Is Conventional Wisdom An Oxymoron?

I see another major talk radio seminar/convention/whatchamacallit is coming up. I won't be going.

With all due respect to the folks putting it on (who I'm sure will get along just fine without me), I've been to a few of these radio affairs and I can pretty much predict what will happen:

At least one major broadcast executive will explain why the future has never been brighter for our industry...

A host known for taking a hard-line position on moral issues will decry the debasement of the medium. No one will think of doing anything tacky like pointing out the host's own well-known moral shortcomings...

Several old-fart has-beens will gripe about how nobody talks about the really important issues anymore...

A panel of marginally talented syndicated hosts will offer advice on how to succeed with syndication...

A self-described Talent Coach will speak for an hour on how to advance in the biz. A roomful of small-time, one-horse, low-pay market hosts will listen, take copious notes, then go home to follow the speaker's advice diligently. A year later the same talent coach will offer the same advice to a roomful consisting of the same hosts. Some of these hosts however will now be working in different small-time, one-horse, low-pay markets...

A half dozen "opinionated" talk hosts will take part in an "issues" panel during which said hosts will pretty much do what they do on their respective shows: 1) talk and 2) wait to talk...

A handful of true visionaries will tell the truth about the industry. Not what everyone thinks is the truth. Not the truth that everyone wants to hear. The real truth. As none of their names appear anywhere on the agenda, these people will be enthusiastically ignored...

A lot of business cards will exchange hands. Six months from now everybody will pull the cards out of their briefcases and throw them away...

An awful of of people will blow smoke up each others' orifices...

An awful lot of people will believe their own bullshit...

Les Kinsolving, God bless him, will make a total ass of himself...

The food will, at best, not suck...

Who needs it? Frankly, at my age my priority is to stay home and get as much sleep as possible. So that's exactly what I'm-a gonna do.

And besides...if I want to hear some self-important blowhard holding forth of a lot of stuff nobody in the real world really cares about, I'll go here...

Or here...

Or here...

Or maybe even here...