By Ken Levine: UnReal

By Ken Levine: UnReal















Dain Schult, CEO, Global Entertainment Technology, Inc.

www.globalentertainmenttechnology.com

www.dainschult.com


I have to cop from Kahlil Gibran to make a statement:



On Children - The Prophet -  Kahlil Gibran



Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.



You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.



You're not out of touch Ken.  Your television children had children who then had children and here we are today.



The sitcoms and dramas of yours and my youth are quaint and Smithsonian worthy now.  What passes for comedy and drama now is so alien, it's a perpetual "Stranger in a Strange Land" song outtake.



When I was 25 I was thrust into managing a suburban Atlanta radio station - it was heady times.  I inherited this old geezer  who went by the nickname, "The Gator" who was my music consultant.  He was in his sixties and looked like he needed to be wheeled over to a rest home.  And yet when the record reps used to show up on Tuesdays to hawk their wares and drop a needle on the singles they were pushing, the Gator was amazing.  This guy somehow managed the impossible - his ear for music didn't age with his body.  He could pick the hits within 30 seconds or less of hearing a new song.  It astounded me.  I always said that I wanted to be like him when I was his age.



Now, I'm in my sixties and having stayed in management and ownership, my ability to pick a hit song now is so non-existent to not be remotely funny.  My kids are in their twenties and thirties now and what they listen to, I can't.  And their children's musical tastes are that much farther away from me now...



The quality of what you or I did in the past isn't denigrated - it's just the natural evolutionary process.  Most of what I see on television right now is straight up dreck and/or I don't get it.  But then again, I don't want to get it.

(As an aside, GET will be involved in both Terrestrial and Internet radio operations in states across the country, including, but not limited to Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Iowa and Wyoming.)