“Re-set”, meaning that advertising will come back to radio, but not to the level it enjoyed even 12 months ago.

“Re-set”, meaning that station brokers and lenders believe radio stations will start trading again, and there will be owners who want to be in the business long-term. But not for the kinds of prices that stations fetched even 12 months ago.

“Re-set”, meaning that radio station staffing levels will stabilize, but not where they were 12 months ago.

You could keep naming more examples of “re-set” in the radio business, and they’re all a way to talk about what Cherry Creek Radio CEO Joe Schwartz calls “the new normal.” In other words, things are going to get better. But they’re never going to be the way they were.

The new normal will be a “re-set” of old organizational structures and old habits.

But more than anything else, the “re-set” is really “mind-set.” As the Borg say in sci-fi-speak, “resistance is futile”, and that’s what group heads like Joe Schwartz and Ed Christian at Saga are preaching. Get used to the new normal, and get used to being proficient at lots of jobs and being very, very flexible. Those guys and plenty of other operators aren’t stepping away from radio, even as they make the painful changes to keep their groups viable. And nobody’s saying they have the magic answers – they’re just trying things and seeing which ideas and techniques work.

Perhaps the hardest mental “re-set” trick of all will be to remember what makes radio special – connecting with the listener, one on one. If radio loses that while it’s trying to just keep the lights on, it will have lost something more important – its soul.

And fear is a lousy motivator, isn’t it? There’s fear of job loss, from the unprecedented numbers of jobs being slashed. There’s fear about whether the industry will have enough jobs for the talented people who thought they'd always be able to make a living in radio. There’s fear about what what’s ahead for many companies who've got major debt payments due in 2009 – some of the biggest companies. And underneath it all, fear that nobody really understands what the hell is going on, or how to fix it. Radio’s not alone. Wall Street is gripped by the same primal fears. But radio’s not used to it. The standard advice – just do the best you can at your job, every day – is still valid. But it doesn’t seem like enough. The hardest thing may be the most important thing, and that’s to remember why radio is powerful – because it makes connections to its listeners. What are you thinking, here around the holidays? I'm Tom Taylor, and I'm at Tom@in3media.com.

We read about assassinations of managers and assaults on reporters – and it’s like the U.S. radio industry is in a different business from much of the rest of the world. Nobody’s hankering to have politicians and police angrily banging on the doors of radio stations here. But one lesson to draw from the latest news is that stations elsewhere know they’re doing something important, something that can even make them a target. While American radio seems mostly focused on managing the shrinkage of its business – and its own self-image. Radio’s lost some of its confidence – some of its mojo – in the years of this decade, along with some of its brightest and most inventive minds. When you talk with people at successful stations in smaller markets today, they tend to say “things are okay here.” For them, the business model of local radio still works. They haven’t lost confidence in themselves – and they’re still doing things, on and off the radio, that move their communities and make them better places. Isn’t that a pretty good goal, even with today’s smaller staffs and tightened budgets? If radio can make sure it’s still valuable to the community around it, it’s got a future. If it’s just a jukebox…who needs it?

Winter is potentially treacherous across New England (and elsewhere, heaven knows) – but New England broadcasters are getting a stern early test of emergency preparedness. They're also enduring a test of emergency generators, not to mention human patience. To everybody who’s working to keep their stations on the air and keep serving the public during extreme cold and power outages – you're doing something heroic. And you'll never know just how much you're contributing to your communities and the quality of life there. You already know this – you're doing something no other industry can.