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Jim Blundell (Dean’s Dad): “How does generic, milk-toast radio fit into a content consumers mindset? It doesn’t.”

Sep 8, 2021
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My Dad is a legend in radio management circles.  I used to call him the gas-man because it was his job to turn around shitty properties for 25 years with CHUM and eventually Rogers.  I’ve asked him to do a series of posts about the business of media and why radio and TV are totally DEAD.  It’s not just the tech.  It’s the people who manage the business who have run it into the GROUND and he walked away from all of it because A) he can and B) My dad only cared about empowering people which is the exact opposite of what Bell, Rogers, and others work.  

Hey, I’m Dean’s Dad and I was in the radio and TV business for 41 years.

Through a series of bizarre circumstances, I ended up working for the storied CHUM radio group and even more incredible as a Vice President and General Manager for several CHUM’s radio properties.

In 2007 CHUM sold to Bell and I was, for the first time in my life, let go.

An old colleague with whom I’d worked at CHUM Limited crossed over to Rogers Media. He hired me as Vice-president and General Manager of 3 TV stations and 11 radio stations on the West Coast.  After a very short time, I retired from that job which should have people to ask, the pinnacle of jobs and you walked away, you retired? Were you too old, too tired, or just plain stupid?

Good question. 

The reason I left that job and my 40-year love affair with the business was simple. For 3 television stations and 11 radio stations, I had approximately 300 on staff. It turned out that 3 out of 300 people reported to me, the rest reported to a myriad of corporate suites in Toronto who had little stake outside of their own self-interests and political agendas.  

It is impossible to get anything done or recruit a team of broadcasters to go in the same direction towards the goal of serving the community, which is where real money is.  Big media has opted to can programming to shave costs at the expense of the listener and the industry has contracted by 60%-80% in the last 5 years because of it.  

Serving some faceless corporate suits who live for this quarter of corporate earnings by which to feed the market and its shareholders is the goal of EVERY major media stakeholder. They don’t care about the medium.  They never did. Most of those suits don’t understand radio or even worst don’t value it for what it was designed for.  Radio in Canada was intended to be a service to and for the community. It was licensed to SERVE, not a license to serve german shareholders and political friends.  

From that service came the incredible business model that Canadian radio has had for decades.

Then came consolidation, the big telco’s and corporate entities buying all of the radio properties they could get their hands on and then proceeded to strip staff/expenses to the point of obscenity.  Then, these telcos fired 3/4 of their staff while taking government handouts. 

Every quarter after quarter they look for ‘headcount reductions.’  It’s a nice way of saying they fire thousands of hard-working announcers, writers, producers, and support staff that have given their working lives to the idea of serving a community and by so doing derive a living as broadcasters. Then they ask whoever is left to do 10 jobs which gave way to the state of the radio union, which is why the entire industry is on life support.  

As a retired man, I get a lot of time to consider the future of radio and I really wonder if it will be here in the next 10 to 20 years, after all, we have transitioned into watching and listening to what we want when we want.

How does generic, milk-toast radio fit into that mindset? I suspect without it getting back to serving the community and caring about people, it doesn’t.  

Cheers,

James Blundell

I wrote a book called “Blue Jello: A Radio Journey.”  Check it out. Or not.  I’m golfing today and every day, regardless.  

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