Radio Layoffs and "Back-up Careers"

[NJnerd19]

As I read the industry headlines today, I felt compelled to ask this.

Who has a “backup career” to fall back on if you work in radio?

About 15 years ago, I felt the budget noose tightening further and further at my cluster of stations. Every year more and more of the people that you worked with for years, some veterans of the market, would get walked out. I got tired of living on pins and needles, so I got a part time job working two days a month at a manufacturing plant.

Let me tell you, it’s eye opening and humbling going from a dream office job in your dream career to standing on a concrete floor 12 hours a day doing repetitive lifting. Toss in a 20 year old kid yelling at you "faster!!!" and you get the idea. Unless it was computer related, I was clueless. “You need an Allen wrench? What’s that?”.

About 9 months after I got that side job, my number in the radio budget lottery came up. I took a few weeks off in the summer and began working full time for the manufacturing company. In less than two years I was making almost twice what I was as a PD for three stations.

I worked 3-4 twelve hour days in a row and had 3-4 days off every week. Overtime was endless and you could make as much as you wanted. I was in the car going somewhere every week during the warm months for my 3-4 days off.

No more job insecurity, no more 2am calls for dead air. No more cancelling plans because of a problem at the stations. I could finally swipe the debit card without doing math. No more waiting until the internet stopped working to pay the bill. I no longer needed a roommate. Being a single guy, my life couldn’t get better. Freedom.

Fast forward to today, I’m a production support manager for the same company. I troubleshoot machines with their crews, research parts and prints, and work with mechanical and electrical managers on prioritizing preventative maintenance and needed repairs. It’s still all about the numbers in the end!

I’m glad I took the leap of faith instead of chasing down another radio job. It was scary at first, but I now have skills and certifications that can transfer just about anywhere.

I miss radio dearly but i regret not making the change myself a lot sooner. I struggled for years trying to pay bills just because I got to do what I loved.

I look at the cluster I worked at today and it has been completely gutted. The news room was forced to cancel their newspaper subscription. Could I have lasted a little longer if I offered to do more? I was already doing more. I gave up nights, weekends, relationships. Just let me keep doing it. Now I look at it as desperation.

To anyone affected by cuts this week, or if you are feeling that anxiety, just remember:

It’s a big world out there. Don’t be afraid of it.

 

[davideduardo]

Hello, "Nerd".

That is a great introspective post, with things everyone can relate to. No, I do not mean that each person should do the same thing as you, but, instead, they should give thoughts to alternatives and spend some time adding skills.

I have a favorite comparison: if you let me loose in a Harbor Freight store, I will always find a tool that "I should have had last week when I needed one just like that". So I buy it, knowing that sooner or later I will indeed need it or do a particular job better if I have it.

While the "learn to code" has become a politicized joke, picking up any kind of technology related skill will be useful. If not employed on a job, it will help you set up your home WiFi or that Ring doorbell!

Lots of community colleges offer non-degree courses in useful areas. A few nights a week in a real classroom or even in an on-line one rather than opening a brewski and watching a game you don't even care about can be rather fun. I find actual classroom attendance to be beneficial because of the interaction, but I know many prefer to avoid the drive and the parking and...

Personally, I got into radio because as a pre-teen my dad taught me about investing and I bought a couple of shares of Storer Broadcasting and felt "required" to visit my hometown Storer station. I loved the visit, and began taking an interest in radio as a career, soon becoming an intern at another station. But I kept up my interest in investing, and when I was "moved" from fulltime to a consultant, I spent most of my time self-employed with my investments. And I made more than ever!

What I mean is to develop a parallel interest, maybe one that can be deployed as a hobby or side gig, but which is in a different area.

 

[TheBigA]

Who has a “backup career” to fall back on if you work in radio?

It's an interesting question. My view is it depends on what you consider "radio." What I've learned is that if you're flexible, you can have a backup career and still work in radio.

 

[XCountry285]

If you can't get a job in radio they will always need teachers. I am a former teacher myself.

 

[b-turner]

I have done a few things just because I could.

1) I started a travel newsletter on tropical islands called Tropical Frontiers. I got to know the tourism department, folks at the radio station and advertised I wanted a penpal in the paper. Eventually I reached about 140-150 subscribers before my radio job in sales left me struggling to find the time to research and write.

2) Somehow I got on the somewhat inside in the mail order business. Everybody was selling mailing lists and those claims if you mail x number you will see a return of $x dollars which never happened. I'd save all those addresses and after 90 days I would send maybe 100 a sheet saying for $20 I'd make sure your name goes to the best mail order offers today. I had no issue geeting people to take my names. For every 100 I sent I'd get maybe 12-15 back with a $20 check. Nobody believed me on results. It was never big dollars...about $3,000 to $6,000 a year.

3) I was thumbing through Rural Property Bulletin and half a city block of a town of 15 people is for sale for $200. I buy and drive up to see it. At the county office they give me a photocopy of all the plat maps and a list of parcels. I drove around and took a look. When I got home I sent checks with a letter saying I was bidding on a parcel. In about 45 days I owned a good number of lots in tiny towns. I sold them on eBay. The money was great but after the third year people figured out what I was doing and were bidding up the lots. I bought some for as low as $5! The recording fee was $10. This was 25 years ago.

4) I bought a coin on eBay and the guy selling it had the coins made. It never dawned on me a person could have coins minted but it seemed so cool, I wanted to try it. I made fantasy coins. These are coins for places not found on a map. They were all designed by hand and struck on screw presses as coins were made before the modern mint. I still dabble in this.

None of these were to be a replacement for radio but just sort of a hobby thing.

 

[Deus Ex Machiato]

It’s a big world out there. Don’t be afraid of it.

I was "wished well in all his future endeavors" a little over 6 years ago after over 20 years in the same gig and over 30 years in the biz. I didn't have a backup plan. Then - not long after the severance ran out - a little "global pandemic" hit and I struggled for awhile. Even worked a factory job for a minute, too.

Then in 2021 I fell head first into a tech sector job that I never saw coming. I was just looking for a gig, but it turns out I'm actually pretty good at this stuff, promotions and raises came fast and furious, and I've been in this industry for going on 5 years now. Not long ago, a job popped up on my LinkedIn feed that fit with my previous radio career. The top end of the pay range was well below the starting pay for what I'm doing now. I even had a PD who wanted to hire me say "I'm sorry, but I can't match that."

Is my job safe? Nope. Like radio, the tech sector is plagued with "reductions in force." I survived a round of layoffs a couple years ago, then another one last year, actually got laid off at the start of this year, and landed a new job a few weeks later. I have a skill set that make me valuable in this new world, and I love it. More importantly, I work in an industry that is (relatively) brand-spanking new and growing, not one that's struggling to stay relevant.

Do I miss radio? Of course. I had a helluva ride. Would I go back? In the words of the last hit single from The Monkees, "that was then, this is now."

Good luck out there.

 

[Miss Tuned]

After leaving radio (not through my own choice), I bounced around temp jobs for a bit, but luckily I then had the resources to go to university. I did a city planning degree, because one of my temp jobs had been in a planning office and I found it really interesting.

While I was at university, I took a temp job in their alumni office, just doing data entry on the alumni database. When I graduated, I took a job in another alumni office as a stop gap, but got promoted and stuck around. These days, I work in alumni fundraising and make more than I ever did in radio by quite a significant amount (well over 50% more than my peak radio earnings).

As a bonus, the university pays in full and on time every month. Radio was plagued with "we aren't quite able to make payroll in full this month, we'll give you half now, half next week" etc. I just got offered a mortgage, bought my first house and settled down for the first time - no more moving around, and a stable enough income to get a mortgage.

 

[radiofan2023]

Congrats to all of you, @Deus Ex Machiato @b-turner @davideduardo @NJnerd19 and @Miss Tuned!

 

[michael hagerty]

I kicked myself for a lot of years for not having a back-up plan. Later, I was glad I didn't, because I would have used it and missed out on a lot.

Everyone's mileage varies---not everyone will have the good fortune I have of having every setback become an opportunity I wouldn't have pursued if I hadn't been forced to. But, personally, man, I'm so glad I never got my real estate license or law degree or any number of things I mulled over between ages 15 and 40.

 

[TheBigA]

I often compare being in radio to being a musician. If you want to be a musician, there can be no backup plan. There are a lot of songs written about making it in the music business. Here's the chorus from one of them:

So if you got a fire, don't lose it
If you got a do-or-die dream, do it
If you got something to prove, go on 'n' prove it
Don't let nobody clip your wings
Keep your head down, keep on the blinders
Tune out the doubters and all the closed-minders
If it's in your blood, falling down ain't enough to change who you were born to be
And gettin' back up, that's the only backup plan you need

 

[radiofan2023]

When I was in J-school, the college I went to required that you have a minor (they didn't call a minor because there were a few less credit hours required for it, but I'm calling it that because I don't remember what it was actually called) if you were a journalism major.

I didn't like it at the time, but it did help when I was going for non-journalism jobs. And I've always used the skills I learned in j-school in all the jobs I've had. I also temped for a bit like @Miss Tuned.

Now I work for myself and don't make as much as I did when I was working in the Bay Area, but I don't have to have roommates and it doesn't take an hour and 15 minutes to drive home. I never would've been able to afford a mortgage there.

 

[CTListener]

When I was in J-school, the college I went to required that you have a minor (they didn't call a minor because there were a few less credit hours required for it, but I'm calling it that because I don't remember what it was actually called) if you were a journalism major.

I faced the same requirement and chose psychology as my minor, mainly because I thought it would help me understand people, their personalities and motivations better, since, as a newspaper major, I was going to be writing about (and editing stories about) all sorts of people.

That said, I wound up sticking with print journalism until the bitter end. I wasn't going to go back to school and put in years of effort to become a psychologist after it became obvious that the internet was going to severely damage the newspaper business. Nor did I explore other fields involving the written word, such as public relations, which is what several of my colleagues were doing during my last 20 or so years as a copy editor. I admire those who can pivot so easily and find a satisfying and lucrative life beyond the media, especially one reporter who decided to quit the business and become a dentist, but not all of us have the psychological makeup to handle something that dramatically different. (See? I'd never have known myself that way if I hadn't had a psychology minor!)

 

[radiofan2023]

I faced the same requirement and chose psychology as my minor, mainly because I thought it would help me understand people, their personalities and motivations better, since, as a newspaper major, I was going to be writing about (and editing stories about) all sorts of people.

Did you like having a psychology minor or were you not crazy about it?

 

[Rollo-Smokes]

All my radio work, past and present, has been as either a part-time employee or volunteer. I have always maintained full-time employment outside the industry, mostly in local civil service.

When I first went to college in the mid-'90s I had lofty dreams of climbing the ladder to either the top of the radio world, or becoming lead news anchor at a big-market tv station. Then life intervened. I eventually went back to school in the 2010s, but by then the media landscape changed and so had I. And I've had opportunities to take F/T work, but I'm much better off where I am. Staying in the industry, which i love, while staying out of the industry enough so that I can still love it.

 

[Mark Roberts]

Taking a deep breath....

There was a time when I thought I had a plan B. After getting fired by the bait-and-switch artists in Beacon, New York, my plan, as it has been for so many people, was to go into PR, which nowadays would be called "strategic communications". Got fired from that job, though the assistant director of that office tried to persuade me to come back. But the director of that communications office was a miniature version of The Devil Wears Prada, and I thought it best to move on. So that plan B failed.

Next was KTRH. A college classmate was in management there and helped bring me on. It was a good experience for about half a year. Then the news director who hired me, a supremely decent man, was fired. His replacement had been a hotshot in Los Angeles radio. He tended to look down on the Houston staff but we got along OK at first. Then I made a mistake, an error in judgment that didn't affect the on-air product but one that offended the new news director. At KTRH under the GM, Michael Packer, if you made any kind of mistake, you would be on your way out. As it was, KTRH was becoming a revolving door, but I was singled out for special attention. It didn't help that my college classmate had been pushed out himself. So I was fired, in a slow and painful process that left me drained of any self-esteem. By the way, just don't take my word for the difficult working atmosphere that prevailed at KTRH -- here's an old thread that I found recently: https://radiodiscussions.com/threads/ktrh-newsradio-740.577618/

I had no plan B. To make matters worse, two weeks after I was fired, my father slumped in a chair and died. I'll never know if what happened to me contributed to his death, but I won't ever rule it out, either.

My college classmate, by then working for a small research survey company in Houston, reached out and brought me on-board part-time. When KTRH brought a newsroom computer system on board, I was one of the first to master it. My friend thought I might be able to do the same for the research company, which had just gotten a PC with the goal of running cross-tabulations and other analyses in-house rather than hiring computer time elsewhere. I quickly figured it out. Though the main analysis program, SPSS, took hours to run on the PC, I was cheaper than mainframe time.

While that was dead-end work, it did open up possibilities. One thing led to another, and about half a year later I returned to Missouri to go to graduate school for a degree in computer science. I had to do a year's worth of remedial mathematics work, mostly calculus, mostly not of much value but I had to do it to show I could do the work. The mathematics that were of value were discrete mathematics (sets, topology, etc.) which I loved. Returning to Missouri also meant I could help my mother with closing out my father's estate (farmland was involved among other business interests).

By pure coincidence, my former classmate also went back to the university to become a faculty member at the school of journalism. Once again, he entered the picture. IBM had provided a huge grant to the j-school for computerization. There was a research fellowship available. My friend made the connection and I landed the fellowship. So I finally had some income.

I graduated in a year with a soft job market, even for computer programmers. The computer science faculty was encouraging me to go for a Ph.D. I would have had to go to the University of Illinois to do it. Maybe I should have, since UIUC had a big role in creating an Internet useable for nontechnical specialists. I was up front about the need to make some money, though. I had hoped to return to Houston, but ended up in Kansas City at Hallmark Cards. I had not even thought about them, but when they came to campus to recruit, someone lost the list of people who had signed up to interview. So I got a call asking me to show up to make sure the department had some reputation. A couple of years later, I was assigned to a firewall project to connect the company to the nascent Internet. That was the start of a 30-year career in cybersecurity. I eventually became a chief information security officer, then decided to scale back a few years later.

None of this was planned. A lot of it was luck. In radio, all I seemed to have was bad luck; in IT, I generally had very good luck. Some of it was having a good friend who was looking out for me. And some of it was being open to new possibilities. I used to be very stubborn in holding to my objectives. The positive way of describing it would be "persistence". While I have a deep and abiding disgust for the KTRH news director who fired me, I wouldn't be where I was today without that having happened, forcing me to consider alternatives. The road was not smooth and had lots of sharp curves, to be sure.

I had a period, mostly during graduate school, where I hated radio. I wouldn't listen to much of it. I loved radio, but radio didn't love me, so it seemed. The interest gradually came back -- otherwise I wouldn't be posting on this board -- but as a listener and as someone very interested in media history. I had no desire ever to work in radio, or the media, ever again. Any romantic notions about radio are long gone for me.

That's the short version.

 

[CTListener]

Taking a deep breath....

There was a time when I thought I had a plan B. After getting fired by the bait-and-switch artists in Beacon, New York, my plan, as it has been for so many people, was to go into PR, which nowadays would be called "strategic communications". Got fired from that job, though the assistant director of that office tried to persuade me to come back. But the director of that communications office was a miniature version of The Devil Wears Prada, and I thought it best to move on. So that plan B failed.

Next was KTRH. A college classmate was in management there and helped bring me on. It was a good experience for about half a year. Then the news director who hired me, a supremely decent man, was fired. His replacement had been a hotshot in Los Angeles radio. He tended to look down on the Houston staff but we got along OK at first. Then I made a mistake, an error in judgment that didn't affect the on-air product but one that offended the new news director. At KTRH under the GM, Michael Packer, if you made any kind of mistake, you would be on your way out. As it was, KTRH was becoming a revolving door, but I was singled out for special attention. It didn't help that my college classmate had been pushed out himself. So I was fired, in a slow and painful process that left me drained of any self-esteem. By the way, just don't take my word for the difficult working atmosphere that prevailed at KTRH -- here's an old thread that I found recently: https://radiodiscussions.com/threads/ktrh-newsradio-740.577618/

I had no plan B. To make matters worse, two weeks after I was fired, my father slumped in a chair and died. I'll never know if what happened to me contributed to his death, but I won't ever rule it out, either.

My college classmate, by then working for a small research survey company in Houston, reached out and brought me on-board part-time. When KTRH brought a newsroom computer system on board, I was one of the first to master it. My friend thought I might be able to do the same for the research company, which had just gotten a PC with the goal of running cross-tabulations and other analyses in-house rather than hiring computer time elsewhere. I quickly figured it out. Though the main analysis program, SPSS, took hours to run on the PC, I was cheaper than mainframe time.

While that was dead-end work, it did open up possibilities. One thing led to another, and about half a year later I returned to Missouri to go to graduate school for a degree in computer science. I had to do a year's worth of remedial mathematics work, mostly calculus, mostly not of much value but I had to do it to show I could do the work. The mathematics that were of value were discrete mathematics (sets, topology, etc.) which I loved. Returning to Missouri also meant I could help my mother with closing out my father's estate (farmland was involved among other business interests).

By pure coincidence, my former classmate also went back to the university to become a faculty member at the school of journalism. Once again, he entered the picture. IBM had provided a huge grant to the j-school for computerization. There was a research fellowship available. My friend made the connection and I landed the fellowship. So I finally had some income.

I graduated in a year with a soft job market, even for computer programmers. The computer science faculty was encouraging me to go for a Ph.D. I would have had to go to the University of Illinois to do it. Maybe I should have, since UIUC had a big role in creating an Internet useable for nontechnical specialists. I was up front about the need to make some money, though. I had hoped to return to Houston, but ended up in Kansas City at Hallmark Cards. I had not even thought about them, but when they came to campus to recruit, someone lost the list of people who had signed up to interview. So I got a call asking me to show up to make sure the department had some reputation. A couple of years later, I was assigned to a firewall project to connect the company to the nascent Internet. That was the start of a 30-year career in cybersecurity. I eventually became a chief information security officer, then decided to scale back a few years later.

None of this was planned. A lot of it was luck. In radio, all I seemed to have was bad luck; in IT, I generally had very good luck. Some of it was having a good friend who was looking out for me. And some of it was being open to new possibilities. I used to be very stubborn in holding to my objectives. The positive way of describing it would be "persistence". While I have a deep and abiding disgust for the KTRH news director who fired me, I wouldn't be where I was today without that having happened, forcing me to consider alternatives. The road was not smooth and had lots of sharp curves, to be sure.

I had a period, mostly during graduate school, where I hated radio. I wouldn't listen to much of it. I loved radio, but radio didn't love me, so it seemed. The interest gradually came back -- otherwise I wouldn't be posting on this board -- but as a listener and as someone very interested in media history. I had no desire ever to work in radio, or the media, ever again. Any romantic notions about radio are long gone for me.

That's the short version.

So your evil news director was the guy who left radio to become a flack for the phone company, eh?

 

[TheBigA]

I had no plan B.

The idea of not having a plan B is to force you to find a way to make your REAL interest work. Once again, that's how it works in the music business.

I remember my first job working the night shift for minimum wage. I talked to one of the other people at the station about it, and he said, "Nobody gets into radio for the money." That was before consolidation. It was true then, it's true now. Whenever I talk to college kids about this, I tell them the same story. Don't go into radio expecting it to be a real job. It probably won't be. Once again, if you don't really have a Plan B, it forces you to keep trying. Until you find that combination of things that makes it work.

 

[b-turner]

I suppose my back-ups were more or less hobbies I did while working in radio, saving much of the profits to counter and tough times ahead. I will say he land deal got me enough money to buy a home.

 

[cc333]

@Mark Roberts I see a lot of me in your story, except I don't even have a "Plan A" career yet. No career at all, in fact.

The timing of this thread is very perfect, because it's offering me some interesting insights.

Almost as far back as I can remember, my two biggest interests were radio and computer technology. I never pursued radio because I had tentatively decided on electrical engineering, since it seemed a better fit for me at the time.

So, for years, I concentrated on that, going though all the remedial stuff.

In the meantime, I started to question it, because the remedials just kept dragging on, I got sick, and then the last straw was when I hit a wall at Differential Equations, so ever since I've kind of been trying to figure out where to go.

I've been thinking about all sorts of different, but related things to get a degree in: CompSci, IT, even some sort of weird Media Technology thing.

Radio never really went away entirely, though.

I volunteered at a local LPFM for a couple years (2008-2010), and it was quite fun at first. The last year, though, was quite terrible, and the fallout left me so demoralized that I refused to do anything related to radio for the better part of a decade.

On the side, I did get into an adjacent field of study, however: audio recording.

I never really considered it for a career, but much of what I learned in my recording classes can apply equally to IT (because most recording is now computer-based) and radio (because microphones, processing, acoustics, and other audio-related things), which ties in neatly with my two interests.

So I guess it comes down to this: do I pursue what I enjoy and accept that I won't make as much money, or do I go for the money making career and enjoy a reliable income that can fund my favorite hobbies?

c

 

[Deus Ex Machiato]

I kicked myself for a lot of years for not having a back-up plan. Later, I was glad I didn't, because I would have used it and missed out on a lot.

Everyone's mileage varies---not everyone will have the good fortune I have of having every setback become an opportunity I wouldn't have pursued if I hadn't been forced to. But, personally, man, I'm so glad I never got my real estate license or law degree or any number of things I mulled over between ages 15 and 40.

For a few years while I was struggling to get my radio career off the ground, my "Plan B" was working in restaurants. It almost became my Plan A. I had all the paperwork filled out to go to the "management training" offered by the company I was working for, and become a full-time salaried manager. In a year or so, I could be a general manager and have a "career."

Then I threw out the paperwork, threw caution to the wind, and quit that job to pursue my radio career full time. I didn't want to live the rest of my life asking "what if...?" I have no regrets. I got to do some pretty incredible stuff in my radio career.

That said, there's a big difference between making a "screw it, I'm going to quit this job and pursue my dreams" decision at age 25, and that sinking feeling you get when the PD tells you that "you just don't fit the sound of the radio station anymore" at 55. I've lost count of the number of fellow jocks who "aged out"of the business and are doing other things now.

The great thing (for me, at least) is that all those experiences I had in radio give me a unique advantage that the 20 and 30-somethings I work with now don't have. When I got laid off from my last job, some of us met for a "pity party" brunch after we were locked out of the building, and my manager gave me a bear hug and she said (tearing up) "I have learned...so...much from you." It's also cool to be able to interject into a heated discussion about Taylor Swift and say "really? Have you talked to her? She's really quite bright."