And to be honest students, high school students, are very media savvy today.

But what about students not pretending to do radio but actually doing it for real?

How often to we hear students on our local commercial or national radio networks DOING RADIO?

Never really!

And that never is exactly why every other week the students from Wellington International School in Dubai come on my show, Nightline, and take over the broadcast.

Risky? WC Fields said never work with pets and children.

Challenge? You bet!

Worth it? 200%

These students are doing a live broadcast every other week for an hour and doing well!

Imagine this program in 2 months time!

Why don’t more stations and presenters do what I am doing?

No clue!

Honest, sincere and real.

I loved his answer to the question about writers block.

Rash said that he felt like every song was his last and then the next one just seemed to arrive in his mind.

I love the sound of his music and he said that it is set to morph into a bit more deeper textures.

This is an interview that I would recommend to anyone who is looking at what they love to do and thinking of packing it in.

Sometimes all you need for a bit of inspiration is someone to take notice.

Listen to Rash Radio music at Triplew.me.

Here is the interview.

I can be  a real pain in the neck as an educator with a voice that can reach many people through the mass media.

Recently I asked myself why there isn’t any student radio on the UAE airwaves.

Sure you can find hybrid student radio online but what about students from a high school doing talk radio? Nothing.

Until now.

Twice a month the students of Wellington International School in Dubai take over my Nightline show for an hour.

The students not only create the content, this is talk radio, but they also run the board making sure that the technical side is perfect.

The result is arguably the best student radio you can hear in the middle east!

If you give our youth a voice it is incredible what you will hear.

No!

The old media is not preparing for the new media environment and new media enthusiasts are failing to actually figure our how to connect with an audience in a meaningful and sustained way!

But it is not all doom and gloom.

In fact there are some very interesting projects taking place with audio broadcasting!

My question is very simple, why are we not doing this int he UAE?

Maybe our schools, high schools, maybe our broadcasters, ARN and GN, need to be thinking a little more laterally.

Check out the idea of Localore.

Localore, a new initiative produced by AIR, builds on the groundwork laid by MQ2 to drive the continuing transformation of public media. Our 10 Lead Producers, in collaboration with their local station radio and television incubators, will focus their ingenuity on blending digital and traditional broadcast tools and platforms to expand the reach of public media in local communities and establish new capacity for R&D at stations. Collectively,  our producers and their teams will help lead us to a new vision of 21st century public media.

So what is it all about?

Experiment and invent new ways to find and tell stories

Discover fresh models blending old and new media

Forge new pathways between stations and their local communities.

I love the idea of MQ2.

MQ2 Takes Public Media to the Street from AIR on Vimeo.

Maybe we need to be thinking in terms of old/new media relationships from the perspective of an incubator?

I am up for it!

TED in Long Beach was great but it was TEDActive in Palm Springs that blew my mind.

One of my passions has been to talk to as many TEDsters on the radio, I host a talk show on DubaiEye 103.8FM, to share their ideas and passion for ideas.

Well here are those conversations with their links.

I like to call these conversations my own private TED event.

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-06-13T22_13_47-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-06-13T22_06_41-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-31T00_24_00-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-31T00_21_37-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-23T21_26_40-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-22T22_09_44-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-17T02_09_36-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-08T22_05_51-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-02T03_09_50-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-04-26T00_12_27-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-04-26T00_05_29-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-02-08T23_39_08-08_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-01-31T01_36_52-08_00

Sometimes, as a professor of communication and media sciences, I am uneasy talking about career options becasue who knows where you might end up with a communication degree.

Sure many, maybe even the majority of grads ,will travel along the traditional prescribed career path but more and more today students are going madly off in different and new directions.

What I have learned over the last 6 years of doing radio interviews on DubaiEye is that more often than not our career paths are anything but obvious.

Take Daniella Williams as a case in point.

Today Daniella is a very good and very successful accountant to small business.

Daniella has been called the thinking accountant and this has happened because she is far more than a book minder.

But Daniella did not get to this point following the typical carrer trajectory.

Daniella studied piano, violin and drama initially and went on to become a music teacher.

Then after 3 or so years of teaching Daniella realized that teaching was not her love and instead of sticking it out, becasue teaching is a vocation you know, she went back to school and got an accounting degree.

Today Daniella has married education and accounting as she works  with SMEs to help them learn to be successful.

Who would have thought?

And it is because of stories like this that I often find it hard to point a student down a specific career path.

I was totally inspired by Daniella and recommend listening to this interview with anyone who really wants to take their career in a different direction but is not sure if they should.

Totally 100% inspiring.

But as of late I have been looking at myself and I realize that I have the life!

I am a successful University professor here in Dubai in the Middle East, my students seem to think what I teach is of value and that is success to me.

My family are healthy and getting the best education money can buy in the UAE.

And I have developed a very interesting radio show on DubaiEye.

Life is good, really good.

It is the radio show that has really grabbed hold of my attention over the last year.

The power of radio to stop us in our tracks is amazing and I think it is largely underestimated for one reason, we are distracted by new media.

But we still get into the car and turn on the radio!

I grew up listening to CBC so it is no wonder that it is CBC I turn to for my radio education.

And who do I like to model myself after?

Jian Ghomeshi of Q fame.

Sure I don’t have the resources of the CBC at my disposal but I try, for 2 hours 4 nights a week, to create the show that Jian Ghomeshi would want to listen to.

No I have never been to the CBC studios in Toronto and no I have never met Jian Ghomeshi and that is the allure of radio, you feel like you know a person because they are talking into your ears and he is my virtual broadcasting coach.

And no I have no plans to stalk him.

So how does my radio education work?

I listen to the Q podcasts on CBC and when I get the chance I tune into the videos on YouTube.

And then I take the tips on presentation and form and try to work it into my own broadcasts.

Here is a sample of Jian at work with a wonderful interview.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And this is the singing that was talked about in the interview.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When I watch what they do in the Q studio I am in awe, really.

I am no Jian Ghomeshi but I like to think a little bit of what he does has rubbed off on what I do here in Dubai on Nightline.

The take home is simple.

If you want to do great radio you have to listen to great radio and do what ever you can to rise to the challenge.

While electronic media, web2.0 and the cloud, is front and center in almost every conversation are we paying attention to the tried and true media in the background?

We get into our cars, wake up with the digital clock radio, and sometimes even power up the old tuner on the stereo when we get home.

Yet radio gets little respect.

Radio is there and I think it demands a lot more attention because it is there and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.

What we do need to think about is programming revolutions.

What we do need to think about is content and the clock cycle, maybe both need a rework.

What we do need is to encourage micro radio and the means to link neighborhood radio.

What we do need is for our schools, all levels, to re-examine the idea of school on the air!

What we need to do is stop listening for a moment and consider how we can make radio even better!

According to an Arbitron survey int he USA.

An average of 241.6 million people 12 and older listened to conventional radio stations each week last year, an increase of 2.1 million over 2009 — and up 4.9% vs. 2005, according to an annual study that media and marketing research company Arbitron released Monday. This is from a USA Today report.

In the Arab world we have a young population that wants a reason to listen to radio so lets give them the domestic content they crave and let the technology of radio work its magic.

We need to be encouraging more kids to go down the road of radio, form news and documentaries to theater, this is a medium that is not going away so lets not ignore it!

I make no apology and I have not used a Nokia or any other smartphone to make any comparison.

I love my phone because as a phone it works BUT as a multimedia tool it also works.

The big seller for me was SIMPLICITY.

This technological tool makes complex tasks easy and painless.

Take Nightline, the radio program I host.

I needed a new intro for the podcast and simply didn’t have time to get into the studio to record the intro.

And if I had there would have been editing and transferring issues, a 10 second job would have taken 30 minutes.

What do I do?

I sit in a closet, really, and record the intro on my iPhone and send it to myself to be added to the podcast!

Broadcast quality recording on a phone that is simple to transfer!

Listen to the iPhone recorded intro, pretty good if I do say so myself.

When I talk about SIMPLICITY the iPhone is another example.

SIMPLICITY is about taking complex ideas and/or tasks and making them accessible to anyone!

Why is this idea so hard to make stick?

The sorry truth is many of us have for, no good reason, turned our back on being champions of old-school media.

Sure there are reasons for turning our backs on old-school media and a piece of the puzzel has to do with control and cost.

Well maybe the issue is not cost but control and access.

I would like to remind you that radio was, and still is, one of the greatest delivery systems for content on the planet!

Think about it.

If you get into a car you turn on the radio.

You sit with friends you access the radio on your phone!

You come home, and many of us, still turn on the radio.

But there is a complaint and that complaint is that the content is awful, commercial and not relevant.

And who is to blame?

Good question, you are to blame.

There are options out there.

My favorite is LPFM, even in the United Arab Emirates a discussion could take place about creating LPFM stations if people actually took the time to start it.

There is a great discussion taking place int he USA where tLPFM station were JUST given the green light. Although they have been operating for some time.

What the UAE needs is to connect its communities and foster the sharing of ideas within the community, not just in a cafe or on a street corner, what about the talent in Liwa reaching Liwa or the conversations of parenting in Mirdif being accessible to all in Mirdif?

What about Zayed University being able to share a variety of ideas with the community around it?

LPFM is a transformative tool and it is begging to be activated. Here is what they say in the USA.

KOCZ’s signal is a mere 100 watts, so low that its reach is only 10 to 15 miles. Mr. Freeman cannot even tune in from his home. But the station has become an unlikely lifeline in this town of 22,000, helping promote local artists and church events in ways that commercial stations either cannot or will not.

There are so many aspects of the community missing from commercial radio, EVEN IN THE USA.

We have an opportunity to invigorate our communities, what is stopping us from starting the conversation?

Just our own fear of making a difference to our own community.