9/30/1994
What if a trade magazine held a convention and nobody came? It happened last week and nobody is more satisfied than those of us at Network 40.
Last week, Network 40 didn’t have our first annual Network 40 convention and it was a complete success. It would be impossible to thank all of the people who weren’t responsible for our first-ever convention, so we won’t even try. Suffice it to say that I you weren’t there, you didn’t miss a thing.
Being limited in time and space, I can’t write about all of the wonderful things that didn’t happen at the first annual Network 40 convention. I’ll just hit the highlights.
The Network 40 convention was not held this past weekend in San Francisco, Virginia, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, New York and Los Angels. We chose not to have it in several different locations at the same time because it had never been done before and that really challenged us to blow it off.
The keynote speech was not given by the President of the United States, Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton did not respond to our invitation not to speak and his non-appearance would have been the highlight of the convention if so many other spectacular events had not taken place.
After the keynote address (which, by the way, did not stimulate the industry into spontaneous support of another four years of his administration), the rest of the day was not scheduled for a series of panel discussions.
The most anticipated of the afternoon meetings was the Top 40 panel that didn’t feature Scott Shannon, Steve Smith and Steve Kingston debating Rick Cummings, Kevin Weatherly and Steve Perun via coast-to-coast satellite. None of the the participants were invited to attend and all did not show up, making this panel so exciting. Scott, Steve and Steve did not get to brag about New York being the bigger market and Rick, Kevin and Steve did not point out that the weather was much nicer in Los Angeles. Although it would have been a toss-up as to where you could see the most famous movie stars when dining out, it was not pointed out that Los Angeles, even with a 10-year low in drive-by shootings, still leads the Big Apple by almost a two-to-one margin.
And what about that panel on record company promotion? Rick Stone, Rick Bisceglia, Andrea Ganis, John Fagot, Ron Geslin, Burt Baumgartner, Craig Lambert, Jon Leshay, Ken Lane, Barb Seltzer, Hilary Shaev, Steve Leavitt, Ray Carlton, Brenda Romano, Marc Benesch, Jack Satter, Bruce Tenenbaum, David Leach, Mark Kargol, Joe Riccitelli, Nancy Levin, Butch Waugh, rich Fitzgerald, Mike Becce, Michael Plen, Stu Cohen, Danny Ostrow and Bill Pfordresher were not invited to participate. It is a tribute to Network 40 that all complied with our wishes. It is worth noting that had they showed up, they would not have discussed how to promote records in the ’90s. Their silence was truly deafening.
Significant by their absence at this panel were Lori Anderson, Randy Speendlove, Bruce Schoen, Banny Buch, Phil Costello, Jeffrey Blalock, Bruce Reiner, Justin Fontaine, Jerry Blair, Charlie Walk, Greg Thompson, Valerie DeLong, Bob Garland, ron Gregory, Michael Steele, Dale Connone, Craig Coburn, Chris Lopes, Sean Lynch, Mark Gorlick, Andy Szulinski, Vicki Leben, Ann Marie Reggie, Skip Bishop and Marc Ratner, none of whom were there to applaud or nod wisely when their bosses made an astute comment.
The evening cocktail party was not hosted by Polly Anthony. It is important to note that not one person drank too much and made comments that would be regretted the following morning.
The midnight concert was not headlined by Elvis and won’t be remembered for years to come. Opening was Sly & The Family Stone who also didn’t show, but this time, nobody noticed.
The entire staff of Network 40 wishes to thank everyone in the record and radio industries for not participating in the convention we didn’t have. Because of you, it was a complete success.
It is a fact that there are too many conventions, but who’s to say there can’t be one more? Or two? Or three? Screams and moans are coming from offices of comptrollers about cutbacks and cost-controls, yet ever record company seems to be able to scrape together enough spare change to send a contingent to nearly every city that can gather together two or more radio programmers in a single, vast room.
There was a time when radio people went to conventions to seek new jobs. The radio business today is in such a state that there aren’t many new jobs available. Most of those squeezing a living out of radio can’t afford to spend their own cash (has that ever happened?) to attend a gathering where they couldn’t at least have the opportunity to pitch for a gig somewhere.
Since many record companies are paying less attention to smaller markets, a programmer who isn’t in a large market has no chance of being offered airfare and hotel accommodations from a once-favorite uncle. So we’re left with major market programmers who are generally too busy keeping their station competitive to participate in panel discussions on how to keep competitive.
But because there have been so many changes in the record industry this year, those in the record business are quick to attend “radio†conventions so they can meet the new record company executives and lobby for a job. The faces and line-of-work have changed, but the pitch is the same.
Like my momma said, “Too much of even a good thing is often worse than not enough.â€
All of us love getting together with others in a similar line of work. We like to talk and gossip and share stories that will make us more informed, and quite possibly, better at our jobs. But even given the beautiful, intelligent and humble people who make up the majority of our industry, the fact is that bonding once or twice a year is quite enough for our particular species. Any more than that and we tend to get aggravated and begin to eat our young.
Of course, it’s easy for us to feel proud and give advice. Last week’s Network 40 convention was such a complete success that it won’t be held again next year. We urge others to do the same.