A lot of people think it's cool to work in radio. I'll admit it is. However, very few people realize all the restrictions and headaches associated with having to work at one. Here is a little primer before I get into the meat of my experience at KZZO-FM in Clovis, NM.
1. Almost every radio station is financed with advertising.
This is the key. I know people hate hearing commercials while waiting for the next song, comedy bit or news to come on, but this how stations manage to stay on the air. In case you didn't figure out from my last post, running a radio station is expensive. During my time at KZZO, I saw two millionaires go broke trying to keep it afloat, and this was just in a small town, where they didn't have to pay the air staff a lot of money. We barely made above minimum wage. This brings me to my next point:
2. DJs and Air Personalities don't directly earn their income.
Can you imagine someone paying you just to sit around, play music and talk into a microphone from time to time? In order to pay people to keep a radio station on the air 24 hours a day, a sales staff has to sell enough advertising to cover everyone's paychecks AND they have to be able to collect on those bills. If you've ever heard about someone in a major market getting paid $150,000 a year, that means some poor salesperson has to bust their butt selling about $500,000 worth of advertising just to cover that salary and then some.
3. DJs don't really get to pick the songs they play.
Now, there was a time in the 1960s in which Free-Form formats existed on FM stations. Most radio stations were AM/FM combos and while a lot of advertising would be sold on the AM side, it helped to support the FM side. People were supposedly paid to put whatever they wanted on the air and this is how people like Jimi Hendrix and Frank Zappa got their fan bases to grow through exposure on FM radio. When FM became the preferred frequency because of the capability to broadcast in stereo, a lot of that went away, but the legend remained that the DJs were in charge of the programming. At KZZO, we had a strict format that we had to adhere to. However, this didn't keep some people we hired from trying to entertain the town with "their kind of music," which usually consisted of playing the same 10 classic rock songs during their shifts. Nowadays, it is next to impossible to sneak your records onto the programming.
4. Radio stations don't really play requests.
Radio stations used to be known for playing songs requested by listeners. This was basically an illusion, so to speak. If you called up and wanted to hear one of the latest hits and you actually heard it played afterward, it was likely coming up in the rotation anyway. It was a coincidence. If you called and wanted to hear an older song, you might not hear it. If you called the radio station back, they would say, "I just played that five minutes ago. I guess you didn't hear it. I'm not going to play it again." I was surprised when I started working at a large market station in Denver that people called in and requested songs. I thought for certain they would have figured out that requests would not be played. Even recently when working at a newsradio station in San Jose, our FM sister station had a text service. People were texting in requests. That amazes me, because in this day in age, you can pull up just about any song on YouTube and listen to it for free. But I guess it has more to do with feeling like you're in control of the music that comes out over the airwaves.
5. Everybody thinks they know how to run a radio station.
One of the slogans for KZZO when we changed formats was "Finally, a really good radio station." My problem with that slogan was that EVERYONE has their own idea about what makes a "really good radio station." A lot of people were expecting us to go back to the AOR format we had before we were K108FM. The consensus seemed to be that we had a great presentation, but we weren't playing the type of music they wanted to listen to all the time. And to be honest, no single radio station is ever going to meet anyone's expectations. That's why it's nice to live in a large market where you can have a variety of choices. One of the biggest problems with the Clovis/Portales area is that the stations were all Top 40 or Country/Western.
6. Every person connected to the station wants to have some say in the music that gets played.
This includes myself. When I started working at the station, I dreamed of the day I would have influence over what went out over the airwaves. That actually somewhat came true when I was named the Music Director. However, almost everyone I worked with kept DEMANDING that I put certain songs on the playlist. When the silent partners took over, one of them had been in the music publishing business prior to holding the reins of the station. He swore that he was not there to control the music. But somehow, every recent song he held the rights to got played by the station, on Jid's orders. On top of that, the partner would open up all the new records when they came in, even though they were addressed to me. It was a relief when the partner went out of town for extended periods.
7. Some contests might be rigged.
I'll admit I've done this. If I had friends who wanted to win some minor prize, like a record, cassette or free food, I often was able to get away with making them winners without anybody else finding out. If I were to say the 10th caller would get a certain prize, I would keep my friend on the line until I figured time enough had passed for 10 people to call. I'm certain there are a lot of others who have done the same thing. Outside my influence, there was one raffle contest we had that was done in conjunction with a charity. People could donate money to the charity for a raffle ticket or, if they didn't want to donate, they could still enter the raffle. (There were laws governing this to keep it from being regulated as gambling.) We used two different kinds of tickets for the raffle. The major prizes went to the ones who donated and a few piddly prizes went to those who didn't. One of our most elaborate contests was rigged in such a way to keep the cash amount down to a minimum. That will be the topic of a separate article in the future.
8. Radical changes are common among radio stations.
A station may be high in the ratings for years, but eventually, they have to come down. When they sink to a certain level, they have to re-invent themselves in an effort to get more listeners back. Sometimes, it works. Sometimes, it doesn't. I'd heard tale of a radio station with a new owner and Program Director hoping to ignite some excitement with a brand-new format and fancy jingle package. They saw their efforts fail because they didn't realize the previous owner had tried that exact same stunt just a few years earlier and it didn't work then.
Hopefully, this will give you a better understanding of the radio business and why some things that happened to me wouldn't make sense in any other business. I've got a lot of ground to cover in the weeks ahead.
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