WHY THE TED WILLIAMS STORY ISN'T GREAT FOR RADIO

All the rage over the past week, aside from flocks of birds dropping dead in mid-air all over the planet, was the discovery of the golden-voiced homeless ex-drug addict, Ted Williams. Hey, we all love a good comeback story and I wish Mr. Williams well, but there's a bit of hint at what's wrong with radio in the tale.

Ted's homeless. He's a recovering drug addict. A panhandler. With an incredible voice. You know the story. He was discovered and now he's getting more jobs offered to him than Clear Channel eliminates in a month! The Cleveland Cavaliers, NFL Films, The Ohio Credit Union League, MTV, ESPN, WBNS-TV and a yet unnamed Pennsylvania radio station have reportedly expressed interest.

Now, assuming Mr. Williams can master inflection at all, even in a listen and repeat mode, he can have a fine voiceover career (if he can keep the demons and lack of personal responsibility that wrecked his life in the first place in check). And I hope and pray that that unnamed Pennsylvania radio station is seeking him for just that purpose - voiceovers. Record a few sweepers to run between records. But I fear they have other plans for our story's hero.

As our beloved medium has regrettably devolved from "must listen" radio stations with an attitude and personality all their own to music delivery commodities, the heart, the passion, the uniqueness of radio communication - one on one between the radio personality and his or her listener, has become nothing more than slick positioning statements and marketing messages that the sales staff couldn't fit into the stopsets. It's no wonder we don't connect with listeners anymore. Who can relate to a silver-tongued liner jock with nothing to say?

Far too often, any personality has been banished to the morning show, if not banished altogether. The edge, the attitude, the personalities that made this business - gone! Today's over-researched radio "product" is as bland and boring as every other product that has ever set out to be "safe". (There's nothing safe about playing it safe, I always say.). A wall-to-wall barrage of well-testing songs with the call letters inserted between each one, with innocuous jocks who think they're "doing radio" reciting :10 second liners from a script their PD wrote as they go into the stopsets. You can listen all day and not fine anything wrong with it, but you can't find anything right with it, either.

I wish Ted Williams well, but unless he has a unique personality to go with that golden voice, I hope he sticks to the voiceover business, and I hope the radio industry has the good sense to realize that a great voice, while a valid tool in any air personality's toolbox, is among the least important tools they have.