Rosin: Radio suffers from “glaring HR crisis.”

In what was almost certainly the NAB Radio Show’s most provocative session, a gaggle of consultants, researchers and broadcasters aggressively challenged radio to step up the quality of programming, reduce spotloads, end voicetracking  and tap fresh outside blood to foster innovation and change. “We are fast becoming an industry of old men with a glaring HR crisis,” Edison Research president Larry Rosin said at Friday’s Radio Stimulus Package session.

Recruit young, creative talent from the Harvard Lampoon and You Tube and let them loose on HD side channels, Rosin urged.  Turn HD3 channels over to interns to build a new farm team for  talent, WMGK, Philadelphia morning man John DeBella suggested. Mark Ramsey Media president Mark Ramsey called on stations to “drop Arbitron or at least operate as if you have. It’s not about how many people we reach, it’s what we do when we reach them.”  Jacobs Media president Fred Jacobs said it’s time to ditch shallow slogans like “radio heard here” and launch an industry-wide SWOT analysis to identify radio’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.  “We need that  kind of strategic thinking,” he said.  And Joint Communications president John Parikhal went as far as call for a toppling of the “czars” of the industry: “The people at the top don’t get it. Things can’t better if you don’t face the truth.”