seabirds and rising ocean levels are evidence of a climate change. There's an industry change. People leaving for other jobs, no matter if they're better paying, was almost unheard of 15 or 20 years ago. It happened, but once that person left, we usually referred to them in a deriding manner: They weren't one of "us."

How can we tell that there is a drought o' geeks? Following Virginia Tech, I'm pretty proud that the stations I consult did some very cool and compelling stuff with the tragedy. Of course, there was the guy who said, and I quote, "We're in ratings, and I don't want to interrupt the music flow." Would a Geek say that? Hell no. They understand the power of the medium. I shot an e-mail to a night guy at a CHR and asked how dialed in he was on grad parties. His response, and I quote, "That's too narrowly focused, plus I have club gigs." Would a Geek say that? God no.

The geeks are dwindling and are now about as easy to find as a good Mariah Carey flick. Why?

• Please refer to my previous "Tips" piece titled "When We Was Fab."

• Most geeks I know had someone they aspired to be. How many people have gotten into radio because they lied awake at night listening to some jock spin magical tails and create art over the airwaves. Jo Jo Wright? There are kids from the early '90s from Charlotte and San Francisco working their way up the industry ladder because they were transfixed by this guy. I know half a dozen young jocks who got into radio because of Tone E Fly. Listening to him at night on KDWB in Minneapolis, they HAD to be a part of this experience. There's not a lot of these great night jocks who inspire dreams and passion left. Lots of "Dylans" and "Tylers" who pretty much could be on any station, anywhere. No kid is lying awake, listening to them, his eyes the size of saucers, thinking, "I need to do that."

• Geeks breed geeks. (Learned that in Ms. Erck's 8th grade health class.) Fewer geeks to mentor the burgeoning geeks leads to fewer geeks in 10 years.

One of my yearly tasks is something I call "Street School." I go around and do one-day sessions with the summer interns and promo kids at the Clifton Radio and CPR stations. Just basic customer-service training before we put them on the streets. I teach them how to banner. How to set up an event. How to answer listeners questions. How to deal with clients. How to trade a T-shirt for sexual favors. The basics.

This year, I'm working "passion" into the curriculum. Because these kids, sitting in a park or pizza restaurant or wherever we find to do school, are our future. And if they come to the table energized and passionate and filled with their inner Geek, we might have a chance. Most of these kids don't remember radio back when it was good and listenable and full of vibe. (Vibe: the by-product that is left over from the fusion of Energy and Attitude.) So, at the risk of sounding like some old "back when I was a kid" story-telling dude, I'm going to, through example, remind these young people that radio can be more then a tight music list and The Incredible Free Money Birthday Game. If I can "reach" even a few kids and they have an epiphany of-sorts about this medium, then, it's a start.

And you should be looking for the next geeks. And nurturing them. Because into their hands we will bestow the future of the industry. And I'd rather have some passionate, energetic, rule-breaking, we-can-do-anything, anything-is-possible thinking geeks in charge of our legacy as opposed to the automatons who seem to be running shit right now.

Which leads to the inevitable question: Was I a geek? Not to start out with. I was a born-again geek. Like many of you I was exposed to radio through the art that was "WKRP In Cincinnati." And when I went to college in California and they didn't have a hockey team (being from Minnesota, I just assumed all schools had teams) I wandered into the campus radio station one day. The girl who greeted me had this whole Jan Smithers thing happening, and I was instantaneously hooked.

Many of you used to be geeks. Pull out that old box of pictures and cassette airchecks. The satin jacket that was SO cool in 1981 and now is a thing you only take out to torture your teenage children when they have friends over. Immerse yourself in your Geek past, and maybe you too can return to the altar of Radio Geekdom.

There's always hope.