This week's NAB/RAB Radio Show in Washington, D.C., brings together the broadcast industry's leaders, movers, and shakers. But of all those who will be attending, who is the one person that truly speaks for our industry? Is there a person? That's the question posed by guest contributor Lindsay Wood Davis in this week's Sales & Management column.

Who speaks for Radio? It is a simple question, one that used to have a clear (if sometimes controversial) answer. When our industry had many thousands of individual owners and operators and the biggest groups owned 7 AMs and 7 FMs, like the pioneers, we often needed to circle our wagons for protection; you just can't get everyone to form a circle without someone being the voice of authority.

Who speaks for Radio today? The answer is certainly NOT clear. At a time when our industry, both internally and externally, is (or should be) seeking as much clarity as it can get, this lack, this hole, is both indicative of the troubled times we are facing and a harbinger of even more tumult to come.

Before reading any further, ask yourself the question: "Who speaks for Radio?" In phone calls, seminars, on consulting trips, at state broadcast association conventions, in a wide variety of circumstances, I've asked exactly that question to almost 100 of Radio's stakeholders: Owners, group execs, managers, programmers, sellers, bankers, brokers, vendors, engineers. Who speaks for Radio? Almost universally, they've had this immediate answer: "Hmmm, well..."

When answers finally spill from their lips, it is principally a response posed as a question: "Peter Smyth?" "Jeff Smulyan?" "Mel Karmazin?" "Bruce Reese?" When I explain that I'm not looking for a correct answer but ANY answer, THEIR answer, other names popped up, again almost always as a question: "Eric Rhoads?" "Jerry del Colliano?" "Tom Taylor?"

No one, not one person, gave a definitive, clear-cut, answer. And no one, not one, named RAB CEO Jeff Haley or Gordon Smith, CEO of the NAB. Not one.

The simple question, "Who speaks for Radio?" has no clear answer. The inescapable conclusion is that, today, no one speaks for Radio. Plenty talk to us; but no one speaks for us.

This is a recent phenomenon. In the last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, radio had two clear spokespeople. The first was Eddie Fritts of the NAB. Eddie Fritts filled many roles as head of the NAB: lobbyist, negotiator, buttonholer, coalition-builder, enforcer, and leader, would all be titles few would argue with. Yet at the root of his soul, he was a Mississippi Radio operator, one of us. Our industry knew this, recognizing that his role as NAB CEO made working with and for TV necessary to his trade. Generally, we always had a pretty good idea where he'd stand. When something needed to be said on behalf of Radio – well, Eddie Fritts said it. And when he spoke to our industry, to us, from his perch at N Street, NW, in the nation's capital, we listened, carefully, because it was Eddie Fritts talking to us - one of our own.

Gary Fries rose to head RAB not as an owner or Board of Directors in-fighter, (that was Eddie Fritts at his most effective) but as an operator of radio stations and networks. He was one of us. After bringing much needed organization, vision and backbone to the RAB, consolidation cast Gary Fries into the role as radio's "interlocutor," explaining radio to our new love interests, Wall Street and private bankers. He worked hard to bring together the leaders of radio's emerging super-groups, a high-wire act where success certainly wasn't easy. Gary became a powerful voice of clarity for radio on topics of both internal and external importance.

The difference between Eddie Fritts and Gary Fries and their current successors, Jeff Haley of RAB and Gordon Smith of NAB is almost complete. When Fritts and Fries spoke, people inside and outside radio listened. And each made sure, both publicly and privately, that their positions were both clearly outlined and given appropriate public airings.

In contrast, Haley is a cipher, made so at the direction of the RAB Executive Board. His public utterances during his 5-year tenure can probably be counted on one hand. Even in those rare moments where Haley does have something to say (and is allowed to say it), RAB's formerly sharp PR efforts have been too denuded by cutbacks and ineffectiveness to give their CEO's comments any real punch. Jeff Haley is certainly not the answer to the question of, "Who speaks for Radio?"

The newest NAB CEO, Gordon Smith is, of course, Senator Gordon Smith. He follows the "Grand-Opening – Going-out-of-Business Sale" tenure of the man who tried to take Eddie Fritts' place, the so-called "Beer Man" David Rehr. The NAB Board of Directors wanted a real "Capitol Hill Lobbyist" to succeed Fritts, so they chose Rehr, who formerly led the National Beer Wholesalers Association. Rehr's term suddenly ended when he, "didn't work out as hoped." This time, the NAB Board decided that they didn't want a mere lobbyist. Instead, they wanted someone who understood the lobbying world at the very highest level. You can't get to a higher level than a U.S. Senator!

Gordon Smith's first overt public act on behalf of radio was to announce that the NAB's stand on the PRA, the Performance Rights Act, is now different...sort of. NAB is still opposed to the PRA, but willing to entertain a recently negotiated package of concessions. So far, about half of radio seems willing to listen to Smith and about half have indicated (and that is a very polite way of saying it) that they'd rather go back to the David Rehr stance of, "I'd rather slit my throat than negotiate." Win or lose, Gordon Smith has yet to establish any bona fides as someone who speaks for radio.

So, is the answer to the question, "Who speaks for Radio?" really nobody? I believe the answer to that, at least on the macro level, is yes. On a nationwide or industry-wide basis, no one individual currently speaks for our industry.

The why of this has many reasons. One of these is certainly consolidation: At first de-regulation, then consolidation, built radio groups owning scores of stations, then hundreds, then to more than 1000. These groups often felt that their size gave them as much clout as groups like the RAB or the NAB, and at no cost.

That the groups were proven wrong in this is now old history, but it did have a decided effect on how these groups acted when they returned to the fold. I've written before about the RAB Board's failed decision to turn away from a CEO whose job was leading the industry, to one whose job would be selling the industry. It has cost radio leadership when it needs it most and also apparently failed to develop our industry substantial real revenue. I say apparently because, with the ineffectiveness of the RAB's own publicity and communication efforts, how are we, as the radio industry, to know?

At the NAB the situation is too new to give a firm opinion. Certainly, as of yet, the radio industry hasn't blindly followed Gordon Smith on the path to negotiation of the PRA. While there seems little chance that Senator Smith will ever be mistaken for the somewhat flamboyant Eddie Fritts, he certainly needs to be given time to make his own way. However, he won't accomplish that by simply and quietly dealing with the friends he left behind on The Hill. Radio needs to hear Gordon Smith speak to the wide variety of issues facing our industry. Some of the time it will come reported to us in the trades as "the NAB says," which is only appropriate. However, we very much need to hear, "Gordon Smith says..." on the important topics of our time. Let's hear you speak for radio, Senator Smith.

Until then, in our own communities, we all need to "Speak for Radio." In each state, we need to continue to make sure that we, through our State Broadcast Associations, are speaking for radio. And we need to ensure that the leadership we have in place in our most important organizations, the RAB and the NAB, is speaking for radio.

Until a new voice for radio appears, it is up to all of us to use our voices to guarantee that we continue to have a voice. Right now, the only voices we can trust to speak for radio are our own.