WHERE DO YOU START when talking about someone who has more years in the business than I have on this earth? 
Simple. Quit yammering and let the man talk. What follows is an edited transcript of a conversation between Cartt.ca’s editor and publisher Greg O’Brien and CHUM’s vice-president, industry affairs and digital radio operations, Duff Roman (right), to mark his entry into his sixth decade in broadcasting.
Greg O’Brien: Let’s talk about your 50 years in broadcast.
Duff Roman: Most of the time it doesn’t feel like 50 years.
GOB: What does it feel like then?
DR: It feels — sort of like breathing. I mean, I’ve been at this since I was in high school, so in a sense it’s my life. I’ve certainly been involved in many variations and under the auspices of great employers such as CHUM, have been able to reinvent myself in different capacities over the years in many different ways. So, I quite thoroughly enjoyed all of it. I guess there are challenges at times, but generally I’m very happy about the career path chosen.
GOB: Now, what were your goals when you got into radio back in, what was it, Swift Current?
DR: Actually Medicine Hat. I was born in Swift Current, but at the time, there wasn’t a local radio station. And my father was a railroader, so I could get out and about with a free railroad pass quite easily. During Easter break and summer holidays, I basically went to bug radio stations as a 16-year old. I had this vision that I could be, not in radio, but on the radio.
I started to make the rounds of stations in Moose Jaw, North Battleford, Lloydminster, Medicine Hat – just generally not knowing what it entailed. I was compelled by some sort of desire or inner force to get involved with radio because, I guess without digressing too much, I grew up very modestly on railroad property outside of the city Swift Current literally without any electricity or any of the niceties, including phone and running water. The thing that really was our link with the world was our battery operated radio.
To me, it was quite magical because with AM… you know the thrill of getting stations from West Virginia selling replicas of Jesus Christ, for example.
GOB: You must have been able to get signals from all over the place.
DR: The best one used to come in from the San Bernardino Valley in California – the first inklings of rock ‘n roll on Shakey’s All Night Pizza Party.
There was a lot of Four Lads and a lot of Rosemary Clooney when I was growing up and frankly, Bill Haley really didn’t hit until I had left home. The other stations were Montana stations, KMON from Great Falls, Montana. Their DJs were called the Comonsters as I recall. And I thought that was quite cool. And they got to play the beginnings of so-called race music that was crossing over onto some radio stations.
Those are the records – the doo wop and R&B records that people like the Crew Cuts, Four Lads and Diamonds were covering. It didn’t take me long to discover that things like “Little Darlin’” were not originated by the Diamonds, nor “Sha Boom” by the Crew Cuts – or that there were groups like Moonglows, The Marcels and all these inner-city groups from the U.S. that really didn’t find their way up to the record stores in Canada, let alone the radio stations. But, only the magic of radio could really deliver this exciting music. It’s sort of like kids today hearing good alternative music for the first time.
GOB: But now they get it on the Internet.
DR: Well exactly. It’s all about content on whatever technology is available. And we keep reminding ourselves in our business that we’re about content. And ultimately, you know we can embrace even the Internet – if the terms are favorable.
GOB: It’s interesting to hear you talk about getting radio stations from so far away simply because there wasn’t much there to clutter the air and could bounce along right into Swift Current. Now, though, anyone can get any radio station from even father away just using a different device, right?
DR: Exactly. What the compelling thing is about audio – and I’m not slagging television, nor any form of multimedia – is that theatre of the mind, which can be pretty compelling. I had a lot of notions about radio before actually got into a radio station. I was hired before I had actually been inside a control room. All I knew were these little studio rooms with glass where I talk into a microphone.
GOB: So, what was your first job in radio then?
DR: On the air. I started on August 29th in CHAT Medicine Hat, 1955. And you know people always say, “Can you remember your first words?” And I can always answer yes, I can because they were scripted. I had them written out. Do you want to hear them?
GOB: Sure.
DR: Good afternoon ladies. These are matinee melodies (spoken in a super-cool radio voice).
GOB: Only ladies?
DR: Well, it was the 50s. The men were at work and it was on at one in the afternoon. Who was out there? The ladies. So, I played all these mellow songs, as I say, Rosemary Clooney. Even some of the sort of post-big band-bands were around: Freddie Martin, Les Brown… but there was nothing quite like Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” to get the party moving back when I was finishing high school.
Then that went on into the rock era. Really when Bill Haley hit late ’54 early ’55 with “Rock Around the Clock” — in fact, that movie “Rock Around the Clock” didn’t come to Medicine Hat until I was already on the air. So for all of us, generally speaking, it was the invention and the introduction of rock and roll. There were newspaper articles about it – stations vowing they’d never play this lewd suggestive music called rock ‘n roll on their radio station. In fact, CHAT, where I worked, banned Elvis Presley for years, just based on what they’d heard.
GOB: Boy, we could spend hours and hours and hours going through the changes that have happened in radio since then. But, what are the things that are still the same from radio in that era and radio in this era?
DR: Well, I think the human element is what’s the same. I know that there are radio stations that can operate from a hard drive, and you certainly could do some form of voice tracking or actually create cyber radio if you want to call it that. With digital’s capacity today and computers, you could have a radio station sound like it’s absolutely live.
But… if you don’t have a good morning show, you simply are not going to have a successful radio station, because so much of your revenues are driven in that 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. or 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. period, so that that is an absolute must. A lot of stations have fantastic operations, but if their morning show isn’t competitive, they’re not going to have that translate into revenue.
There has been the ability of being able to economize, to rationalize, to consolidate, to even use the dreaded word, downsize but I see that as reaching a point now where we have to reconsider before we think of those economies. We have to grow our business. And growing our business sometimes is even standing still if we’re talking about share points.
GOB: And people don’t listen to radio like you did.
DR: It remains a challenge and I think that part of what will define radio is its localism, its personalities, really, a sense of identity and that goes to the larger issue of whether or not satellite radio is going to steal the lunch off our table. My own sense is that they will have viable business plans, but their viable business plans aren’t necessarily that different than having an in-dash CD player or tape player or even an MP3 player where you use it and as radio stations, we have to deal with fragmentation.
Television is dealing with it now. They don’t have the tuning they used to have on conventional TV. So you get into specialty TV, where CHUM has been probably top of the class in that area. It’s a sense of knowing that the technology and the interest in youth become multimedia. So, you’ve got to be part of that. You can’t just have your nose pressed up against the glass and just wish that things were like they used to be.
GOB: Well, those young people, they’ll force change right? I mean eventually CHAT no longer banned Elvis, and eventually all those radio stations played rock ‘n roll.
DR: Exactly right.
GOB: And you know, eventually traditional radio will have to figure out a way to deal with the many changes that are going on right now.
DR: I often say to my colleagues that if we’re smart about it, if we’re open to change, then we’re not going to have to go through the dislocation the conventional music business is still going through.
And they actually started it. The music business started with this great idea with CDs fully digital, which would allow all these baby boomers to convert their scratchy vinyl records into CD versions of the Beatles and everything they had in their library. Well, that was a huge boom. Those were the salad days. Everybody converted their vinyl, generally speaking.
But now, oh my goodness, there are people that are burning new records. Once it was digitized the new forces on the Internet like Kazaa took over.
GOB: What’s new on the horizon for radio nowadays? What do you think is the big new thing? Is it podcast? Is it going to be digital radio or high definition radio, whatever you want to call it?
DR: My sort of smart-ass answer to that is all of the above. I think we’re re-identifying our strength as content, and I think we shouldn’t fear any of the new platforms. We should work diligently to be on all of the new platforms.
And what’s happening now is that the units are becoming more efficient and multi-purpose. So instead of having three or four devices as we do now, a Blackberry, maybe a regular cell phone, an MP3 player, an iPod. I don’t think it’s a stretch now to think that one or two devices, probably one multipurpose device will eventually carry all of the sort of wireless services that are available out there.
The good news is all of the software allows one appliance to handle satellite and terrestrially based radio – various codecs that are now being installed in spectrums… and they’re all just various compression and transmission techniques that are in wireless spectrum that require a chip to transform them into RF that you can hear. That’s the reassurance that I provide our people here at CHUM saying, you know, whether or not we roll out our subscription radio service, I don’t think it’s necessarily that the technology isn’t there or won’t be there.
It’s the business case that has to revolve around other things – like whether the playing field is level with regard to our competitors not having to do all of the socially important issues such as Canadian content and other services that we provide under the Broadcasting Act that these people don’t seem to have the same obligations.
But I am encouraged. I think radio, as a pure audio medium, will survive in the same way that perfume isn’t multimedia. It’s for the sense of smell. Just like they’ll always be art hanging on the wall. It may not be multimedia, but a good piece of art is strictly a visual experience.
If you maintain a very philosophical, but very quality driven attitude about the audio deliverables in radio the sense that you can do several things at once with radio. I mean, most of my radio experience is done while reading a book or the paper or working in my shop – and I don’t miss a thing.
GOB: Sort of the original multitasking device.. So what are you going to tell the CRTC Radio Review?
DR: I think we are concerned that with the new technology, the competition not having to abide by the 35% Canadian content rules. We’re going to have an issue there with regard to how we achieve what is socially responsible with regard for support for Canadian artists and Canadian culture and what is realistic in the face of the competition that the Commission itself introduced in the form of XM and Sirius that has brought in hundreds of radio stations to every market.
There is no escape. The local station operator now has 200 individual radio services in his or her back yard. We need to look at a way of managing that so that the music industry is satisfied and that we will be competitive. We think there are some issues with regard to what form of arrangements radio can enter with regard to creating more critical mass in the form of local sales agreements.
We think there’s still a very important element and that they’re good for the business.
There is the support for new artists and new releases balancing the actual tonnage of increased quota to 40%. The music industry will be looking at what this new or energized commitment to new artists giving radio stations points against real numbers and that’s an ongoing dialogue right now because for the music industry there are certain revenue sources that relate directly to airplay.
They have to balance, in their own mind, with regard to what new and emerging artists will do for their business cases. Certainly the independent industry, which has the greatest, loudest voice, I believe, with our regulator, is all in favor of more attention on emerging artists.
The larger companies that have the catalogue and superstars and so forth, you know, they look at that issue I think with different eyes with regard to really just going about and doing their business. Because as we found out in the movie business, you can make funding and contribution arrangements for the support of Canadian movies, but can you get screen time?
There is no quota put on the major players in the music business with regard to they must produce X number of Canadian records or they must find space in retail for X number of Canadian records. That’s all done by market forces. We’re the only part of the equation that works to regulation – whether or not new records are particularly good, whether or not there’s an abundance numerically of new records. All of that stuff is the pressure that is put on our music departments and programming people hitting 35% reasonably distributed each and every week.
And to hit it, you do make compromises at times.
(As a former band manager and board member of FACTOR) I know what they face. They’re different from us, musicians are entrepreneurs. They do mortgage their house. They do sell their life insurance. They do take risks. They’re in it for the art. And then the money, hopefully, comes later.
I’m very, very, very aware of the sacrifice and the commitment that they have to make. But yet we on the radio side are often underestimated in terms of what we contribute to the process. Every time we play a record, it’s a free commercial for that artist.
And unlike television where you find rights and market rights for a new television shows, anyone can buy the recordings that we play. So if people say that radio lives off the artistic endeavors of others, when Alan Waters built the first Top 40 radio station, you could buy those records at Sam too – (CHUM) was all about value added.
I guess coming full circle here, that’s what radio still is. It’s what we do with that music. The character of the station, the formats, the personalities. People can tell you they have favorite stations and sometimes they can’t totally tell you why, but they know the difference.
