Coming up, is Canadian Music Week. It's a big honkin' conference in Toronto that runs most of the week. Most mainstream radio managers and high paid DJs attend to schmooze with old friends and tell old stories which seem a little more blurry every time they tell them. At night, many of the attendees head over to the nightclubs to see new Canadian unsigned artists in concert. There's also a gallery of exhibits that shows off new technology and seminars put on by well-known radio owners and managers. There's also a lot of beer. (No thanks.)It's an expensive conference so I'm selecting the day that is most appropriate for me. I'll go to the dinner gala Thursday night - it honours some of the radio veterans I listened to as a youth.
Here's the thing about events like this. CMW offers nothing for Christian radio. Everyone goes from rock radio, country, news and sports and top 40 attend but no one working in Christian radio is there. In fact, Christian radio is pretty much off the radar screen.
Is that good? No.
We/Christians like to talk about how we are impacting the world with the gospel and CMW doesn't know we exist.
I think we need to go to mainstream events like this and take away some of their great ideas, then utilize them in our Christian radio stations.
So every once in a while, I jump back in the mainstream, nose around, schmooze with my counterparts and see what I can learn from them.
We'll see.
I think this is also an example of why you have been more successful in running a radio station than some of the other Christian stations out there. You program a radio station, you are a Christian, your station demographic starts with "Christians"...but you start with running a good radio station. Other Christian stations around the country don't seem to care about what is "good radio" They choose to ignore best practises of what the listener expects or wants. When I turn on Life 100.3 I get good radio, and then the music and announcers make it a Christian radio station suited to the demo.
ReplyDeleteI've been to CMW (way back when) and while expensive there are some great seminars and networking to be had. (I think any industry conference is expensive, but usually worth a visit) But I think that until the Christian stations show up and are visible you won't see much acknowledgement by the industry.
I had looked into going since I'm going to be in the city anyways. It is expensive, but when I was looking at some of the seminars they were offering, it looked like it would be worth the price. Too bad they happened to fall on the same day as my appointment or I so would have been there.
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