My name is Andy Green, and I have been employed in the commercial radio industry for the last 7 years  and as I am 24 it has been a substantial portion of my life. I am currently the music director for a rock station. A music director works with the program director, and these days a consultant  deciding new music for the radio, scheduling the music for the day, and communicating with record labels.

Today's mainstream radio has become a formulaic, airplay trend following circle-jerk. Most radio stations today look at what songs are spinning on a national basis, therefore the more radio stations that jump on board a song right away, the more will follow and thus a hit is born on the radio. This formula is very bad. Radio stations are waiting for everyone else to take a chance on a song and if it sticks, maybe test it out on the air, put it through the "research-ometer" and decide if it falls under the category of familiar to the average joe. Because Nickelback does well, bands that sound like Nickelback will have a better shot at getting on the radio. Back in the day songs would make their way to the hands of open minded music loving d.j.'s and program directors in all sorts of ways, thus allowing the miracle bands to be discovered and appreciated, but they didn't know at the time that Led Zeppelin would be a homerun right away, radio stations played it and the LISTENERS responded accordingly! Led Zeppelin would be snubbed without a bat of an eyelash in todays macabre radio scene!

In the radio world, as with any habitat predators evolve. In the radio industry, there is a creature, forged through time, cursed by God, soulless, incapable of originality, patrolling the jungle of airwaves preying on weak minded general managers and station owners. These ghastly beasts are called consultants. They convince radio executives to throw huge piles of dirty stinky money at them in quid pro quo for their ""expertise"" in the art of radio. Consultants then gather national data regarding music and demographics, and tell programmers what music, promotions, d.j.s, etc to execute and how to do it. Consultants are the reason local radio no-longer listens to their local audience. I am a person who cares very much about radio and music and because of this I think consultants should be exorcised and sent back to Hades from whence they came!!!!

As consultants are hired directly by the superiors of programmers, music directors, and d.j.'s they have the upper hand in the vicious office politics game that plagues radio. If a programmer or d.j. challenges a consultant it is not unheard of for them to be fired because the consultant consulted that their challenger is a liability or just not up to employee standards. This prevents the people who are connecting with the people in their radio markets from shaping the direction of music and the radio station!

Now because the consultants have deemed the average radio listener a person who is so scared of "unfamiliar" music that he or she will turn the dial at the mere utterance of something original. Popular music over the years has become a watered down, wasteland of disposable music. Today's popular music has become an uninspired mess of safe statistical sounds about fornicating in the club while you are gettin your drink on, the children of today are becoming tiny parents with no desire to expand their minds. Today's idiot children are tomorrow's leaders and that is a scary thought to me. With good mind expanding artistic music hitting the mainstream again I honestly believe you would see an increase in innovation among our high school and college students.

I know that the state of the radio and music industry sounds grim, but there could be light at the end of this dark tunnel. Do your research, get the contact info for your local radio stations general manager or owner and have as many people as you know write and call them telling them to fire their consultants and put the radio station back in control of the listeners!!! It is imperative and I need your help, so do those damn fucktard children!