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Leaving in Style

F

FiveStar

Sometimes figuring out the right way to leave a station can be just as tough, if not more so, than getting a job. Case in point, the former morning man at KLAZ. Phil, it never looks good to get sponsors to write letters to your old station dissing your replacement after your leave. For one thing, it looks like you're trying to sabotage your old station. (You wouldn't do that would you?)

For another it makes you look like a self centered ego maniac. I know you'd like to believe that the only reason someone advertises on your show is because you're such a swell guy, but the truth is more complicated: however much the sponsors may like you, the bottom line for them is the bottom line. You may buy them the best lunches and flatter their wives better than anyone else, but the fact is that they advertise where they think they can get the best return for their dollars.

If KLAZ's new morning show is good and provides a good advertising venue for business operators in Hot Springs, that's where businesses are going to advertise no matter how much they make like you personally. By the same token, if you do a better job, you'll walk away with the lion's share. Love, marriage and friendships are hot blooded. Business is cold blooded.

So my advice is to do the best show you can. Everyone says you're a talented guy who does a good show. If that's the case, you'll do just fine, but putting up your old sponsors to write hate laters to KLAZ (especially sponsors who admit in writing that they are getting deals below the standard rate card) just makes you look petty.
 
On my last show on my last day after ten years at my old station, I told a joke. Listener calls the receptionist and asks, "Where is _____?" The listener is informed I've gone to work in Arkansas. A few minutes later, same guy calls, same question, "Where is _____?" He's gone to Arkansas, of course. Another few minutes, same guy, same question, and the receptionist says, look, I recognize your voice; I've already told you twice he's left and gone to Arkansas. Guy says, "I know. I just can't hear that news often enough!"
 
If we stay in the business long enough we'll all find out the hard way that none of us are so important that a station is going to shut down the transmitters the day we leave.
 
FiveStar said:
If we stay in the business long enough we'll all find out the hard way that none of us are so important that a station is going to shut down the transmitters the day we leave.
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Quite true. However, I still find it funny that after I left the Cumulus cluster in central Missouri to take a government job, my cell phone rang constantly for about two months with former co-workers asking me how to get the stations back on-the-air after Audio Vault crashes!
 
and sometimes...your egomania is satisfied. my previous job was in missouri, and when I left, the boss said he's not that important, we don't even have to replace him. that lasted about a month. then they hired a guy; he didn't work out. at which point...they hired two guys. ;D
 
I'm still scratching my head over what happened at the Cumulus cluster. One minute, I'm winning an award, and one of the OM's is bragging about what a great employee he has. The next, he's cutting my hours and my airtime. I managed to get out before he could fire me, and he didn't last six months after I left.

Honestly, I didn't have a problem talking to my former co-workers about Audio Vault and how to make it work. They weren't the ones I had a problem with, and I still consider many of them to be good friends. However, I also wasn't going to put my government job in jeopardy by answering my cellphone all day long at work to help them.
 
Sometimes the answer is the obvious one: some people in positions of authority are nasty, conniving backstabbers who would do anything to feed their ego. That manager may have felt you were taking the spotlight away from him/her and thus had to go, even if it hurt the station.

Of course, sometimes someone in upper, upper management has an idiot nephew who can't hold a job at Burger King....
 
FiveStar said:
Sometimes the answer is the obvious one: some people in positions of authority are nasty, conniving backstabbers who would do anything to feed their ego. That manager may have felt you were taking the spotlight away from him/her and thus had to go, even if it hurt the station.
Click to expand...

Well, the guy wasn't well-liked in the building. Of course, there are a lot of people like that in radio! He certainly did a lot of damage to the cluster during his 18 month reign of terror. I have two thoughts as to what happened. Both center around the fact that we had two OM's, and it wasn't rocket science that Cumulus was going to get rid of one of them. However, it's been three years, and I'm over it. He made two months of my life pure hell, but he really didn't do much to hurt me. My government job was an instant $10,000/yr pay raise, and I got to keep doing radio on the weekends, though it's been at two different clusters. None of that means I like him or that I wish him particularly well, but it doesn't really bother me anymore. About the only concern I have about the whole episode is that I may have done something to set him off that I didn't realize. After all, I'd like to know if I did something so I can learn from it and not do it again at another job!
 
Kent said:
FiveStar said:
Sometimes the answer is the obvious one: some people in positions of authority are nasty, conniving backstabbers who would do anything to feed their ego. That manager may have felt you were taking the spotlight away from him/her and thus had to go, even if it hurt the station.
Click to expand...

About the only concern I have about the whole episode is that I may have done something to set him off that I didn't realize. After all, I'd like to know if I did something so I can learn from it and not do it again at another job!
Click to expand...

Doesn't sound like the situation even warrants that kind of concern. If you were doing your job and speaking in turn and that wasn't good enough, it says more about him than you.
 
How's this for leaving in style?

Back when radio was live 24-7, I worked at a station where the program director (the most contemptible person I've known in this business) pulled the afternoon shift. One payday, the evening jock picked up his check, then didn't show up for his shift. The PD found the evening jock's resignation letter on his office door. Poor PD ended up doing nine hours on the air that night.

The only thing that would have made it better is if the overnight guy had resigned that day, too.
 
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