Stunning…

Could this ever happen in Radio?

Not that long ago, within our lifetime, Jonas Salk developed the first, effective vaccine to stop polio, a terrifying scourge that left millions of children and young adults paralyzed in the 20th century.

When asked why he didn’t patent his vaccine and enrich himself, he said, “Could you patent the sun?”

It seemed impossible, less than 50 years ago, that one would hold populations hostage with cures to horrible diseases.

Could Jonas Salk exist today? Could anyone today walk away from that kind of money — for the greater good?

THIS is a story worth sharing.

It raises a couple of important questions we probably don’t ask often enough:

  1. Are most CEOs worth 300 times — or more — their average worker’s pay?
  2. Is it possible to pay all full time workers within any industry enough to live, without welfare, or medicaid, or food stamps? — because right now most welfare recipients work full time.
  3. And if not, how do we fix that in this age of ever-increasing CEO compensation packages?

This story is remarkable because it’s unexpected, because it goes against everything we usually hear about the 1%.

Does anyone at CBS or iHeartMedia or Entercom have the imagination to do this?

Think what it would mean if they did.

Think how it would change your perception of your company.

Think how it would change our industry.

All it requires is a bit of humanity, humility, and courage to separate from the peer-pack of media CEOs.

Oh, and a willingness to not need to further enrich oneself.

Do you think your CEO has that within him/her?

How about us? Would we be willing to give up a bit of our compensation so that every full time worker inside our stations earns a livable wage?

That puts it in a different light, huh?

How cool would it be to work in a group with this kind of leadership!