The Death of Gatekeepers: A Media Origin Story from MTV to Algorithms

This episode is my media origin story.

I grew up in an analog world where music and media still had gatekeepers. MTV broke artists. Radio decided what you heard. Recording studios were expensive, and working in media was a profession you trained for, studied, and slowly earned your way into.

Then everything changed.

In this episode of Confessions of a Gen-X Mind, I trace my path from high school journalism and tech theater, to radio, to early streaming at Yahoo, and into today’s algorithm-driven creator economy. Along the way, I unpack how payola, label influence, and MTV placements shaped the music business long before Napster blew the doors off. I talk about being an early Napster adopter, watching Lars Ulrich testify before Congress, and realizing that the old business models were never coming back.

I also get personal about why I was drawn to media in the first place. ADHD, external validation, the pull of the spotlight, and the slow realization that fame is a terrible life goal. Democratized tools made it possible for anyone to create, which was both a gift and a curse. The barrier to entry vanished, but the noise exploded.

This episode is about adaptation. About growing up analog, surviving the collapse of traditional media, and learning how to create with intention in a world where everyone has a camera, a platform, and an opinion.

Not to romanticize the past.
 To understand it.

Transcript

George TenEyck: 0:00

Media, music, and the long way around. I came of age in a world where media felt mysterious. You didn't just make it, you trained for it. You studied it. You worked your way in. There were gatekeepers, sure. But there was also craft. You learned signal flow, you learned how stories were built. You learned that behind every voice, every image, every moment on screen, there were people in rooms making deliberate choices. That's what hooked me. At first, I told myself I just wanted to understand how it worked. But if I'm being honest, I also wanted to be seen. Like a lot of Gen X kids, my first education came from pop culture. MTV when it still played music. Rocky Metaries, like A Year and a Half of the Life of Metallica, and MTV's The Making of Aerosmith's Pump. Watching artists in studios, watching producers sculpt sound, watching the sausage get made. That's when I knew I wanted in. Music was the entry point, but media became the obsession. And somewhere around high school it clicked in a more concrete way. I was writing and shooting photos for the Pioneer Press, my high school newspaper. Learning journalism, learning deadlines, learning how words and images actually landed with people. We laid out the paper the old school way, on early Macintosh running Adobe PageMaker, Xacto knives, glue sticks, laser printers, physical layout boards, on giant drafting tables, real old-fashioned publishing, not theory. At the same time, I found myself pulled towards the tech theater class, Mrs. Merby. That was the closest thing I had to a tribe in high school, besides my BMX friends. At actual high school, it was the theater kids, the thespians, the odd ones, the artsy creative types who knew about O'Clockwork Orange and Pink Floyd's The Wall, and the obscure one-act plays that most of the school had never heard of. The kids who stayed late to rehearse and build sets and chase perfection for state competition that nobody else cared about. Our Fine Arts Center was at the time one of the most advanced high school theater facilities in the state. A real theater, real lighting rigs, a real sound system with a full rail and catwalks high above the audience. This is where I tasted real production for the first time. If there was a musical, a school assembly, a talent show, or anything involving a stage, the tech theater students could volunteer to crew it. We didn't get paid, but it felt professional. Running spotlights from the catwalk, watching cues, and feeling the tension when something went live. Standing up there on the dark ceiling high above the audience, operating a spotlight, something clicked. This felt familiar. It lined up perfectly with my fascination with roadies and stage crew setting up Metallica shows, the people behind the scenes who made the spectacle possible. For the first time, I had a tangible thought that wasn't fantasy. Hey, I could realistically do this for a living. Around the same time, I started getting something else that was just as intoxicating recognition. Kids thought me in the hallways between classes. They liked the articles, they loved the photos, and they loved the videos. I even made crude VHS edits when the gymnastics coach, Coach Milan, wanted a promo commercial for the school's in-class video system channel 1. A lot of high schools had this in the early 90s. That's the same channel 1 where, weirdly enough, Anderson Cooper got his start. For an ADHD kid with shaky self-esteem, that recognition was a dopamine hit, a big one, way back in 1991. And I'm not gonna pretend otherwise. I didn't just want to create, I wanted the spotlight. I thought I wanted to be famous, or at least almost famous. The attention made me feel good. It made me feel visible. It made me feel like maybe I wasn't invisible after all. So yeah, I chased it hard at first. That's why I studied radio, TV, and film at the University of North Texas. The anchor desk, the voiceover booth, the mic. That was the imagined destination. The late great Bill Mercer, the legendary sports and wrestling broadcaster, pulled me aside after class one time and said, You'd better do something with that gift. He was talking about my voice. Much to my surprise, I had taken that class as an elective. I didn't have any intention at that moment of being a voice actor, but that moment mattered more than he probably realized. But here's the part they don't put into the brochures. While I was still in college working part-time at Sports Radio 1310, The Ticket, I'd occasionally ask the radio personnel use for career advice. Rookie move, I know. But more than once the answer was pretty blunt. Change majors. It wasn't out of cruelty, it was out of exhaustion. These were salty veterans watching terrestrial radio consolidate, automate, and hollow itself out in real time. They knew the math, and they weren't wrong about the odds. But I was undaunted. Dallas is a top five media market, it's number five. You don't just walk on to a job on the air in Dallas. I knew that. So I went behind the scenes out of necessity. Engineering, production, learning everything I could to stay relevant and paid. I worked at the ticket, then conservative talk radio at Salem Radio Network, against my own progressive leanings, I might add, because I needed the full-time job and insurance after graduating from UNT. That trade-off mattered. I learned how the machine worked from the inside, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. The guys I worked with were awesome. I got my break, and I got my full-time employment and my insurance. But helping push right-wing pre-maga propaganda was not who I was. So while I was there, I quietly aimed higher. At one point, before Yahoo or Google were even realistic possibilities for me, I was interviewing with NPR in Washington, D.C. NPR was the dream job for me in 2004. The gold standard. Journalism done right. After Salem, I wanted to work for something that aligned with my values. But then reality kicked in. I did the math. Salary versus cost of living in DC, winters, and most of all the requirement to join a broadcasting union just to work there. The dream was still a dream, but it was suddenly much less viable. At the same time, I was planning a fallback. I had minored in real estate because my parents' generation always said you better have something to fall back on if the creative thing fails. I was literally preparing to sell houses with my dad. Then Yahoo called. Postbroadcast.com, post-Cuban era, streaming before people even called it streaming. Crude Windows Media Encoder, Dell Edge servers, and satellite dishes pulling in everything from NASA TV to the NHL to NASCAR. Cutting edge for 2006, duct tape and all. It was a big unknown, but I knew something else too. If I didn't evolve right then, I'd become one of those salty radio guys, or worse, I'd wash out of the media business entirely. Yahoo was the right move, even if it scared me. Meanwhile, the mythology of media and music kept unraveling. MTV wasn't rebellion and art alone. It was paid placements. Labels bought rotation. Radio had payola long before anyone admitted it. Hits were not accidents, they were investments. Then, Napster detonated the whole system. I was an early adopter, I'll admit it. I loved the chaos of Discovery. iTunes did not exist yet in 1999. Genres dissolved overnight, music escaped radio silos. But I knew the genie wasn't going back in the bottle. Lars Ulrich, Metallica's drummer, went to Congress. I watched it. I was a little perturbed at first because those guys were kind of my heroes on some level, but I understood his argument as an artist, but I still lived in the reality of the moment. Digital upended everything. Recording gear got cheaper, software replaced studios, distribution went direct, the physical media business model completely collapsed. I read confessions of a record producer around that time. It didn't kill my love of music, but it tempered my expectations. Guitar players were a dime a dozen, and they always had been. Seeing kids today casually ripping Metallica riffs on Instagram proves the point. Talent matters, but timing and access matter more. That realization pushed me further behind the scenes. Then the next reckoning arrived. Everyone suddenly had a studio in their pocket. HD cameras, editing apps, platforms begging for content, no permission required. And I'll be honest, that messed with me. I was a professional, degreed, trained. I'd spent years learning production, audio, storytelling. I struggled for gigs. I chased validation. I paid dues, and now I was watching complete amateurs go viral and monetize attention. It was hard not to feel bitter about that. Hard not to ask why I was even still trying. Comparison really is the thief of joy. An influencer culture is a 24-7 comparison engine. Algorithms don't care about your resume, they care about attention. And here's the twist. After years of chasing the spotlight, I didn't want it anymore. I didn't want to be recognized in public. I didn't want eyes on me at all. That same external validation that once fueled me became exhausting. I questioned my relevance, I questioned my path. I even thought about quitting, but I didn't. Because once the frustration settled, something clearer emerged. The tools didn't replace experience. They exposed intent. A lot of people wanted attention. Fewer people wanted to understand the work. The democratization of media didn't erase professionalism. It erased the illusion that professionalism guaranteed recognition. And that was freeing. Years later, I closed a loop by finally trying freelance voice acting, auditions, rejection, 50 tries before one booking. A$1,200 job I recorded standing in my apartment closet. But that was enough. I didn't need to prove anything else. I'm a classic underachiever on paper. Long hair, dressing different, BMX tricks to draw a crowd, a nonconformist posture, hiding a shy kid with social anxiety, and a quick wit as armor. I masked well. Most people never saw the struggle. Now I don't hide it. And here's the part that feels like full circle. For the last 14 years, I've gotten to use my voice every day on the job as the voice of a webinar brand. Not behind the scenes, not invisible, but trusted, familiar, and present. I didn't need that marquee placement. I didn't need to be on a big local radio station or on television to feel relevant. That wasn't the path they taught us at UNT. But it's a far more realistic outcome than the old broadcast ladder ever was. In Confessions of a Gen X mod, I look back at childhood, culture, media, music, and technology. Not to romanticize the past or to dwell in it, but to understand it, to add context, to explain how a generation learned to adapt without instructions, and why so many of us are only now finding the language to explain ourselves. Like James Hetfield put it, decadence, death of the innocents. The pathway starts to spiral. Infamy, all for publicity, destruction going viral. I didn't want infamy. I wanted meaning. And as it turns out, the long way around was the right way, after all. I'm George Tenike. This is Confessions of a Gen X Mind. We'll chat with you soon.