It’s a shame what’s happened to radio

广播业的现状令人惋惜

I signed off the air for the last time in 1994, capping a nine-year side career on the radio. People still sometimes ask me if I miss being a disk jockey, and for a long time I always wistfully answered yes. But not anymore. It’s not that I would be rusty as heck after all these years – and boy, would I. It’s that radio has changed drastically, and it just wouldn’t be any fun for me today.

1994年，我最后一次在电台结束了播音，为我九年的兼职广播生涯画上了句号。人们有时还会问我是否怀念当电台DJ的日子，很长一段时间里，我总是带着怀旧的心情回答“是的”。但现在不再这样了。并不是因为多年不碰这行会变得生疏——天哪，我确实会生疏——而是因为广播业已经发生了翻天覆地的变化，如今这份工作对我来说已经毫无乐趣可言。

I listened to a lot of radio when I was a teen. It was a companion when I was by myself doing homework or whatever. I called in requests and tried to win contests (but never did). I had a few favorite DJs, the ones who kept you listening because you wanted to know what they’d say next. The fun they were having made whatever I was doing more fun.

青少年时期，我听过很多广播。当我独自做作业或做其他事情时，它就是我的伙伴。我曾打电话点歌，也尝试过参加竞赛（虽然从未赢过）。我有几位最喜欢的DJ，他们总能让你听下去，因为你很想知道他们接下来会说什么。他们展现出的快乐，让我在做任何事时都感到更有趣。

So when I got to college and found out about the campus radio station, WMHD, I had visions of being the kind of entertaining on-air companion I had enjoyed. I asked for and was given a weekly two-hour shift, just like every other disk jockey at the station. We could play whatever music we wanted, but my musical tastes were pretty narrow and I had trouble filling my time without always playing the same handful of artists. And I found out that wit failed me when the mic was open; I was lucky just to announce the next song without tripping over my tongue. My early shows were really pretty bad!

所以，当我上大学并发现了校园广播电台WMHD时，我幻想着能成为像我曾经欣赏的那种风趣的电台伙伴。我申请并获得了一个每周两小时的排班，和其他电台DJ一样。我们可以播放任何想听的音乐，但我的音乐品味相当狭窄，如果不总是播放那几位歌手的歌，我就很难填满时间。而且我发现，当麦克风打开时，我的机智就消失了；能不结巴地报出下一首歌的名字就算走运了。我早期的节目真的很糟糕！

When I got my first part-time professional radio gig at WBOW, I had fun building and honing my on-air skills. There was a lot more to pro radio than what I’d done in college and it took time and practice to be good at it. If you’re old enough, you’ll remember the station in your town that everybody turned to for news, community information, and inoffensive music; in Terre Haute, that was WBOW. I was supposed to provide some “personality” between songs.

当我获得第一份在WBOW的专业兼职广播工作时，我乐于建立和磨练自己的播音技巧。专业广播远比我在大学里做的要复杂得多，需要时间和练习才能做好。如果你年纪够大，你一定记得你所在城市里那个每个人都会收听以获取新闻、社区信息和轻松音乐的电台；在特雷霍特（Terre Haute），那就是WBOW。我当时的任务是在歌曲之间提供一些“个性化”的内容。

When I moved down the hall to the company’s rock station, WZZQ, I had fun connecting with listeners. I loved hearing from them when they called to make requests and play the contests. Over time, a handful of listeners came to know me on the air and called during my shifts to just say hello. I looked forward to their calls and meeting them at station events around town. It was great to know that I was providing the same kind of pleasure for them that radio gave me when I was young.

当我转到公司旗下的摇滚电台WZZQ工作时，我享受与听众建立联系的过程。我喜欢听他们打电话来点歌和参加竞赛。久而久之，一些听众在节目中认识了我，并会在我值班时打电话来打个招呼。我期待着他们的电话，也期待在城里的电台活动中见到他们。知道自己能为他们提供我年轻时从广播中获得的同样的快乐，这种感觉真是太棒了。

In the intervening years, a number of things have changed that have made radio less fun to listen to and, I’m sure, to work in. First, now that I’m in my 50s, advertisers don’t care about me anymore. Radio stations choose their formats to appeal to the groups that advertisers think spend the most money. Advertisers love thirtysomething moms, by the way, which is why there are so many country and adult-contemporary stations playing eleven hits in a row or forty minutes of uninterrupted music. No one radio station really reaches me.

这些年来，许多事情发生了变化，使得广播变得不再那么有趣，我相信，在其中工作也不再那么快乐。首先，现在我已年过五十，广告商不再关心我了。电台选择节目形式是为了吸引广告商认为消费能力最强的群体。顺便说一句，广告商喜欢三十多岁的妈妈们，这就是为什么有那么多乡村音乐和成人当代音乐电台会连续播放十一首热门歌曲，或者四十分钟不间断的音乐。现在已经没有哪个电台能真正触动我了。

Second, thanks to government deregulation radio is now big business. Owners have always been in it to make money, even when ownership was local or regional. But now very large corporations own so many stations and cost management seems to be more important than the quality of the on-air product. Live and local talent is all but gone, replaced by satellite-delivered formats and a form of prerecording called voicetracking. The evening jock on your favorite station probably recorded tonight’s shift this morning in a studio in Tampa or Minneapolis. Try calling the station you listen to in the evening or on the weekend. Nobody will answer, because nobody’s there. It’s cheaper that way.

其次，得益于政府的放松管制，广播现在成了大生意。即使在所有权属于地方或区域时，老板们也是为了赚钱。但现在，大型企业拥有了太多的电台，成本管理似乎比节目质量更重要。现场直播和本土人才几乎消失殆尽，取而代之的是卫星传输的节目格式和一种称为“语音追踪”（voicetracking）的预录形式。你最喜欢的电台里的晚间DJ，很可能是在今天早上于坦帕或明尼阿波利斯的工作室里录制了今晚的节目。试着在晚上或周末给电台打电话吧，没人会接，因为那里根本没人。那样做更省钱。

Third, a change many years ago in the way radio ratings are measured has changed radio programming. As long as there have been ratings, radio stations have formatted themselves to maximize listening among the average, everyday people the ratings companies ask to track the stations they listen to. But the new way of measuring ratings, which uses a listening device called the Portable People Meter, showed a very different picture of actual listening from the older paper-diary method. It pinpointed exactly what caused listeners to change the station. This has led to stations framing programming in much shorter blocks with less human interaction with the audience. It’s why many stations have become anonymous appliances. Why listen to a station that doesn’t relate much with you when you can just listen to Spotify on shuffle instead?

第三，多年前广播收视率测量方式的改变，也改变了广播节目的编排。只要有收视率存在，电台就会调整自身格式，以最大限度地吸引那些被收视率公司追踪收听习惯的普通大众。但新的测量方式——使用一种名为“便携式收视率仪”（Portable People Meter）的设备——揭示了与旧的纸质日记法截然不同的实际收听情况。它精准地定位了导致听众换台的原因。这导致电台将节目编排成更短的板块，减少了与听众的人际互动。这就是为什么许多电台变成了冷冰冰的“播放器”。既然可以听Spotify的随机播放，为什么还要听一个与你毫无共鸣的电台呢？

I’m painting a pretty one-dimensional picture of radio’s problems; they are actually layered and complex. I don’t pretend to get all of it, but what I do get is that it has squeezed all the fun out of the business for me. There are few on-air jobs left where you can hone your craft and relate to the listeners.

我所描述的广播业问题可能比较片面；实际上，这些问题是多层次且复杂的。我不敢说自己完全理解，但我明白的是，它已经榨干了这份工作对我而言的所有乐趣。现在几乎没有剩下什么能让你磨练技艺并与听众建立联系的播音工作了。