My job with News Monitoring Services was running fairly smoothly in the early part of 1994. I came in every morning, did my monitoring and any other odd jobs that needed done and went home. I rarely had to interact with anyone, especially the owner, Mr. N. But this didn't mean that I didn't see him go on rampages. He would frequently get mad about something and start yelling. Even though I was never on the receiving end of these tirades, I knew it wasn't long before I would be. (And I'll have a separate article about Mr. N tomorrow.)
In the meantime, we had to move from our space in the Kearny Mesa area to a building close to Downtown San Diego. We had to transport all the VCRs, tapes, monitors, editing equipment and office furniture. It was a pain to coordinate because we still needed to be recording and monitoring the news while we were doing this.
Things were going okay for awhile at the new location, but he decided to start paying us by the hour instead of the point system. And then he started delaying our paychecks. This was irritating because he stated our paydays were on specific days and then he found out what the law allowed and wouldn't pay us any earlier than that. He would even wait until the end of the day to release the checks. And then, when we did get paid, we practically had to race two blocks to the bank to make sure the checks would clear. Sometimes, they didn't and it was very reminiscent of the follies that took place when I worked at KZZO-FM.
One day, I was at work and some official looking people came in. One man told us he was from the IRS and that the assets on the premises were being seized. All the employees would have to leave immediately. Employees were not the only people Mr. N owed money to. I left not knowing if I still had a job. I wondered if I would be available to apply for unemployment. Even though I was working 40 hours a week, I wasn't really considered full time. Afterward, Mr. N was able to contact his attorney to start bankruptcy proceedings. When that happened, the IRS people left and we were able to return to work. Thank goodness!
Very soon after that, we had to move again, about four blocks down the street. The big problem this time was that Mr. N decided to use it as an excuse to go two whole days beyond the legal deadline to give us our paychecks. One of the employees who had been hired the same time as me yelled at Mr. N about the check situation and Mr. N kept yelling back. That guy wound up quitting. That move got on everyone's last nerve. But the good news was that we never needed to move again for as long as I worked for the company.
During this time, my responsibilities increased. I was in charge of programming the VCRs, doing the schedules for the monitors, editing videotape and audiotape, writing transcripts. And for a period of time, I was in charge of hiring new monitors. I had very little downtime at work. And it seemed that every time I was able to arrange some breathing room, Mr. N would come up with a new duty for me to perform. And he did this without raising my pay.
On top of all this, I would have to show up at work at odd hours on the weekend when we didn't have staff so that I could load the VCRs. And to be honest, I did this without getting paid. (I was just glad to be able to keep working.) My social and event life revolved around making certain that we were recording the programs that we needed for our inventory.
One of the benefits of being in charge of the recording was that I could borrow the videotapes of the major network primetime programs that I enjoyed watching. I watched way more TV than I needed to. But then again, I didn't have a girlfriend. I had all that time to burn.
In yesterday's post, I didn't go into much detail about our monitoring software. It was designed by Mr. N's brother and was in beta phase the whole time I was there. They had come up with a couple of different versions and it clearly was not completed, but it was functional for our purposes. After all the monitoring for the day had been done, the sales staff would search on specific terms for our regular clients. This would bring up a list of the hits that we got on each newscast and the list would then be faxed to the clients. Afterward, the sales staff would scan the summaries to see if there were any businesses we could cold call and see if they wanted copies of the news reports. The only inconvenience about the report was that we couldn't edit it, so our clients would get several stories with the same search terms that didn't have anything to do with them.
Ultimately, Mr. N's goal was to sell this software to other video monitoring services, including AVR. But while his brother knew all about programming and coding, he had some mental health issues that kept him from completing the software. If you clicked on "help" for some topic, something would come up that said "Content to be added later." It was a long way from being completed.
Enough time had passed that someone else came up with monitoring software that was completed. And while it wasn't as user-friendly as ours, it did allow for editing of search results. But by this point, I had gotten fed up with Mr N and the direction the company was heading. I tried to figure out a good way to leave before the new software was to be implemented.
That opportunity presented itself in the middle of December 1999 when Mr. N had posted a message on our intranet that asked me to record something on CNBC. For whatever reason, it didn't show up on my computer desktop. One of the other co-workers saw the message and pointed it out to me. I knew this wasn't good.
When Mr. N came in and found out I didn't record the program, he started yelling at me. I started yelling back that he could have called me at home or left a note on the VCRs or something because it wasn't my fault that the message didn't appear on my station. He said, "You don't talk that way to me! I sign your paychecks!" I said, "Okay, you can sign my last paycheck, then!" I went over to the time clock, punched out and went home.
I knew of someplace that I could get work right away, but I wouldn't be able to apply for it until the next day. Mr. N called me at home and talked me into working the last two weeks of the year. I agreed, but took the next day off so I could go apply at a call center, where I would have my next job.
After I finished the year, I never went back. The only time I had contact with the company was when I had moved and had to make certain they knew where to send my W-2. However, I still had to drive by the place on a regular basis because it was on the way to Downtown San Diego.
Since then, TV news monitoring companies have become practically obsolete. A lot of TV news operations now post almost all of their stories on YouTube, where anyone can watch and download for free. New Monitoring Services ceased to exist sometime in the last 12 years. However, I see that one of our competitors is still up and running and provides content digitally. I guess that's for those times that the news stations don't post a certain story. I can't imagine they make a lot of money.
But there would still be a need for radio monitoring. No one records radio programming and puts it on YouTube.
I'm glad I got out while the getting was good. And as it would turn out, this wouldn't be the last job at a company that would become obsolete. That would apply to my next job as well, but it's going to be a while before I get to that one.
No comments:
Post a Comment