How radio programming is like computer programming and how stupid listeners are just like stupid users!
I didn't start out in computers for I was raised by dinosaurs... thousands of years before man discovered silicon. I got into computer programming because I got bored with radio and I thought I wanted to get into a new, more secure high tech occupation that would support my family. The story starts in the mid 80s when man finally figured out that he can create a computer chip with silly silicon. And make lots of money! Math, music, or muscles - choices for left brainers, right brainers, and no brainers  Non-Jock boys are more mental---but still highly competitive. While the jocks developed their bodies at the expense of their brains and were playing soccer and later going to FB practice, the mental kids grabbed onto the new computer games or collecting and listening to music. They rarely ventured out of the houses except to go to the mall for more music or more games. They became the very first nerds--usually either underdeveloped or overweight because of lack of exercise. (Exception: female music lovers may not be nerds; depending on their looks, they might be useful groupies, girl band members, or loyal listeners! Males and ugly/overweight females, though, always test positive for Nerd Disease.) The creative music lovers went into radio and the math ones went into computer programming. Math or music programming  It's kind of like the radio mantra that says listeners (users) only want to hear the same 40 songs over and over. Programs work perfectly until users touch them or get any say! Test data is perfect, real data has been touched by human soiled hands. The problem with the whole process is humans who connect the keyboard and the chair, or listeners who fill out ARB diaries! The more humans are connected to the network, the less perfectly servers run... and then humans make so many mistakes and programmers have to go in and clean up their data. Same with radio... listener habits compiled 4 times a year by Arbitron just screw up expert programming and staffing! Pathetic Earthlings!  The only way computer programmers can get even with users is to NOT look at their work flows, not ask them what they want, but to just write a perfect program and force users to change their ways of doing things. Last are the USER screens and, so to get even, programmers try to make screens unfriendly, hide features and give users carpal tunnel syndrome by making programs too mouse-dependent. Similarly, sales people will roll over to make a sale, no matter how much a client's bush-league commercials run off listeners! And production people will bury that stuff in a stop-set so long, most listeners will go take a pee until it's finally over! Job security and style Most programmers delegate a program's screen interface design to lower life forms. Some chick working at a third of a programmer's hourly wage. Programmers are entirely too cool to be bothered with anything but cleaning caches and writing business rules in small objects that will take any new programmer weeks to follow. So the objective is two-fold. Write code no one else can figure out, so you have job security. Radio people wouldn't have nearly the problems they do if they would have built job security into radio! And secondly, the contest is to see how fast you can write a process to run in nanoseconds, and write it with the fewest possible lines of code. You learn this in school from programming instructors. It's how they test you. It has nothing at all to do with making useful tools for your company at minimal cost. Its still about computer school! Ut's all math, all backend stuff. And all about practicing the technique you learned in back school! Managers who pay the bills know nothing about programming so if a programmer SAYS it'll take nine months to write, or it has to be done THIS "proper way" and not THAT 'faster way', well what manager can tell that you figured in 3 hours of surfing and game-playing for every two hours of actual programming? And of course every five years, 'best practices' change in programming theory. So therefore, do best practice styles and internal debates between computer programmers on how code should be written -- all of which have nothing to do with delivering economical solutions which bring in more sales, cheaper. Computer programmers care more about technique than profit and loss. Many computer programs cost more in time/salary to write than all the sales those programs will ever process! This cost-benefit test is one of the free rides computer people often escape because no one knows exactly what goes into programming and whether it's worth it. Radio people wouldn't have nearly the problems they do if managers didn't have measurable evaluation tools preventing peedees from bullshitting their bosses. The problem is ARBITRON, which consults LISTENERS and puts their pleasures into analytical numbers! Radio people wait nervously for those numbers several times a year. People get FIRED based on those ratings! UNDESPUTED FACT: Measurable accountability is everyone's worst enemy! Today's computer users just dont NEED no stinkin' instructions! And of course, deliver their baby without a single page of user documentation. No one reads computer manuals, right? Convenient, since most programmers are math people, not words people and so if they ARE forced at gunpoint to write some, it's so badly written, and from a programmer's perspective, which only nerds find useful. Hence all programmers know users are not smart...and in fact computer users are a noxious weed. It didn't take long for programmers to learn this. Most of their classmates had ADHD and are from the Sesame Street generation. LIke radio people...if its longer than a liner-card, it's too long! Old school programmers wrote manuals. Even Microsoft wrote manuals for Word and DOS back in the day. But not lately. THIS NEW generation doesn't read manuals They want to figure it out on their own and if there's a problem, then Google the Wiki or online HELP! Best yet, if Microsoft wrote it, there'll be a step-by-step Wizard to do all the work! Don't bother them with classes or printed instructions. Their confidence is such that if you make them sit in class, they'll play computer games or check their email even as a thousand-dollar-an-hour instructor shows them a Powerpoint program on how do USE the topic software. Today's nerds are just too confident to sit through classes! Their view is to "SHUT UP", go away and they'll figure out how to do it if they need it, and so you're wasting your time with training and classes. It's an ego and generational thing! All knowledge I require today is now online so don't bore me with class or paper instructions! If I can't figure something out on my own, I'll bring up Google for the answers! Time is not my problem! Again, I'll figure it out! Why Bill Gates is really the "Worst Person in the World"...  Once you finally figure out what those buttholes have done...they change the goddam operating system to get more money, and ship it full of bugs. (The newest pile of shit is Vista!) That's actually not so bad because its more job security for the math kids. And so you ask, "How is all this like radio programming?"  To draw this back to what YOU think you know .... think of yourself as a music director. You know what they want to hear and how songs should flow, one to another. Yet these dustbunnies call in with requests, interrupting the flow of your programming.
Commercials interrupt your creative art, so you bundle them into unlistenable packages of five or six back-2-back commercials and actually handle them as interruptions. Your jocks basically say, "we'll be right back with another fabulous music sweep after this tasteless interruption...so you can go pee now or make a quick call on your cellphone. Back in 5 minutes after we raise the money for our creativity." Radio delivers ears! Companies which advertise pay the radio station to run their commercials...and that's how radio stations earn money and pay their staff. Fact is, radio's CUSTOMERS are not at all the listeners...they're the ADVERTISERS who buy 'spots'. See the problem? Radio people must serve TWO MASTERS... one that lets them eat by buying commercials, and the other listens for the music and entertainment, NOT the commercials!
Computer programmers have the same problem. Companies pay computer programmers to create useful tools for users. But programmers work to please themselves! Back to radio. To illustrate how stupid listeners are, Apple put a shuffle button on their ipods...and listeners don't even seem to mind using it. Totally illogical. And listeners actually want to call in and tell YOU what songs to put on your radio program, which is just shuffle at 50,000 watts! One more thing...radio listening is too simple. Ya get only two knobs. Volume and station. Even a dead head can figure those out when listening to the BUZZ. Had radio people made it more complicated, they could have had another whole industry... Radio HelpDesk. But again, you didn't and now you've missed your shot! That's the World as According to Rman for a Tuesday. I think I'll go have brunch as I contemplate that I'm really not a math kid, I'm a music kid which is why I wrote this website and am so preoccupied with radio these days! The computer programming didn't fill my needs even if it DID pay the bills! |
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 Donald Segretti, disbarred California lawyer who staged political dirty tricks on behalf of Richard Nixon, through CREEP (The Committee to Reelect the President, 1972) He's today's GOP strategists' Patron Saint.      thosetees.com (Jugs not included) Hasn't anyone told the Republicans yet, they LOST the election last November? We ALREADY took our country back!!Bad McDonalds! Bad! |
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