Getting a job in radio...back then

[bk77]

Was it easier or just as hard to get into radio back in the so-called good ole days ( say prior to the 1970s ) compared to today?

Over the years I heard a few "old timers" say things like "..hey if you think breaking into the biz is tough now you should try doing it back in the 1930's, 1940's and even the 50's".

One thing they point out was back in the 30s and 40s, the networks and many local stations had some sort of "morals code" for those who wanted to be on air. Such as one had to married. Not that those who were single couldn't find work in radio, that was reserved for writers. I wonder how much of this was actually true?

Another thing I heard was that back then announcers had to pass a voice test in order to even be considered to go on air such as saying a certain tounge-twister, fast and several times in so many minutes..and correct.

And back then, if you worked for a show that was sposnored by a product, well you were forced to use that product. Say the station/show you worked on was sponsored by Camel Cigarettes, well you have to smoke Camels. Even if you were a non-smoker, well you have to take up the habit of smoking Camels or you get the ax. If this is true, imagine trying to this practice today.

Any other differences?

 

[sack]

I came up in the early 80s as a part time board-op at a public station. So I can't talk about what happened before,, however...

I wish they brough back the "Voice Test". I am beyond annoyed at these half assed wanna be announcers butchering the english language just to sound like they are in-touch with the audience. I still believe if you are on the air you should speak proper english. Sure, every station has a specific sound, but why does sounding like an idiot have to be part of that sound? We used to respect the announcers and disc jockeys,, now they are a joke. Not all of them,, but more and more every day.

Just my old man opinion.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Got my first job at a radio station in June 1956. Had the privilege of working for some veterans who told of sleeping on the transmitter room floor to make ends meed back in the depression. Interesting stories of some real knuckle-head bosses.

First you need to have some discussion with some old timers about what life was like in American back in the 30s, 40s and 50s whether you worked at the hardware store, the bank, taught school or worked at the radio station. Particularly out in rural America. It was an era where you always included a photograph with your resume so the potential employer would know your race. It was an era when employers felt it was their duty to pay a married man more than a single man because he had an extra mouth feed. And men with children were to be paid even better. Employers in any line of work established any tom-fool hazing event they wanted for job applicants. I lived in one town where the, make that THE car dealer made sure that a majority of the city council and the school board were employees of his. You could get a job teaching school in that town driving something other than a Chevrolet, but local folklore said that you better be driving a Chevy by the time your contract was due for your second year of teaching.

I haven't worked for a radio station for several years so I don't know how hard or how easy it is to get employment in the industry today, but I think it was probably less of a problem back then. Getting the GOOD jobs, the DESIREABLE jobs has always been competitive and tough, then and now.

 

[mleach]

First you need to have some discussion with some old timers about what life was like in American back in the 30s, 40s and 50s whether you worked at the hardware store, the bank, taught school or worked at the radio station. Particularly out in rural America. It was an era where you always included a photograph with your resume so the potential employer would know your race. It was an era when employers felt it was their duty to pay a married man more than a single man because he had an extra mouth feed. And men with children were to be paid even better. Employers in any line of work established any tom-fool hazing event they wanted for job applicants. I haven't worked for a radio station for several years so I don't know how hard or how easy it is to get employment in the industry today, but I think it was probably less of a problem back then. Getting the GOOD jobs, the DESIREABLE jobs has always been competitive and tough, then and now.

actually somethings have really never changed. While few today would send a pic of them alongside their resume, many places still even today favor a married man/woman over a single for a job even though there are laws in place that are supposed to have put a stop to that practice.

One radio station I was part of, quite often the 7-Midnight gig was open. They just had a hard time filling that position.
We had a part-timer on the weekends who had YEARS of experience in both small and major market radio plus he had a great set of pipes as they say in the biz. But whenever a full time opening was available he was always passed over. At one point the PD hired a young man with no radio experience at all ( and sounded like it on the air ) for full time 7 - Mid even though the veteran djapplied for the position. The young man's voice was so high pitched that even I had a few listeners asked me if he was a man or a woman. Why did the PD picked him over the vet? Because the young man was married and the man who had years of experience had never been married. The PD simply refused to promote and/or hire someone who was a single to full time status though he had no problem hiring them for part-time. He even told me this himself. Saying that married folks "are more serious, stable and conservative and they don't fool around". This didn't happened in the 70s or 80s, say 1999 !!!!!

Needless to say our station passed over a number of pros ( and we lost a good number too ) over the years because of the PD's opinions.

And that kid 7-Midnghter they hired? Yeah he stayed with us for awhile but his marriage... Well we had a number of listeners call us up complaining that he and his wife had a number of online ads on personal websites asking for a "third" party to share their bed since the couple had an "open relationship". Well so much for this guy being "more serious, stable and conservative and they don't fool around".

 

[redneckriviera]

Here are a few more observations. I started as a jock in 1966, run a 6-station cluster today as market manager & also teach at a Big Ten university.

Consolidation has eliminated probably two-thirds of all on-air jobs, and there are enough boomer-jocks still around to make it damn-near impossible for a youngster to break in as an AT. Not impossible, but close. Today's young air talent has to be much further along than we were 40 years ago, because they're competing with experienced 50-year olds for those "entry-level" jobs. So they don't have the luxury of OJT--they've gotta be very good, immediately. There is no place to go (or very few places) to make the mistakes we made while we developed our talent. I advise my students to dive into the university's student stations (our school has both FM and online stations) so that they can be competitive upon graduation.

Another big change from 40 years ago is that a college education is damn-near a necessity, now. This is still a "talent business" (like singing or dancing or carrying a football)--and a "performance business" (you can't just show up at work every day--you've gotta move the meter)--but within the greater scope of American society, today's BA/BS is equivalent to yesterday's high school diploma. Everybody's got one. Radio sales has become much more sophisticated & much more competitive, so there's not much room for people who aren't well-educated, intelligent & creative. If there ever was room.

Finally, radio's payscale hasn't kept up. My first small-town radio sales gig following college graduation in the late sixties paid $200 a week--$10,400 a year. In today's money that's equivalent to $55,000--and nobody is paying 55 grand today for sales rookies. As a result, the "best & the brightest" aren't even considering radio as a career. Forty years ago we were among the higher paid people in sales; today--among the lowest. That's a huge problem.

 

[jonbruce]

I started in 1964 in a one stick town. It was so easy in those days. In a few months you could move up from midnights to drive time at your first station, then just drive into a bigger market and be hired the same day. Yes, there was a lot of competition for gigs in the million plus markets but after a few years experience if you were good those jobs weren't that hard to get either. Almost all the stations were live 24/7. Those were the days; no first and last months rent required to get an apartment. Everything was affordable even on min. wage !

 

[TheStoker]

I started about 33 years ago. One thing that stands out to me now are the interns! Back then you would never have this "From intern to PD in 18 months" nonsense!

 

[sack]

I started about 33 years ago. One thing that stands out to me now are the interns! Back then you would never have this "From intern to PD in 18 months" nonsense!

Interns! I remember doing just about anything to get my foot in the door. Now so many of the newbies have a rotten attitude when it comes to doing the crummy jobs that interns used to do, like its beneath them to do grunt work.

And intern to Pd in 18 months??? well, if all you have to do is insert the information the consultant gives you into Selector, you could get away with a monkey doing that job. Maybe thats why radio sounds like it does now. You can program by the numbers, but you never see a paint by the numbers in an art gallery. OK, I'm old school and still consider radio done right an art.

When I was growing up I worshiped some of the radio personalities I heard,,, Jean Shepherd, Harry Harrison, Dan Ingram, Scott Muni, John Gambling. They were all distinct personalities, and you wanted to listen to them, not just the radio station, but the on air personality. After school I would go home and listen to Scott Muni,, not WNEW-FM but Muni on NEW. Now there are so few personalities on the air, liner card readers don't inspire much interest or loyalty. If radio doesn't take its product seriously, why should listeners, and if listeners dont' take it seriously, why would anyone want to be in this business?

OK, Im old,,, but it was better back then, at least in my opinion.

 

[firepoint525]

I'm not nearly as old as some of you, but times have changed even since I got my first job in radio in September of 1990. To read more about that first station I worked for, click here, and look for my message on page 4 of that thread:

http://www.radio-info.com/smf/index.php/topic,59892.30.html

I just walked in off the street to that station and asked for a job there. The following week, I was on the air. Of course, the PD asked if I had any experience, and I told him that I did. (I knew this was a small station when I noticed that he was talking on the air without wearing a headset! : )

If you read what I posted in the thread I linked to, above, you would know that it is now impossible for some kid fresh out of college to walk in off the street and ask for a job there. First of all, he would find the doors locked, and the place empty!

Three out of the first four stations I worked for probably would not hire me now, because they would not need me due to satellite, automation, voice-tracking, etc. This makes me wonder how a kid just starting out would be able to find a job in radio now. The first rung of the ladder is now basically gone, so the entry point into a radio career would evidently be much higher up the ladder now, if it even still exists at all!

Maybe this explains why radio is no longer such an attractive career for a kid growing up now, as it was for me a generation ago. Or maybe they read about the b.s. that one must go through to get into radio, at sites like http://www.krud.com and they decided that it just wasn't for them.

Meanwhile, I got let go from my most recent station a couple of months ago, and haven't been able to find anything since! I've got lots of experience in radio, but not much in anything else, and experience in radio, as we all know, doesn't count for much anymore! :'(

 

[bk77]

another problem with radio I have learned in recent years is that many people today don't consider radio a "Stable job" unlike the way it was as recently as the early 90s. That scares many.

The other day I was turned down for a Sears credit card. Not because of a bad credit but because of the nature of the job I am in. Even though I have been in radio since 1993, Sears pretty much considers radio on the same level as working for Manpower Temporary Services.

I can see how. Between comments like "...you are not really in radio unless you have been fired". And whenever a station is sold, BOOM !!, comes the talks about possible job cuts. And with even the the average Joe knows about Clear Channel and the other big companies letting people go without even blinking, yes I see Sears point.

 

[firepoint525]

I am not old enough to remember a time when married men were paid more than single guys for doing the same work. But I have seen the flip side of that lately. Now it is assumed that the spouses of married people also work. I have never been married, and I have often barely made enough money to take care of myself! I have often wondered how married people make it on roughly the same amount of money I make? And I suppose the women's movement and the rise of the daycare industry have made it easier, more common, and more acceptable for women to work outside the home. But if daycare ever costs more than the lower earning spouse makes, look for that spouse to stay home and take care of the kids, at least until they are school age.

Last winter, I bumped into a former co-worker at the TAB (Tennessee Association of Broadcasters) job fair here in Nashville. He told me that he wanted to find a job in radio that would pay him enough that his wife wouldn't need to work anymore. I thought that that was a noble and chivalrous goal, but considering that nearly all of the stations represented at the job fair were only accepting applications for potential possible future openings (and that those applications were only good for 30 days!), it was highly unlikely that he would even find a job in radio at all, much less one that paid a realistic cost of living! And given that we were all rubbing shoulders in that small, crowded meeting room at that hotel, it is highly unlikely that everyone there that day will ever be able to be placed in radio at all, given that there are simply not enough jobs in radio to go around!

 

[Cincinnati Kid]

I go back over 40 years and remember how a station wanted you to have a Third-Class FCC license so you could read the meters of the transmitter and log the results. At that time having the license seemed more important than your speaking or announcing ability. Being able to do a number of duties - like DJ, reading commercial copy, giving the news, being able to do sports play-by-play and being able to time your show - was looked upon as a plus. There were different station officials who told me having the license and the ability to perform the various tasks were much more important than having a college degree in radio.

Sadly, the chance for the young person to obtain an over-the-air position began to dwindle when radio stations started using automation. It decreased even more when those stations began programming satellite-fed shows for hours at a time.

 

[gr8oldies]

I'm not aware of radio ever being a "stable job". I can speak of starting in 1975. There were more places where you could get your feet wet on the air. In my first station in Celina, OH, I met beginners as well as DJs who had worked in larger markets, from places like Cleveland, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, San Diego, and you-name-it, in their first or second gig, or just sgtopping in long enough to cut an aircheck and move to the next bigger town. You may haev DJed at a hole in the wall station or babysat reel to reel automation, reading news and weather and doing production while making sure the music reels were changed on time. My ex-father-inlaw worked in radio in the early 60s and talked about playing commercials off three inch tape reels. There were weekend slots to fill in the 70s, and stations that still had to hire at least one First Class FCC licensed operator (remember those six-week wonder schools for the First Phone like REI in Sarasota, FL?). As
far as a job that would support a middle class lifestyle, those weren't any easier to get back then.

 

[flwfg]

Yeah, whatever happened to REI, Sarasota??? Weren't they in the old Florida Theater downtown??? Somehow I mamaged to get by for 28 yrs with just a 3rd ticket in the Manatee / Sarasota area...

later...

walt