EVOLUTION. JUST DO IT.

Being a creative services director these days involves writing, editing voicing, mixing, mastering, promos, commercials, an air shift and dealing with the neighborhood schizophrenic who shows up wearing a tin foil hat insisting your transmitter is making him wet the bed. That makes you indispensable right? Not even close. All that stuff that used to be considered creative magic is now the domain of anyone with a cracked copy of a DAW and the ability to read English reasonably well. Is that dude as good as you? No, however, it's not that simple.

Radio is looking for new revenue and new ways to reach an A.D.D audience that has an iphone pouring jibber jabber into one ear, and an ipod jamming stolen music into the other. As you've noticed, many stations are not focused on imaging right now. They're trying to populate HD channels, squeeze more cash out of the website, develop twitter contests, provide podcasts and of course, figure out the people meter.

So, ask yourself where you fit in to these new priorities. Have you shifted your attention? Learned new skills? Contributed ideas? Evolved?

As a production person, your tendency is to tweak and refine. You're likely to have valuable critical thinking skills and a creative mind that always remembers to entertain or at least be interesting. That makes you a great candidate to lead your station in new directions. Tough times always provide opportunities to those who are flexible and resourceful.

Sometimes having fewer tools and smaller budgets forces people to be more inventive. Many of you may remember being more wildly creative when you were working in smaller markets with less of everything. You took more chances and you went the extra mile to make goofy ideas come to life. Those corny commercials you made actually got results for local clients. You were evolving all the time. Some of you are in that phase right now.

No matter who you are, it's time for a growth spurt. Here at The Bag, we're trying new things too. We're using ipods for field recording, using more live musicians, experiementing with analog stuff and one time, we bought a bag of kazoos for a holiday project. Even on the tightest budget, you can still afford a bag of kazoos.