Re(2): Why dont you ever play Dancing Queen? Posted on June 19, 2021 at 03:14:29 PM by A radio gypsy
Again (exhale) I never cared about the sales slugs and what they did, so long as the lady in accounting gave me my check every two weeks. Come to think of it, nobody else on the performing side gave a crap either!
Unlike you, those guys were out beatin the streets, driven by a hard ass sales manager that he didn't wanna see em until the next sales meeting first of the week.
Which is probably why you're out of radio and had to one man band it because you couldn't stand the pressure, or demand to work too hard. Or am I wrong? For askin me all the time about my resume, you hold yours pretty close to your chest.
Btw, about radio and TV handles. Mine were chosen by program directors. One was because I signed a restrictive covenant at KFH and Bashaw wouldn't let me go across the street to take a morning gig unless I changed the name I used there. Air names aren't important but keeping the same one is helpful when you stay in the same market--especially in news because you build a reputation of trust with your sources, and you want it to follow you if you move cross town.
You wouldn't know that as a sales slug who often start out in radio and then move to selling cars, billboards, or products that quadruple your income.
Tell US why you didn't go sell medical supplies for some big corporation or get into real estate or advertising and eventually open up your own agency? That's what my dad did--he left K State and sold feed and before he got cancer, he had his own agency. That's when I got interested in the media; I really wanted to be a graphic artist til he told me how little they made and that they were a dime a dozen in KC. But news was way more fun. I had to get out of field work becaue it didn't pay all that much; working inside did, but it wasn't as fun.
For me, broadcasting lost its luster when radio corporations were reticent to get into wage wars with their competitors so they didn't raid each other's stables. Instead they got their sister stations to raid the talent across the street to other markets.
Amazing what general managers do to their employees when they're at the club having lunch with each other. The can break the law over cocktails as much as they want to restrain trade.
I may not know much about the business at 30 thousand feet, but I did learn that being number one in the ratings isn't nearly as important to bosses, as meeting your profit targets and pleasing the home office. Only jocks care about ratings because if they have a bad book, or their station suffers, they're callin the moving van. Ask Ron Eric about that.