You don't have to be in the radio industry to know that it's life's experience which helps us communicate. The term "broadcasting" is based on an ability of sending to many people, simultaneously. Groups reached are usually defined by how individuals within relate.

From the beginning, those in control of whatever was being broadcast would use a singular relatable thread to capture the attention of people on the receiving end; hence, we have commercials during football games that show fans watching football games.

"No studio. No printing presses, cameras, or microphones. Yet, a message is being sent to the massess..."

Relate to the audience while giving it a message is the objective in mass communications. Said more succinct, get the largest portion of an audience to digest your message by relating to it. That next Sunday is Christmas is something Christians (and many others) relate to. The week after that, everyone in the world will relate to a New Year approaching. Now that we've encompassed the world let's focus more on your market, a specific city, a part of town, one school's radius, a neighborhood, and a street.

Communicating is done on many levels and, with the internet, you can cover each of them efficiently. Let me use one of my life's experience to demonstrate these levels of granularity.

On Saturday December 17, the neighbor on my left (#1) was visiting the neighbor on my right (#2). With the internet, again, I show this using Google Earth.

While there, #1's car burst into flames. It obviously got my attention, and that of our volunteer fire department. What wasn't known until now is that #1's a craftsman, and all of the tools used for his work were in the burned car's trunk. Due to these tough times, as with many struggling families, there was no insurance on car or tools. Expand the circle now, from neighbors to our street. Our neighborhood is friendly, everyone talks with each other. A few of us started talking and agreed that neighbor-1 needed help.

Everyone on the street is being contacted to, in the spirit of Christmas, give what they can to help this family in need. I've set up a page at AudioGraphics.com to make this easy.

By virtue of the internet we also have the ability to expand this request through our township's school radius, to all of Cleveland's suburbs, to your city, the nation, even around the world using social media. That's an amazing feat in itself, but considering it is being done from my home office makes it remarkable.

No studio. No printing presses, cameras, or microphones. Yet, a message is being sent to the masses in a relatable way: If you find the meaning of Christmas within this story, please donate to this family's distress.

Nothing represents this holiday more than helping those in need. Whether a person donates by a kettle in front of a store, at a Salvation Army soup kitchen, at a church, or on your street, the ability for people to reach back from where-ever-in-the-world-they-are is an astonishing act that the internet makes possible. You can take part in it right now!

Where we once used a megaphone, we all, radio industry included, now have an ability to communicate one-to-one, on a granular level. Successful radio managers will use this two-way communications as a foundation for existence.

Yes, the radio industry is still broadcasting. But everyone in it better know how to drill down to the level of a street. It's being done with more regularity every day, by businesses - and neighbors giving support.

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