Companies With Their Heads in the Sand


Wow!

Yes, that was about the size of coffee I would need every day to get through my last job. The stress at that place was unimaginable, and every day something completely dysfunctional happened.

From what I’ve heard, the company is still behaving the same way.

Radio, as I have mentioned in previous blogs, is a dysfunctional business. Not that it should be, it just is. We live in an ever-changing world where technology is constantly being redesigned and pushed forward. Communication is absolutely sacrosanct, yet so many radio people prefer to live in the 1950’s. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous! Radio will never be threatened by the Internet or satellite radio. Those ipods are just a fad! People will be listening to those little transistors till the end of time!” My last job had the worst communication from its managers. People would write emails but ignore all etiquette and decency.

Here is a little bit of an email I received. I won’t name names, but this came from someone who had no power over what I, as a radio performer, was doing. Mind you, I was hired as someone to be a radio performer for the time period of afternoon rush hour. You MUST entertain people during this time period; it is demanded of you. Even on music formats, mornings and afternoons need to be entertaining. Some stations let their nights be entertaining, too. Most keep the midday, from 10am to 3pm, pretty music intensive. My show was music intensive, but when I did speak it was always for less than a minute and always entertaining. Here is a piece of the paragraph-long email:

Yesterday, I heard you trying to imitate a French accent. No more warnings. Keep it straight and play the music.

“Keep it straight.” Read: Keep it boring! That’s what your radio stations today want from their jocks. Boring. Numerous patients in San Diego buy cialis professional come to New Century Spine Centers to see a chiropractic doctor for their back ache from sitting at the computer for too long that may not be correlated to your back. Eventually they then super viagra uk fail to make the desired erections and fail to take appropriate treatment. It is the phase of life in which one can achieve orgasm and provide each other complete pleasure, without necessarily having canadian viagra store to have a strong erection and increase the size of his penis. This cialis 10mg has to be on the school letterhead and signed by someone from the previous school. Do you know why I was doing a French accent? I did it for 2 seconds and it was part of a joke! I didn’t do my whole show in a French accent. By the way, I am quite good with many accents (you can hear by clicking on the Santa Fe Cafe samples to the right). I can even speak a little French and was coached specifically on French pronunciation. But this is communication in radio: It’s only purpose is to treat employees like little spoiled kids that constantly need reprimanding.

Radio has no idea what world it’s living in. It thinks it’s still in the world of “Mad Men” where discrimination and sexism run amok and employees are made to be kept down. We live in a new world! Radio apparently doesn’t know that and has never looked out the window.

The way I was kept down runs totally contrary to how an organization should be run. Even the book Managing For Dummies says in a situation like this, everyone loses! “Your employees lose because you aren’t allowing them to stretch themselves or to show creativity or initiative. Your organization loses the insights that its creative workforce brings with it. Finally, your customers lose because your employees are afraid to provide them with exceptional service. Why should
they if they’re constantly worried that you will punish them for taking
initiative or for pushing the limits of the organization“?

Today’s WHAT THE HECK??? Why are companies like this allowed to keep running? You know what, they’re not. They’re the ones that are filing for bankruptcy. Try as they may to blame the economy or blame Obama for not bailing them out, they’re own worse enemy is themselves and their failure to grow with the times. I use radio as an example because it seems the most pronounced in fighting everything it SHOULD be in today’s world. The managers and the owners behave like the spoiled children: Not willing to try something new or something that is needed.

If you want your employees to “keep it straight” and keep their noses buried in the past, good luck. Your company will die out in this very different world you refuse to live in. Have fun keeping up. Enjoy the coffee you’ll be downing.

2012 Will Be a Very, Very Interesting Year!

That’s me with a very cute dog named Madison. She’s a Yorkshire Terrier and she loves to attack my round bald head. She must think I’m a mobile doggy toy only when you bite me I don’t squeak…I squawk.

So this picture was taken yesterday, the third of July, not too long after I saw online that Sarah Palin is resigning.

Today’s WHAT THE HECK?!? Sarah is really preparing for 2012, NOW in 2009? Her term was up next year, but what can 4 years do to make her the first female president of the U.S.A.?

First off, if I was a Republican right now, I’d feel like I did as a Democrat back in 2000 when we really had no main leader in the party. Then I’d be looking at SP and saying…SP? I was really hoping when she first exploded on the scene last year that she’d be a breath of fresh air. Someone that I’d be happy seeing being the next vice president.

People on the right say she was side swiped by the media. Katie Couric was too harsh on her. All the media outlets went after her poor defenseless pregnant daughter. How dare they! It’s the media’s fault!

I am SOOOOO tired of hearing the media blamed for what really is someone who doesn’t know how to carry herself in front of the cameras. Ronald Reagan blew away everyone in 1980 when he took office and began to show both parties that he knew how to work that camera. He knew how to work the media. He was the Great Communicator. It is the best generic version of cheapest viagra and facilitated at one-third cost of that original version. The most common cause of vertigo is benign paroxysmal positional online cialis india vertigo (BPPV). Post-event sports massage is usually related to stress reduction and/or to the correction of minor dysfunction, and longer-term sports massage programs address the treatment and rehabilitation of mild prices viagra injuries, as well as overall body health. It not only cures chronic prostatitis from the symptoms but viagra samples from doctor http://raindogscine.com/?attachment_id=35 they don’t treat the deeper causes of the symptoms. In the couple of months before the election that Sarah Palin was in the spotlight she only showed that she has no idea what she’s doing in that department.

Who knows, maybe she would have been the best VP we ever had. Maybe our country would be completely out of its financial doldrums right now because of her. She tried her best at the very end by actually showing up on Saturday Night Live to poke fun at herself. However, she could have toured with Madonna, there was no way of stopping the Obama Express.

I will be so interested to see what she does. I have friends like her: Conservative, hard working moms, thick Wisconsin-whatever accents. I think I might like her if I got to know her, but the people behind the scenes of the GOP will take her and mould her and make her into something I unfortunately might despise. I think she’s someone who takes direction well. She said she was a maverick, but when she was being moulded by the GOP late last year before the election it was painfully obvious: the clothes, the rhetoric. You could tell when she was lying. This concerns me.

So on this Fourth of July weekend, say a prayer for this country, say a prayer for the people who will vote for president in 2012 (Obama VS Palin?), and say a prayer for all the world’s problems that we may have smart cool-headed leaders solving them.

Speaking of heads, I think I’ve just about wiped all the little dog slobber off of my bald cabeza.

Music and the 80’s Generation’s First Big Goodbye


That’s my crazy radio DJ face.

Very frightening. It’s a fun job, no money in it, but for a type like me that enjoys a wide swath of music it fits me.

When I first started in radio in 1986 there were at that moment no Michael Jackson hits getting played in tight rotation on the station I interned at. That would all change when he released the first single from his “Bad” album, “I Just Can’t Stop Loving You”, a duet he did with Siedah Garrett. After that there were number one hits with “Bad”, “The Way You Make Me Feel”, “Man in the Mirror”, (the next single, “Another Part of Me”, from the Disneyland ride Captain Eo peaked in the top ten but not at number one) “Dirty Diana”, and “Smooth Criminal.”

After that I start to lose track of what went number one for him. I know he had a very intricate “live action mixed with animation” video that MTV used to play all the time called “Leave Me Alone” but that hardly got played on the radio. When his next huge hit “Black and White” came out I was working formats that didn’t play him much (or didn’t play his fast songs, just his ballads like “Will You Be There” and “Heal the World”). Meanwhile, his sister Janet was all over the radio and had pretty much been so since her 1985 album “Control”.

Today’s WHAT THE HECK? What the heck is wrong with us, with anyone, for slamming this man now at his shocking untimely death? We all know he lead a life that most of us question, but look at what will be his REAL legacy, his two amazing albums “Off the Wall” and “Thriller”. Both those albums taught us how to let loose and have fun. A distinct group of liver diseases is attributed to its constant innovation as it regularly comes up with products that capture people’s attention. order generic viagra For many it is a day that buy cialis cute-n-tiny.com provokes pilgrimages from near and far. Kamagra Soft Tablets It has been another most liked version of the generic sildenafil http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/crochet/ cheap viagra pills. He credits an intense five days of a one-on-one studio class with Craighead for making him not only think differently about the creation of a painting, but for also making him think about his paintings’ effect on others. cute-n-tiny.com generic cialis professional Michael was not ashamed of his high falsetto. Eddie Murphy and others poked fun at it, but he knew he could rock like the best guitar gods in his own uncompromising way (he even enlisted a guitar god, Eddie VanHalen, to play the crazy solo on “Beat It”). Without him, I doubt we would have been so willing to open the doors for Justin Timberlake and others who sing high and dance like we wish we all could.

In the months and years to follow, we’ll get the whole story on why he died so young. We’ll maybe hear of even more controversies: What did he do while staying in the middle east? Why did he hit such economic hard times? What is the legacy of his children? How many plastic surgeries were ultimately involved in the expanse of his entire life and why was he so vane?

He is the first of the 80’s pop generation to leave us so soon. He had such a lasting impact: He is like an Elvis or a Sinatra though there will be those who call that blasphemy. Those people have their ears in the sand and have no idea what greatness we were listening to from Michael’s earliest years playing with his family to 1995 when he enjoyed his last number one hit (“You Are Not Alone” which broke records for making it to number one so quickly).

When you work in radio, especially a top 40 station, that plays the same songs over and over again, you get to know each and every note of certain songs. I am honored I got to hear every note of Michael’s.