Re(1): Radio Career Paths Posted on April 21, 2021 at 05:55:22 PM by Bailing for better pastures
The station's now known as WOAI-TV. Our format was TV News. Same job I had when I left Wichita. Luckily, when the layoffs came at KSN, the then ND had worked in SA at KSAT and linked me up so I was actually double dipping for 3 months. Moving around sucked. Selling a house buying one, wife changing jobs, kids changing schools.
I should have bailed from the media THEN because I'd learned the fundamentals of dBase/Fox programming and PC's were just taking off big time. Every business wanted to computerize. I did write software called NewsDesk, well before the big boys wrote software beyond my capabilities, linking the producers to the prompTer and the rest, the most popular then was NewStar. I coudln't compete with that and I hated sales. and besides I had a full time job.
Mine just did the Assignment desk, the rundown, staff scheduling, fleet maintenance, and photo archives which was helpful at the time. Smaller stations bought it. KSN was early into computers since they had a network of six Kansas stations linked to Microwave, and we passed copy on it. My job was in part to oversee that as well as buy photo, computers, weather equipment and coordinate satellite feeds which got pretty big right then. Now stations generally just keep their sat trucks parked; buying 5 minutes of network time was only $70, so trading with fellow affils using their talent was way cheaper than staffing a road show with reporter, photographer and engineer, PLUS the sat time. Besides talking heads went out of favor so local stations just quit covering the state capitols--which is why state gumments have become so crooked! Today, TV doesnt even need but a couple live reporters because they just chase the cops around and do feature stories from assignment desk handouts. Like Radio, TV was no longer that fun when they took enterprise reporting out of it.
When I finally did bail after yet another staff cutback here in town, I got a contract job with my dBase skills overseeing the midwest superfund sites. Thats how I ended up at the Academy, until Microsoft bought out Foxpro and starting soaking everyone for user licenses. They loved Fox's wicked fast search engine but when we networked, no SQL licenses were required for workstations. Just our own pricy programming software.
Bill Gates will own the world. Remember when they went to 360 Subscription Office? I bought into a 30 day trial, and the bastards wiped out all our pre-paid Office software so when the 30 day Trial was over, we all had no choice but to buy into their annual subscription software. We couldn't go back to Office 2000, etc because they deleted it and wouldn't support reinstalling from disk.
Totally an unfair business practice!
Buisiness computing saved corporation America from hiring file clerks, but with all the overhead, and staff email and excel habits, they loose. Now salesmen sit aorund looking at their spreadsheets analyzing LAST month's sales instead of hitting the street and drumming up business for THIS month! But I never had to wait longer than a week to move to a new job...programming is a programmer's dream cuz they can't live without us! Replies: