Re: voice-tracking is the symptom, but it's not the disease-- re send

[dan.strassberg@att.net]

Although I agree with a lot (albeit, far from all) of 
what Donna said, I think she erred in posting her 
message in a reply to your message on voice-tracking. 
Your topic was only marginally related to what Donna 
wanted to write about and I don't think she should have 
used your message as an excuse for creating what I liken 
to a clumsy segue.

One part of what Donna wrote that I disagree with is 
that the technology is responsible for the state of 
radio. Just becasue hard-drive automation enables a 
broadcast group to use a personality thousands of miles 
from a market to--in 35 minutes or so--voice-track a 
four-hour shift, thus allowing the personality time to 
provide customized local content for stations in eight 
markets (none of which the personality may ever even 
have visited) doesn't obligate the broadcast group to 
use the approach. The technology may enable--or even 
encourage--management to mismanage its business, but the 
technology is not at fault; management is.

Blaming the (faceless) technology is another example of 
avoiding pinning responsibility on the responsible 
parties (or accepting responsibility for ones own 
actions). Both are symptoms of what seems to be a 
widespread and serious problem in 21st-century Western 
civilization.

> Gee, I didn't mean to stir everybody up at the holidays.  I started all this 
> by just pointing out that the station that I work for was doing 72 hours of 
> Christmas music and that technology allowed us to do that without anyone 
> having to work the holiday.  I wasn't trying to start a fight.