With ers Without You

Something no-one really tells you about adulthood is that it’s mostly just waiting.

Ten years ago tonight, September 2nd 2010, the 90.9 Sea FM Gold Coast studios created a local afternoon and evening show for the last time.

This story means little to most Australian radio listeners, but there used to be so many more people employed in the creation of radio. In 2010/2011 that number dropped significantly as radio networks merged, like Macquarie Regional Radio with Austereo did and RG Capital with DMG Radio before it. In the last decade the number of people engaged in the creation of local radio would have reduced to be a fraction of what it was in 2003 when I started in the industry.

I feel like columns like this generally provide a slanted view of it being good or bad, but I truly don’t know. It isn’t like The Benchwarmers were creating radio that mattered, or that the Big Kahuna was making radio that changed people. We were just a bunch of humans being paid to have fun for your enjoyment. We loved it, you loved it, advertisers loved it, we got paid.

Through Covid people who “have fun for your enjoyment” have suffered through the absence of live shows and events, and I wonder if we will ever know the true loss we’d be left with if we keep on minimising the number of people who have fun for our enjoyment.

I hope we can always find a business model for fun. Traditionally fun was paid for by advertisers, but in 2021 we as a society feel less comfortable with that business model, but the only other one is one where we the consumer pay up.

Photo of me in a radio studio over a decade ago having fun.

“When you’re young, you look at television and think - There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realise that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought.” - Steve Jobs

x% of all sales go to a good cause. The remainder goes to me, a not-good cause.

Channel 4’s tribute and favourite moments YouTube clips in remembrance of Sean Lock are solid gold.

Choices

Kesha, the artist, is a prophet: Her ’09 debut single Tik Tok turns out to be quite the business plan for the 2016 social network bearing the same name. 2010’s Blah Blah Blah describes, well, it describes everything. 2017’s collab with Macklemore, Good Old Days? Enough said.

On in-person education:

“The Nobel laureate economist Friedrich Hayek had a phrase for the kind of awareness it’s hard to capture in metrics and maps: the ‘knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place’.”

from “How to Make the World Add Up” by Tim Harford

The wedding industry is weird, it’s one of the few workplaces where you’re encouraged to make your clients cry,