Early in the year the NAB called with an invitation to appear at their spring conference in Las Vegas (next week if you haven't been keeping track). They asked me to build the session from the ground-up. The bullet train passage of time often brings an unintentional portmanteau of connections accidentally leading somewhere. The concept for next Tuesday's NAB session had been simmering in my mind long before the NAB's invitation. The idea for Back to the Future 2.0 really started during an informal after-hours discussion with some clients last fall.

That discussion began with a proclamation: "What great radio companies did in the 80's can't be resurrected today. It's impossible based on profit models and declining programming culture." I remember reflexively thrusting out an open palm: "To hell we can't! Some companies can't create that radio today for the same reasons they couldn't do it then...and money's not it." We talked into the evening with all hands presenting interesting perspective. At some point I remember adding with deprecatory expression, "If you mean KVIL, KSTP, or WMMS can't be remade to scale, you're right of course. The designers who built those leviathans are playing golf in Scottsdale or somewhere. But just as surely the foundation of those magnificent stations can be built today, and in their own time and place can be just as effective." 5 weeks later, NAB invitation in hand, I started working up the evidentiary which come next Tuesday, will include three generations of 5-star programming minds; geniuses if you prefer.

Right on cue, our colleague Eric Rhoads wrote a column on 3/14 titled, "What Should Lew Do With Citadel?" Eric wrote, "It's tempting to send a message to Lew asking him to return to the days of wine and roses, but that's a dream that cannot come true. We're not living in the 80's anymore. Though we know radio had more personality, more localism, more involvement in those days, the reality is these giant operations can't be run that way and get the margins necessary to service their debt and make a profit for their investors." Rhoads added, "I'm not na�ve enough to believe Lew Dickey will return his company to the halcyon days of radio. It's not financially possible."

I admire Eric a lot but he's dead wrong about one thing; money wasn't the singular avenue to a station's �lan. Legendary stations came about because it was necessary to invent them when pride mattered and companies and programmers defined themselves by their stations' national respect. Fairbanks, Group W, Cox, ABC, Shamrock and others wanted their stations to personify their markets and become larger than life. Only when the siren song of consolidation whispered economies on grand scale did radio shift its values, putting the consolidation vehicle in front of the performance engine. Even so, in spite of post consolidation's spread-sheet dogma, facile princep like Jerry Lee forged ahead as did format champions KBCO, WTMJ, KOSI, KQRS and WLW, along with many mid-market legends such as Magic 98, WNCI, WNTQ, or WIVK.

Perhaps one of radio's problems is that we haven't been taught how to cope with reality; the reality that lies just under the reality, the one that matters....And so next Tuesday in Las Vegas we'll ask nationally admired programming minds from then and now to put this question to the test as we assemble George Johns, principle difference-maker at the iconic Fairbanks (KVIL, WIBC, WIBG, WRMF, etc), flanked by arguably one of the most powerful forces in Contemporary Radio, John Gehron who propelled ABC's WLS to epic heights, Kevin Robinson who borrowed from the past, coupled it to the future and super-charged Bonneville's Arch, America's most successful Adult Hits station. Completing our ensemble as a delegate of the Today Generation comes Jen O'Brien, for seven years presiding over Z-93 La Crosse, a station that has averaged double-digit scores for over 20 years as one of the country's best CHR's. It's true, you can't go back in time, but you can bring time forward. See you in Las Vegas!