BostonRandy said:
Care to define "always"? Obviously, you don't know how cool WSAR was back in the late 70's/early 80's under KQS. Fantastic jocks, good music, lots of community involvement. I would hardly consider them a mess.
Than I guess the mess started after I got there. When I say mess, it started with ratings (which there were none). When I was hired I asked about ratings. The PD's response was..
"WELL.. WE REALLY DON'T PAY MUCH ATTENTION TO RATINGS AROUND HERE". After I started working there, I could see why. I said to myself... This sh*t isn't getting any ratings. Nobody could possibly be listening to this garbage.
A new PD was brought in because the old one got smart and left. He complained about the place working him to the bone and it not helping him one bit because he was on salary and not hourly. He wasn't even getting extra pay for his efforts. So I can't blame the guy for leaving. The horrible pay made me leave too. Here is an example. I was a full time employee with a Monday through Friday show. Was a board op on Sunday mornings too. The station paid me the grand total of $4.25 an hour. So when I saw an ad in the paper that WNAC FOX 64 was hiring and paying $7.50 an hour for Master Control Technicians, I suddenly had the urge to switch jobs. I left WSAR so that the inside of my wallet would look nicer. Unfortunately.... I quickly learned that I hated working Master Control. that's a whole different story. So 3 months into that I made a break for it and moved to New York. I ended up working at a Pergament Home Center store which still paid me $1 more an hour than WSAR Radio did.
I stayed there for four months and was totally Depressed with the situation. I missed radio. So I figured that I would move back and give WSAR another chance. I was a great employee. So they definitely wanted me back. The only problem was that they had replaced my shift with a new guy when I had left. There really was no place to put me. So I just worked weekends for about two months until they finally decided to create a position at WSAR which didn't exist before. They hired me as "PRODUCTION DIRECTOR." Yes this is a common position at any other radio station. But WSAR didn't have one until me. As far as I know, I was their first Production Director. It was a full time gig that paid me a whole $5.25 an hour. It was still better than the $4.25 I had been making there previously. So I was happy about that. I figured that at least I'll be making the same amount as I did at the Pergament Home center store in New York paid me..... but now I was at least working in radio again.
I'll never forget the time the new PD went through a formula with me of figuring out how many people were listening to him. He said one out of every 100 listeners on average will call into a telephone contest. I was in the studio watching this master demonstration of numbers. In the next 3 minutes he received a total of six calls. He then looks at me and says....
"SEE... THERE ARE NOW 600 PEOPLE LISTENING." I did my best to not roll my eyes. I really liked this guy. But I think his theory might have been off..... and the fact that he was excited about only 600 people listening in "afternoon drive" kind of made me nauseous. Once again..I uttered to myself...
This station is a mess. However... just like the first PD who left because the station was cheap, the new PD did the exact same thing about 15 months later when he moved himself and his family to Florida. Apparently so happy to be away from WSAR that nobody ever heard from him again.
All of the above happened under the management of
Knight Quality stations. Perhaps "Cheap Ass stations" would have been a more fitting name. Those dudes didn't want to pay a decent wage to anybody! Things went from bad to worse when Knight sold the station to new owners. The same people who still own them now. Another new PD was brought in who was clearly out of his element. This was the third Program Director that I had to look at in the span of two years. The man was totally clueless. Staff who had been at the station for a while started leaving like crazy because of him. He was a personable man who you would be proud to call your grandfather, but he ran the station like Bozo The Clown. Half the time he was asking others what to do because he didn't know what to do himself. He once came up with a brand new slogan for the station. He brainstormed for what must have been days on end. Finally the new slogan for the station was revealed.
"RIGHT AT HOME ON WSAR". Well.... much creative energy must have gone into him coming up with that. The staff all shook our heads when we realized who else was using that exact same slogan.
Click here and Look >>>
http://i47.tinypic.com/wgunpf.jpg
So ultimately the station became even more of a joke than what it already was. With the new owners came a brand new format in 1989 when they switched to TALK. Every on air jock was being eased out. But instead of a simple firing, the station was trying to get the old jocks to train the new talk hosts who would take their place. Can you imagine how it felt having a show on the air for years, but then you get put in charge of teaching your replacement how to operate the equipment! Well... that is exactly what was happening at WSAR in the summer of 1989. Morale was at an all time low. I don't think one jock stood for that nonsense. A bunch of employees walked without giving their two week notice. They simply walked out the door and never came back.
However since I was Production Director, they were going to keep me since I was still needed no matter what format the station flipped to. I also got stuck training all the new hosts how to use the equipment since all the DJ's walked out. I was pretty much the only one left. Me and Happy Hec! He sure the hell wasn't going to stick around training people.
This Bozo PD tried to relegate all of his duties onto me just as he had done to everyone else since he first walked through the door. At one point even asking me to make a demo tape for him so he could get a new job announcing professional sports. He said it was an outside project and he would pay me personally for doing it for him. Something like $25. So I made it for him. He loved it and the weasel never even paid me.
So anyway.... I stuck with the station for two more months after I saw that whole mess go down. Then in September of 1989 the station had some huge event coming up where they were going to broadcast a Live remote from for a week! Once again this PD tried to get me to do everything that he was supposed to do to prepare. I think he became as sick of the job as the two PD's did before him. He was the only PD that made me sick! He tried at every opportunity to relieve himself of all job responsibilities by making the rest of the staff do his job! It got to a point where I couldn't take his shenanigans anymore.
The tipping point for me was not helped at all on the morning I saw a sign at McDonalds that said...
Now hiring closers $6.25 an hour. I had struggled for months to get raises and WSAR could only muster up a 25 cent an hour raise at one point to stay.
But now I see that people at McDonalds are getting paid 20 percent more than I was making working at that piece of crap radio station!!! I couldn't even stomach that place anymore. I had reached the end of the line at WSAR and that was the last they ever saw of me. I had enough. I Quit. In the 20 plus years since then, I've heard horror stories that make that place no better today than it was when I worked there.
So anyway,..... Boston Randy.... to answer your question of how I define "always a mess". ^^ Look above ^^ Thank you.
