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Frank Cotolo
10 May, 2009 |
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As summer of 2009 approaches, Cotolo Chronicles moves along into the hot
U.S. months with no plans but to broadcast. Planning, we have discovered, is a
bad work habit, since it takes far too much time, effort and thought, and we
like to keep things spontaneous.
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We have gone through at least a dozen producers since last year due to this
policy. It seems that people who come onto the production team have this concept
of organizing the program's content far before the day of the broadcast. When
they discover they cannot do that, they quit. We never fire them. We have begun
to think that we should not hire any producers unless they commit at the start
not to try to do producer duties, like planning for shows.
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This anti-planning concept is nothing new, though most radio producers insist
that a lot of work needs to go into a broadcast. We are seriously beginning to
believe that producers feel that way in order to justify their positions. To
"produce", after all, means to create and develop. In order to create and
develop, most producers feel they should spend hours preparing. It is a notion
that is long overdue to be dismissed.
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If you know anything about the history of radio you know that even its inventor,
Marchese Guglielmo Marconi, never planned to come up with a machine that could
transmit voices to other machines, no less one that would eventually send out a
signal that could include the voice of Rush Limbaugh. Marconi's penchant was
food, not a radiotelegraph system. In fact, history tells us that he would have
invented the radio years before he is credited with doing so were it not for
his meal breaks.
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People unaware of Marconi's personal life are unaware of his refusal to
memorize the term "electromagnetic radiation", which, of course, means "radio
waves". Marconi said, according to a distant relative's diary, "All I know is
it works and I can't even tell you how I arrived at that".
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Marconi only became successful when he began to copy all of the work done fifty
years before by people who believed that hard work and long hours of planning
would result in a "radio". None of them managed to invent one, though. All of
their hard work wound up to be scattered notes and theories that Marconi
happened upon and, through no effort of his own, managed to find a way to
make them work.
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In fact, at the time Marconi invented the radio he was more interested in
changing his first name. He hated "Marchese" because it rhymed with the Indian
Cross and Circle game called Parcheesi. It was adapted in America and loved by
millions. But friends who would say things to him like, "Hey Marchese Parcheesi"
and "It's time to play Parcheesi, Marchese" haunted Marconi.
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In a letter to his mother that was dated sometime just before the radio was
invented, Marconi wrote, "What have you done to me by giving me a name so that
everyone can make fun of me? Did you know about this Indian game when you
named me? How could you be so cruel, so insensitive, so careless?"
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His mother replied by insisting that Marconi's first name did not rhyme with
Parcheesi and that people who poked fun at him by using the names as rhymes
were idiots. Marconi did not agree, so he dropped his first name and went by
his middle name, Guglielmo. Some time soon after that he stumbled upon the
elements that, one day, allowed him to invent the radio. Because it all came
together so simply, Marconi felt that there was no reason to work at anything
or plan anything in order to accomplish something.
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So, you see, our show policy is linked with the very nature of the man who
invented radio. That is another reason why we are still broadcasting after a
decade without any clue of what we will do next.
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