meet and greet other members in this group?

[Mark Roberts]

Gee willikers - maybe we should appoint a committee to come up with some fun games and activities to help everyone get to know each other and break the ice....And hey, we can even print colorful nametags! (heaven help us).

Hooray! A team-building exercise!
Followed by selecting our favorite Successories poster, and then taking a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire. Then lunch from Panera Bread.

(You can tell I went corporate, can't you?)

The preceding was not closed-captioned for the humor-impaired.

 

[DavidEduardo]

That sounds suspiciously like having the ER doc & nurses scrubbing road rash & burnt skin off of and out of the cuts and burns on my leg after my motorcycle crash.....without waiting for the pain meds to kick in.

And, of course, that is why some ER docs call them "donorcycles".

 

[DavidEduardo]

If there ever was a meet up, would we be required to use our "radio voice"?

I never had one. That's why I had to build my own station to get an entry-level job in radio. Nobody tells the owner he does not have a radio voice... except his wife!

 

[DavidEduardo]

Hooray! A team-building exercise!

"Team building" sessions in radio generally are sub-titled "perfecting your use of profanities".

 

[Mark Roberts]

Not to mention, I'd guarantee you that nobody from this board would look in person anything like Brad Pitt. More like; 'Good Lord'!

Since both Brad Pitt and I walked across the same floors in Neff and Walter Williams halls at the University of Missouri School of Journalism circa 1978 and 1979, I wish I could say I was acquainted with him or even knew what he looked like. But he was in the advertising sequence; I was in the broadcasting sequence; there was almost no interaction between students in those two sequences. He dropped out and went to Hollywood a few weeks before graduating. I stayed around and have acted up more than I have acted.

 

[DavidEduardo]

Might be better off planning a meetup in Vegas during NAB

That would exclude any non-industry folks, I believe. Were this to be done, the best outcome would be "insiders" to have contact with active listeners and answer their questions or doubts.

 

[Yabadabado1]

"Team building" sessions in radio generally are sub-titled "perfecting your use of profanities".

That's sorta the truth. You'd think that people who work in radio would be careful with their language but once I got into radio I learned swear words from other DJs that I never knew existed. I think even sailors would have complained about their "potty mouth".

 

[tall_guy1]

Are you new to Radiodiscussions.com?

There would be no way to "lock thread" if things got out of hand.

 

[Mikey Radio]

"Team building" sessions in radio generally are sub-titled "perfecting your use of profanities".

That's sorta the truth. You'd think that people who work in radio would be careful with their language but once I got into radio I learned swear words from other DJs that I never knew existed. I think even sailors would have complained about their "potty mouth".

My first staff meeting was when I was a young, paid intern at the Top 40 station in our market. I was still in high school, not even 18. Aside from doing the usual intern-type stuff around the station, assisting the nighttime jock and engineering some remote broadcasts, I had airshifts overnights on weekends.

For the meeting, all the on-air staff assembled in the lobby of the station one weeknight. They had pizza and I was given a beer (again, wasn't 18 and the legal drinking age was 21). The PD and MD walked in and the PD proclaimed "OK, let's get this meeting started. Now. After the MD/morning show guy finished his shift, we went to lunch. We started drinking. We still haven't stopped, and if anyone has any problem with profanity or the use of the word "@#$%", then I suggest you just hit that @#$%ing door right now, because it's about to go downhill here directly". The PD was nearly new to our station, came from a large market to helm our small-market station because he knew the owner and the guy asked him to come in and help right the ship after we'd gone through 2 PDs in about 3 month's time. The meeting actually started out a bit harsh as he went after the night jock for spending too much time on the phone swooning the ladies rather than concentrating on his shift (complete with his spot-on impression of said jock with visuals), he called out a few others for stuff he'd observed about them, but in the end it turned out to be quite a productive meeting. Shortly after he threw out the computer-generated playlists and instituted index cards, color-coding and a clock, showed real faith and trust and interest in his staff and improved ratings even more than they already were, but yeah - that was my first exposure to "team building" in radio. Lol.

 

[michael hagerty]

"Team building" sessions in radio generally are sub-titled "perfecting your use of profanities".

F@#$%^& right, David.

 

[michael hagerty]

That's sorta the truth. You'd think that people who work in radio would be careful with their language but once I got into radio I learned swear words from other DJs that I never knew existed. I think even sailors would have complained about their "potty mouth".

We all have pretty much forgotten the first thing we were ever told in the business, which was "assume every microphone is on".

Which makes some of us too careless when we know the mic is on.

True story as to how I got back into radio after television:

My contract at my last TV station was up and they informed me that they were going to use my salary to hire three kids straight out of J-school.

I was 56 and figured that, even if I landed at another TV station, that was just going to happen over and over again as I got (even) older, so I started talking to people I knew in radio---who had nothing.

Until a couple of weeks later, when I got a phone call from one of them.

He ran the iHeart traffic cluster in Phoenix, where his people did traffic for six markets, Phoenix, Tucson, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, El Paso and Salt Lake City.

The traffic reports for Phoenix were done live, but the others were recorded and fed on a just-in-time basis---start recording five minutes before the hit, feed four minutes before the hit and even with a lagging internet, the station has it three minutes before. It's automatically ingested into the playlist on the other end---untouched by human hands.

The young woman doing the shift began recording her Salt Lake City traffic report, stumbled and yelled:




"MOTHERF***ER!"

...collected herself, took it from the top, finished the report....





And forgot to edit the file before she hit "send".

Which means the people of Salt Lake City (of all places) got to hear a word you don't get to hear on the radio much.

It also meant that there was an immediate opening, and I was back in radio for another 11 1/2 years.

 

[michael hagerty]

There would be no way to "lock thread" if things got out of hand.

True. You'd pretty much have to just lock down the venue and call in a SWAT team.

 

[michael hagerty]

The PD and MD walked in and the PD proclaimed "OK, let's get this meeting started. Now. After the MD/morning show guy finished his shift, we went to lunch. We started drinking. We still haven't stopped, and if anyone has any problem with profanity or the use of the word "@#$%", then I suggest you just hit that @#$%ing door right now, because it's about to go downhill here directly". The PD was nearly new to our station, came from a large market to helm our small-market station because he knew the owner and the guy asked him to come in and help right the ship after we'd gone through 2 PDs in about 3 month's time. The meeting actually started out a bit harsh as he went after the night jock for spending too much time on the phone swooning the ladies rather than concentrating on his shift (complete with his spot-on impression of said jock with visuals), he called out a few others for stuff he'd observed about them, but in the end it turned out to be quite a productive meeting. Shortly after he threw out the computer-generated playlists and instituted index cards, color-coding and a clock, showed real faith and trust and interest in his staff and improved ratings even more than they already were, but yeah - that was my first exposure to "team building" in radio. Lol.

I have to be SO careful telling this story because the PD in question is still working and at a well-regarded, major market station.

Some years ago, this PD gets brought into a station where I showed up a few months later. He was introduced at an all-staff meeting----literally the entire cluster (125-ish people) is there.

The guy is known for his expletives, and these were grownups, so he probably could have gotten away with an s-word here or an f-word there.

But he decided to plant a flag for aggressive news coverage and told the room:

"And we're going to stop giving b***j**s to politicans."

He spent the rest of day one and all of his second day at the station in meetings with every female staffer, individually, at the GM's insistence and with the GM present, apologizing.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

I have to be SO careful telling this story because the PD in question is still working and at a well-regarded, major market station.

Some years ago, this PD gets brought into a station where I showed up a few months later. He was introduced at an all-staff meeting----literally the entire cluster (125-ish people) is there.

The guy is known for his expletives, and these were grownups, so he probably could have gotten away with an s-word here or an f-word there.

But he decided to plant a flag for aggressive news coverage and told the room:

"And we're going to stop giving b***j**s to politicans."

He spent the rest of day one and all of his second day at the station in meetings with every female staffer, individually, at the GM's insistence and with the GM present, apologizing.

I would like to comment on this, since it already delved off topic from the OP’s suggestion of an L.A. meetup.
My question is: When this PD at a major market station said this about politicians, was it only the women who spoke up? And, if so, doesn’t that cause resentment among the men that the women are so overly sensitive that the men have to “tread on eggshells” all the time? Was there a backlash and grumbling that the women were creating problems by being “too woke”?

The following is a story about someone that you and everyone in the L.A. market knew. He is deceased now, but he used to write and produce news feature stories for big stations in L.A. He was also a D.J. When he moved to Orange County, he started an acting workshop, a private school for aspiring actors.

He also got a job teaching broadcasting at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo. Saddleback was looking for announcers for their college station KSBT 88.5, a jazz format. I listened to that station all the time, knew something about jazz, and knew their playlist. When Saddleback announced that they were looking for weekend and substitute announcers for KSBR,who would be hired after completing this man’s broadcasting class.

I thought I could do a 3 hour weekend shift, which would be fun. I knew the man as a radio personality and liked him.

I was teaching high school English at the time. High school teachers are a pretty genteel group, because they are used to watching their language in classroom environments with young people. Educators do go out socially in groups of course, but their behavior is usually professional, because they are supposed to be examples for the youth of the community .

So I signed up for this man’s class, so that I could be in the group of applicants for KSBR.

Part 2 is below.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

At the first class meeting, there were 15 men and 4 women. The instructor asked everyone to introduce themselves. One of the gals, Josie, was very attractive and worked as an actress doing local musical theatre and drama at places like Laguna Beach Playhouse. The other 3 women like myself were just regular looking. But Josie caught the instructor’s attention.

The instructor wanted to create a scenario for a morning duo of man / woman DJ’s . He said that a morning duo needed very good chemistry and had to relate well to each other of doing patter back and forth. So he had written a script of what a morning male/ female duo might say. He called Josie and one of the men up to read the script.
This is where it went off color.
Part 3 below.

 

[michael hagerty]

I would like to comment on this, since it already delved off topic from the OP’s suggestion of an L.A. meetup.
My question is: When this PD at a major market station said this about politicians, was it only the women who spoke up?

As I understand it (and as I said in the initial post, it happened a few months before I arrived), the GM was proactive and didn't wait for complaints. As soon as the all-staff was over, he took the PD into his office and began summoning the female staff, one at a time for their in-person apology.

He understood that it was deeply unprofessional and that he needed to resolve it immediately. After those meetings took place, there was a blanket staff e-mail apology and a promise to do better.

And, if so, doesn’t that cause resentment among the men that the women are so overly sensitive that the men have to “tread on eggshells” all the time? Was there a backlash and grumbling that the women were creating problems by being “too woke”?

No. I think most of the guys on the staff at that time understood just how offensive it was to use a graphic sexual reference and appreciated that the GM took quick action---knowing that if it had been them, there was a non-zero chance they'd have been fired on the spot.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

When Josie and the male student got up to read the script, the instructor had some basic advice. He told them, “look up from the script from time to time, so that you can make eye contact. He told the man, “Now, look her straight in the eye. I don’t mean the eye between her legs. I mean the eye on her face. Josie, keep your legs closed, so he doesn’t look at your other eye. “ He laughed.

Josie was taken aback, and she stumbled. He told her that she would have to learn to deliver her lines better. ( she was a professional actress).

And as the class went on, he just got more and more blue. It was all F-bombs and x-rated jokes.
He was nothing like his persona on the radio. Nothing at all. He was nothing like the DJ or feature writer I admired.

After class, at the door, one of the gals caught the attention of the other three and asked, “Could we talk a minute? Could you work with this man? No doubt he talks like this always, with all the F-bombs and targeted sexual remarks towards women. What could one of us do if he started after one of us, and we were alone in the studio with him? Could we complain? Who would we complain to? He is the person in authority at KSBR. All he would do would be to fire you. “
She made sense. So all 4 of us dropped the class.
TLDR: Whoever said that a radio station is one of the most profane workplace environments in the world (outside of the military ) yes, absolutely correct.

Back to OP topic. It’s just as well that this L.A. meetup won’t happen.

Thank you for letting me tell this story. Never told anyone before- too embarrassing. But a radio station is a very rough workplace. Nothing at all like what the listener hears. -D.

 

[Kelly A]

As I understand it (and as I said in the initial post, it happened a few months before I arrived), the GM was proactive and didn't wait for complaints. As soon as the all-staff was over, he took the PD into his office and began summoning the female staff, one at a time for their in-person apology.

In reading your description; I'd say the GM made potentially the wrong call by summoning only female staff for independent apologies. In my mind, the PD's sexually charged metaphor would have been inappropriate and unprofessional to any of the staff in attendance. I realize what the GM was trying to do was to humiliate the PD multiple times through multiple apologies to make a point. Moreover, his move was a CYA, particularly to female staff, but women being singled out for an apology for overall bad behavior sends the wrong message. "Don't say anything unprofessional or offensive. There are ladies in the audience!".

 

[michael hagerty]

In reading your description; I'd say the GM made potentially the wrong call by summoning only female staff for independent apologies. In my mind, the PD's sexually charged metaphor would have been inappropriate and unprofessional to any of the staff in attendance. I realize what the GM was trying to do was to humiliate the PD multiple times through multiple apologies to make a point. Moreover, his move was a CYA, particularly to female staff, but women being singled out for an apology for overall bad behavior sends the wrong message. "Don't say anything unprofessional or offensive. There are ladies in the audience!".

Completely agree. It’s just the way the GM handled it.

 

[Kelly A]

Back to OP topic. It’s just as well that this L.A. meetup won’t happen.

Amen.

Thank you for letting me tell this story. Never told anyone before- too embarrassing. But a radio station is a very rough workplace. Nothing at all like what the listener hears. -D.

Your story reminds me of the Charlie Rose saga. A seemingly mild-mannered, well-spoken, intellectual, and journalist. Come to find out he was an abusive deviant who prayed on young female staff.

Up until 'me-too' brought the issues to light; I'd agree that some radio and TV stations became cesspools of inappropriate behavior. Over the years, I'd witnessed milder versions, but still would be considered offensive by today's standards. If anything, bringing unfortunate situations to the greater public has put employers on notice that this sort of behavior won't be allowed anymore, and they risk being sued and publicly keel hauled if it gets out.

The really sad part of this? Some people, including on this very site, thought that kind of behavior was considered 'the good ol' days' of radio and TV.