The following is and exerpt from a post by Scott Fybush in an earlier thread. I took it upon myself to "raise the topic" because it's well-written, relevant and because I've noticed that items posted deep into a thread don't get as many hits or reads as they sometimes should. Hope you don't mind, Scott.
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Regarding working in the business and getting a job, Fybush writes:
"What I'm really not clear on here is exactly how Bill thinks one gets a job in radio. When I look around town - both on the commercial stations and the noncomms - what I see are a lot of people who have paid some very serious dues over a very long time to get where they are. Bob Lonsberry got where he is not just on the basis of his politics (though they certainly didn't hurt). He got there after years of newspaper drudgery, and he stayed there by virtue of being one of the hardest-working people anywhere in the business. Name a bad shift, and Bob's worked it, probably while working two more gigs at the same time. He makes it look easy. Believe me, it isn't.
In fact, I can't think of one person doing radio news or radio talk in Rochester who hasn't worked a whole string of cruddy jobs at (or below) minimum wage on the way to the "big time," or made huge personal sacrifices (moving alone to a strange city across the country) just to get that first break. And I guarantee you that all of them (present company very much included) were rejected a lot more often than they were hired along the way. It's not a question of applying at four places and being turned down. It's a question of applying at 40, or 80, or 100, before that big break comes along. I got my first paying job in radio news, back at WCAP in Lowell, Mass., by sending tapes and resumes to every radio newsroom in Massachusetts and most of New Hampshire and Rhode Island as well. If I remember right, only two of them even called me back.
It was a terrible field to try to break in to then, and it's only getting harder. The newsrooms that provided a "farm team" back in the day - WCGR in Canandaigua, WBTA in Batavia, WCJW in Warsaw, and so on - are either gone or reduced to one-person operations. If I'm counting correctly, there are a grand total of seven people in all of western and central New York employed full-time as radio talk show hosts. That's a hell of a tough club to break into. It's a little easier to get into TV, where there's always a need for producers and assignment editors, but even that's a challenge these days with the shutdowns of newsrooms at WNYO and WUHF and so on, which put some very experienced people back out on the job hunt, chasing perhaps 150 TV news jobs here and fewer in Buffalo. How many radio news jobs are there, total, in Buffalo and Rochester? I count about a dozen in Rochester, one in Batavia, one in Warsaw, and I'm guessing perhaps 20 on a good day in Buffalo. Those aren't good odds.
Don't get me wrong - there's a reason those of us who work in the business put up with all of this. When you finally get that break, and when you get behind the mike or in front of the camera, there's no greater feeling in the world. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have worked where I've worked, and I wouldn't trade it for a desk job in a million years. But it's been a long, hard slog to get there for me, just as it's been for the other professionals who post here - and for all the good people I know (some of whom also post here) who still love the business but don't work in it anymore, whether by their own choice or otherwise. There are probably more talented radio people out of work, or severely underemployed, at any given time than there are actually in the business. (Cf. Neaverth, Danny.)
If you don't feel like you're getting much sympathy after what looks, from what you've told us so far, to be a pretty minimal job hunt given the realities of the business today, perhaps this helps to explain why."
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Regarding working in the business and getting a job, Fybush writes:
"What I'm really not clear on here is exactly how Bill thinks one gets a job in radio. When I look around town - both on the commercial stations and the noncomms - what I see are a lot of people who have paid some very serious dues over a very long time to get where they are. Bob Lonsberry got where he is not just on the basis of his politics (though they certainly didn't hurt). He got there after years of newspaper drudgery, and he stayed there by virtue of being one of the hardest-working people anywhere in the business. Name a bad shift, and Bob's worked it, probably while working two more gigs at the same time. He makes it look easy. Believe me, it isn't.
In fact, I can't think of one person doing radio news or radio talk in Rochester who hasn't worked a whole string of cruddy jobs at (or below) minimum wage on the way to the "big time," or made huge personal sacrifices (moving alone to a strange city across the country) just to get that first break. And I guarantee you that all of them (present company very much included) were rejected a lot more often than they were hired along the way. It's not a question of applying at four places and being turned down. It's a question of applying at 40, or 80, or 100, before that big break comes along. I got my first paying job in radio news, back at WCAP in Lowell, Mass., by sending tapes and resumes to every radio newsroom in Massachusetts and most of New Hampshire and Rhode Island as well. If I remember right, only two of them even called me back.
It was a terrible field to try to break in to then, and it's only getting harder. The newsrooms that provided a "farm team" back in the day - WCGR in Canandaigua, WBTA in Batavia, WCJW in Warsaw, and so on - are either gone or reduced to one-person operations. If I'm counting correctly, there are a grand total of seven people in all of western and central New York employed full-time as radio talk show hosts. That's a hell of a tough club to break into. It's a little easier to get into TV, where there's always a need for producers and assignment editors, but even that's a challenge these days with the shutdowns of newsrooms at WNYO and WUHF and so on, which put some very experienced people back out on the job hunt, chasing perhaps 150 TV news jobs here and fewer in Buffalo. How many radio news jobs are there, total, in Buffalo and Rochester? I count about a dozen in Rochester, one in Batavia, one in Warsaw, and I'm guessing perhaps 20 on a good day in Buffalo. Those aren't good odds.
Don't get me wrong - there's a reason those of us who work in the business put up with all of this. When you finally get that break, and when you get behind the mike or in front of the camera, there's no greater feeling in the world. I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have worked where I've worked, and I wouldn't trade it for a desk job in a million years. But it's been a long, hard slog to get there for me, just as it's been for the other professionals who post here - and for all the good people I know (some of whom also post here) who still love the business but don't work in it anymore, whether by their own choice or otherwise. There are probably more talented radio people out of work, or severely underemployed, at any given time than there are actually in the business. (Cf. Neaverth, Danny.)
If you don't feel like you're getting much sympathy after what looks, from what you've told us so far, to be a pretty minimal job hunt given the realities of the business today, perhaps this helps to explain why."