Thompson: Do you actually work in radio anymore? ARE YOU STILL ON THE BEACH?
Quit complaining! With ideas like switching signals, it is no wonder you are gone. Geez, Baltimore! Yeah, like that would happen. WSTW will always be a WILMINGTON radio station. I will end this with what someone else said on the Delaware board. WSTW is like a swiss watch. It keeps on ticking, and producing, and making more money then any other station in the market. Hmmm… money. Don’t you wish.
Don’t bash my family. You will not win! Don't try to even question my abilities as a broadcaster. I was trained by the best... Johnny Randolph... WAKY... Nuff said!
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Unless something unexpectedly drops into my lap, I'm done with radio...I'm certainly no longer looking to continue my former career. I'm working outside of radio in various capacities and am currently in between careers, but most of my time and energy these days is spent on singing and playing guitar with the regional cover band, Jack The Penguin.
However, I can complain all I want to because I am still waiting for the knife wounds in my back to heal after my DBC experience. I can bash the family all I want if I've been excommunicated from it. I will not deny that for many people DBC is a wonderful company to work for, but in my case I worked my tail off for nearly fourteen loyal years in order to make WXCY the best sounding station in the region (which I think we were). I do know that Pete Booker was never happy with my on-air presentation, which is why I was eventually moved off the air full time. To compensate, I tried to make myself the best music director a station could possibly have and I used the advantage of not having to worry about doing and preparing an airshift to put far more time and effort into scheduling music logs than most music directors have. I also learned quite a bit from consultant Keith Hill who taught me many of the tricks of the trade on how to use Selector and I even developed some music scheduling techniques that I'm sure that Keith Hill picked up from me and now uses on some of the other stations he consults. I don't want to say that WXCY's ratings success was directly because of me, but I certainly contributed to it...and the management at WXCY always acknowledged my contributions.
Obviously, something changed prior to me getting let go in June '06...and there are certain events I recognize that may well have contributed to me getting the axe. These are not things that I wish to go into a great deal of detail about, but I had issues with the growing corporate influence of the company and the station, especially when it meant that the sales staff could flout station rules and create unnecessary headaches for those on the operations side. My criticism of the country format following the Dixie Chicks boycott is also well-known and may well have contributed to my ouster as well. It is quite possible that none of those had anything to do with me getting canned, but I certainly have done some soul-searching and those thoughts did come to mind.
My biggest issue, and much of the reason for my continuing anger and resentment, is the fact that I do not know who was responsible for making the decision to get rid of me. I say that because, the person responsible for making the decision varies depending on who I talk to. I do know the reasons given to me are that they were not happy with my vocal delivery and because they knew that I wasn't entirely happy with the station. The first reason certainly is a valid one...if they had gotten rid of me after a few months or a few years, rather than after fourteen years when my role with the station was transformed into a primarily off the air one. The second reason is entirely bogus because I certainly wasn't the only employee at WXCY or with DBC who wasn't entirely happy with the station or the company, and they're all still there. A couple of months after my exit, I even extended an olive-branch in an attempt to get in touch with the WXCY family and to have them write a reference letter for me to help me embark on a new career...only to have them agree to do it and then never follow up on it.
I probably shouldn't say this, but I really don't care anymore since they can't fire me again, but the subject of WSTW's programming (lack of) focus was a common conversation in the hallways and offices of WXCY. Certainly, it is not something that was ever discussed when WSTW's people were around, but it was discussed because as far as we were concerned, we were competing with WSTW for a share of the audience. We (or at least I) were also made aware of the concerns that DBC management had with WSTW's ratings. John Wilson's firing didn't come as a surprise to me.
