I was never *supposed* to end up on the radio.
The end game was always television, and I was either going to be a VJ on MuchMusic or a news reporter. I primed for that my entire time in school. I learned how to tell stories in under two minutes, I honed my writing, I paid very close attention to how the really great camera operators I got to work with got their shots so I knew what I wanted my stories to look like. TV was the goal.
Radio was the solution though.
When I was a kid, music and the radio were everything. I loved the personalities telling stories and giving information between songs. Being that I was always an old soul, I loved talk radio too because I loved that callers got to take part. I don’t remember ever having that same connection with television news. I certainly watched it, but didn’t feel that same connection to the people giving me the news.
So me and my big ass personality ended up in radio.
I don’t want this to read like a resume, so let me just say that I loved a lot about radio, and have had A LOT of different jobs in A LOT of different places. I was fortunate enough to work in both the talk and FM formats, so I developed a very well rounded skill set. I learned how to inform and how to entertain. I can tell you everything you need to know about anything in 12 seconds if I have to. Radio taught me how to be on time. The news goes to air at 6pm. Not at 6:02pm. Not even when it’s finished and ready to go. It goes on at 6pm.
What drove me out of radio the first time I “retired” was the lack of stability. I had been fired. I had got jobs because other people got fired. I knew people who had moved four times in ten years. I saw very bright and talented people lose coveted positions due to format flips, or simply because they were making too much money and it was time to find someone to do the same work for less.
I craved stability so I left for about four years, but went back. I joke that radio is my bad boyfriend. It doesn’t treat me that great, sometimes it borders on abusive, but I love it and I’m drawn to it.
I needed a bit more control over my destiny for round two, so I decided to just do radio part time, on weekends. I didn’t want to rely on it for my livelihood. It would be like a fun hobby I got paid for.
Radio changed a lot in my four year absence from it.
Outside of the morning show slots, it seemed like the ability to truly be a personality was gone. The wave of the future was the crush-and-roll. Never stop the music. Talk only over the song you are going into. We still had stop sets (a break right before going into commercials) but the time there was severely limited. There wasn’t a ton of time for a bit or a story. But that really didn’t matter anyway, because we also had so many liners (basically jock-read commercials) that fulfilling those obligations took up most of the talk time.
Now I always knew that being on the radio wasn’t about ME – the jock. I never thought that when I listened to some of my favourite jocks back in the 90s that it was about THEM, I just wanted to hear what they had to say because the ones I listened to told great stories. I didn’t feel like I got to connect with an audience by just reading sponsor tags and introducing shitty Katy Perry songs.
So I found myself back in news radio which was refreshing. I live for news and current events and can honestly say that was where my strengths were. I dabbled back and forth between news and FM for a few years and overall it was enjoyable.
The advent of social media was something I found frustrating in radio. I am in no way opposed to using twitter and facebook to get information to people, but I was frustrated that I now had another hat to wear.
Radio has become a very bare bones operation. The companies keep saying they don’t have money to either hire more people or pay the ones they do have a better-than-poverty-line-wage, so I had to do everything. Read and write the news and sport, answer the phones, do interviews, read weather casts. Now I also had to update websites, tweet, update facebook and have it all done to some mystical standard that I could never figure out. Out of nowhere, social media was a big hairy deal… just not big enough to actually hire a devoted body to cover.
Remember what I said about the news going to air at 6pm because it’s 6pm? The news doesn’t go to air at 6:02pm because I have to update twitter. Social media is certainly important, but let’s not forget what we were actually there to do – which was be a radio station.
Anyway, despite all the work, the not-so-great pay, etc. radio was great for me, for a time.
But then people got fired.
Stations in our cluster were suffering and people had to be let go. I get it. I have been around long enough to understand how the business works. But that doesn’t make it any easier to see people get let go. Some of those people were ones I’d grown up listening to, some were co-workers that became good friends. It sucked. It was all around shitty.
Also… I was getting tired.
At this point in my life I had been working two jobs (not always radio) for ten years and I was running out of gas. Working in radio certainly wasn’t back breaking labour, but it was time I was devoting to something that I was starting to feel I could be using elsewhere.
So I was feeling uninspired, I was sad to watch the business chew people up and spit them out, and I was tired.
So I stopped.
Now I want to be clear, what I witnessed towards the end of my time in radio was not unique to the company I worked for. I still have a ton of love and respect for that company and the experiences I had there could have happened at any company. It’s the nature of the beast. And it’s because of that beast that I hung up my headphones.
But once a performer, always a performer.
Thank goodness it’s 2015 and podcasting is a thing because it is PERFECT for me. I will never lose my desire to want to be on air, but doing it in a paid, professional context is not in the cards.
With podcasting, I am my own boss and to be blunt, I don’t have to give a shit about ratings. I know if we put out a shitty show one week, I won’t be getting hauled into meetings, and I won’t feel a noose tightening around my neck if the numbers aren’t great.
With having a podcast, I get to combine the things I loved about radio into one place. I get to be on the air, I get to produce the audio and the content. I handle my own research AND I got to pick my own co-host.
I’m finally doing the show I always wanted to do.
Working for free to not be in radio is better than getting paid to be in radio. It feels good to be doing something I love and to have it be a complete labour of love too.
I would argue I never truly found my place in radio. Maybe if I had I would have found a way to stick with it over the long haul. I got into radio a week before my 21st birthday. I had no clue what I wanted out of my career at that time, I knew I just wanted to learn everything. I wish I’d had someone that was willing to really work with me and guide me into something.
Regardless, I am where I am now (thankfully) because of choices I got to make. Radio will forever be a massive part of me and I’m not going to rule out a return to it one day because hey, you never know.
But if I am honest with myself, I hate being told what to do. Podcasting it is.
iamlindseywithane 