• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Progressive talker needs direction

Did local TV news for 20 years. Some anchoring, lots of reporting. Not renewed for the last time I did talk AM talk radio (small market) for 16 months until the station let me (and six others go) due to falling revenues (great recession). But I gotta say I was bitten/smitten with sitting behind a drive-time mic five days a week, and I WAS F'ING GREAT at it. Progressive and not shy about it and the viewers loved me.
So where do I go from here? Not a lot of progressive AM talk slots out there and I can't afford to pay any more dues. Any suggestions? Who should listen to my stuff? Do bigger market PDs use agents to find talent? Where would I find an agent?
All suggestions greatly appreciated.
 
Many of the progressive talk stations have Randi Rhodes, Thom Hartmann, Ed Schultz, Alan Colmes, etc so a place to start is talking to whomever syndicates them. Some PD's have their weekday slots full but may need a weekend talker, so another option could be asking the PD's what if anything are they looking for. There's a lot less progressive talkers out there so demand may be higher than supply. Finally, although exhausting, you may have to find a flagship who gives you an anchor spot to reestablish yourself and get you back on the map.
 
Mammon....

Here's some direction....

Rule Number One: You work for the People outside the Studio Window.


Rule Number Two: You do not work for yourself, and especially not your ego:

The People will always tell you what they need, by either listening, or by not listening. If they're not listening....you are wrong.


Rule Number Three: You do not work for your Company:

Regardless of your committment, competence, success, or innate ability, your company will blow you out the door eventually. Usually because they don't listen to anyone except themselves, and that pathological intellectual inbreeding will always catch up with those who practice it. (Why? They ignore both Rule Number One, and especially Rule Number Two....Relgiously)


Rule Number Four: You do not work for a paycheck.

If you need a paycheck, don't do Radio. The Geniuses have determined through the continual concert of Thought, Word, and Deed, that On-Air Talent is really the only true weakness of Radio. Regardless of how little you may make, you are too expensive, and therefore necessarily expendable. If you do not have at least 25-Thousand Dollars in your F@#k-You! Fund....You're about to go bankrupt.


Rule Number Five: You're about to get fired, therefore you do not need a contract.

Most of what you sign in a contract is a trap, designed to give your company an instant and ongoing opportunity to fire you. Since we have already defined your actual place, standing, and future in any given Radio Station, it's far better to have the fund mentioned above, and work at will.

Finally, Rule Number Six: Be Friendly, Cordial, Professional, Quiet, and Cooperative, always.

You lose nothing by being hard to figure out. Especially, if you do what you're told. Truly, never let them see you sweat, lose your temper, or your poise. Be a Pro.

Good Luck!

Jon-David Wells
The Wells Report
NewsTalk 660 KSKY
Dallas, Ft. Worth, Texas
 
I'm sorry, but that has to be the most disfunctional advice on how to live one's life I have ever read!

Is that how we have ended up with Donald Trump, Glenn Beck and their ilk as the poster children of our civilization?
 
Hey Goat...

He wasn't asking for direction on how to live one's life. He was asking for direction on how to make it in Radio today.

The dysfunction you note isn't in the advice....It's the current state of Radio that requires it being shared in the first place.

You blame the observers for what they observe....the analysts for what they discover....the honest practioners for telling others what they need to do in the face of a...yes...dysfunctional reality.

Stop killing the messenger....

J-D
TWR

PS: Where's your (better) advice? Is it: "Sit on the sidelines, and make snide comments about those with the guts to speak the Truth"?
 
jondavidvox said:
The dysfunction you note isn't in the advice....It's the current state of Radio that requires it being shared in the first place.

I'm going to agree with you. My message was poorly written. It should not have been aggressive, and so in-your-face.

But you and I may have some things on which we disagree related to the situation of the person who kicked off this thread.

Much too late in life this old country boy realized that in this world some people are born to be quarterbacks and some born to be fighter pilots. There are certain skills to "see the playing field" and skills to prescribe the correct medicine that set these people apart. I conclude there is probably no mentor on the face of this earth who could have trained me to handle the football, see the playing field, and select a receiver or runner under the time constraints of the game.

There are people who played pretty good H.S. ball, maybe college ball, and a few who actually tried to play in the pros who did not have that inborn skill. These folks who can play the game, but can never quite be THE STAR make GREAT COACHES because they have had to dig and experiment to learn what works. They have had to go to their coaches and mentors and ask: What am I doing wrong? Sometimes the star quarterbacks and fighter pilots can't guide someone else because they don't why or how they do it... the just do it and do it better than anybody else.

Here is what triggered me to write such a brash response. So many self-help books and essays like the one you wrote are great advice...... for the person with Quarterback brain-power. For young people who have attended college and selected a sensible degree plan that matches their brain-power and have found themselves working for a corporation that is "functional" and has a H.R. function that is given a mandate from management to groom and nurture the candidates working their way up the pyramid, essays like yours are mandatory reading.

But for people butting their heads up against the wall in today's.... (can I call the broadcast industry dysfunctional without irritating people?)... today's broadcast industry, for even more so for people butting their heads up against the wall in trying to create a whole new genre in this world of Podcasting, streaming, on-demand digital material... I would maintain their no clear path. There are some would-be geniuses doing their best to shape and discover this new genre of media. Some are destined to be winners. Some are destined to wish they had a staff accounting job at Eli Lily or Coca Cola or AFLAC when it comes time to put their kids through college or put their 401k into after-burner mode for the final 10 or 15 years of their work life.

I've had a topsy/turvy week. I'm going back in the next day or two and read again your post (slowly) and I will probably come away with a much more positive attitude about it, but will probably still have some quibbles on what it doesn't do for the would-be stand-alone Progressive Talker Talent.
 
Goat....

To be completely honest....I have no argument with your implied wish that Radio couldn't possibly be so messed up that advice like that would be appropriate. I got to the end of my essay wishing that it didn't have to be written...even to the point of looking for a way to moderate it somehow. No joy. (No really....NO JOY.)

However, on my Broadcast; The Wells Report, we have an important motto....Truth Spoken Here. And so it goes...

I'm writing a book about this entire subject. In that book, I'll take the reader step-by-step through the construction of the Veteran/Successful On-Air Radio Professional. I'll share the experiences that led to me responding to a post from a bright new Broadcaster in that Bare-Bones, Rough & Ready, Do this first, and yes, Harsh list of advice.

Thanks for your response, Goat....We share the exact same feelings. Perhaps someday, the hot and narrow pursuit of short-term Corporate Earnings will once-again give way to a successful pursuit of Service to the Community, and the Future of this Industry....

J-D
TWR
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom