The majority of my experience in radio has basically been gleaned through a career progression in one company.
OK, it's the biggest company and a conglomerate of what was once several smaller companies, and I've been brought along for the ride to work across four of it's well-known stations...
That all sounds pretty good. This company has treated me well. I've had opportunities. I've progressed, but lately I've been looking over the garden fence at other, smaller radio groups, stations and production houses and wondering what it's like to be there?
I'm a very loyal person, and very grateful for the people that have given me time, energy and the chance to step up the career ladder, so this is a fairly momentous change.
As any organisation expands, invests in certain places, cuts costs in others, and plain buys-out new ventures, there is always controversy, speculation, and people who lose out. Having not been one of those people to this point, I've always been quite fiercely defensive of my company's radio networking vision, challenging the cheap, poorly-researched arguments about localness and public interest, and getting into full-blown arguments over the ability to deliver quality programming on a careful budget.
So why now? Is this the end of this love affair with radio? Because if I can't get my mojo back now, it's either this:
1) Go to a smaller company, take a pay cut, take more responsibility and actually feel more directly connected to the medium again.
2) Switch mindsets completely and try my hand at the BBC
3) Leave radio. Get a real job. Oh God.
The first option springs from a slight desperation on my part, that as the team of people reporting into me has expanded, so has my calendar's pencil-pushing predilection. Yet the team is still too small for the work we deliver, so I'm doing the same job as them too, in between the planning, creative, admin and management stuff. Which means that all of it just fucks me off and makes my job purely task driven and not remotely passionate at all. And THAT is worrying if you work in station sound, or have to make sure that whatever a client is paying millions of pounds for sounds engaging, fresh, and exciting to the listener.
This week, a small team of three of us have barely slept in the lead-up to a huge meeting with the company's biggest ever sponsor.... in fact, this is the biggest ever sponsorship deal in commercial radio, all because we were worried that they wanted to see some mind-blowing new creative. As it happens, they were pleased with what we brought forward, but the sheer pressure placed internally on our team of three (already overworked people) made us feel like a) the deal would pull if we didn't impress them and b) every one would starve and die as a consequence. What's more, the new creative was pulled apart in a series of last-minute unnecessary meetings, just to appease middle-managers who really just wanted to justify their position and were using completely outdated information and contradicting their own peers. Mixed messages anyone? Yes indeed, as a kind superior attempted to explain to me afterwards, seeing the position I was in. They were all just trying to do the right thing too.
Frankly, I'm getting a little fed up with the amount of wound-up, shitty hoo-ha placed on people who can full well see for themselves where they need to place their efforts, but don't have the physical resources to do it. I'm also a little fed up with the lack of trust placed in management's ample capabilities to make decisions for themselves. It seems we are looking to people who aren't even allowed to give a straight answer themselves.
Much to her credit, my boss is helping with a solution for my crushed, adrenalin-riddled team, but it can't come soon enough, and what's more, when it does, I'm worried I will be so far disillusioned with the whole thing I'll have nothing left to give. I'm not sure my team is even too stressed either, maybe it's just me. I'm actually planning out someones day hour by hour because their time-management is so poor, they have no idea what they're capable of delivering.
Yesterday was the prime example of the pewp de pewp that comes from nowhere but stressed-out people, and I'm going to moan again, just because I don't generally cry in front of colleagues. It's a retarded thing to do, and I pride myself on making it to a respectable level of expertise in a male-dominated specialism of production.
After the aforementioned client meeting, I rushed back to the office to deal with the usual mountain of PROBLEM that cripples my email inbox every five minutes or so, requiring SOLUTION. In the heat of that, I rushed off to a meeting, with the silliest man in the world. Not that he's stupid or anything, but he's frankly someone who's been in the same job too long for his own good and is thus riddled with paranoid hokum and odd perceptions about just about anyone who may or may not be a threat to his job. Frankly, I'd be paranoid in that position too.
At any rate, he's never been my biggest fan, but being the most socially awkward, spiky little creature I've ever met, I've always rather liked him. I like troubled people. My benefit of the doubt was flushed down the loo when he ended up standing in front of me as I sat there, looking down and SHOUTING, SHOUTING, SHOUTING that I had an ATTITUDE TO HIM, that he was the SENIOR JOB TITLE MANAGER OF THIS STATION AND EVERYTHING MUST GO THROUGH HIM....
I do see his point, seeing as one of his producers made a stupid mistake, misread a VERY clear email from me and broadcast something awkward without his knowing. Unfortunately, I didn't quite warm to his manner of conveying it, and all I could do was apologise dumbly, like a schoolchild being told they were the stupidest, most worthless thing in the world. It felt pretty horrible, especially after a ridiculously pressured week with the other deal, and I found myself a bit choked up. I tried to go on to other business and just couldn't because I couldn't breathe. It was fucking annoying to be so knocked over by someone so irrelevant to me professionally, but it did the job and I had to excuse myself to go run and retch and cry into the toilet.
I didn't go back, and although he apologised in an email later, I'm frankly furious and think he's a bit of a cock. What's more, I couldn't be bothered to reply. I can't even be bothered to try and repair it - he was cold enough when I was just trying to build one for starters, so I don't think we're coming back from this. What's more, I'm angry. REALLY angry that he humiliated me. I know full well the guy is insecure in his job and gets a lot of shit off a lot of less than polite people, but frankly, there is no excuse for treating someone like that.
Gosh, this is turning into 'Dear Diary, I hate my job'. To be fair, someone DID give me a bottle of champagne for two hours of rather intense client-fronted panic this week. I also work with a lot of very kind, very clever, equally stressed people, so it's not all bad. We're in it together, it's just that nobody likes to moan TOO much and bring the others down. But will I really read through this again when I'm an old woman (provided I get old and the internet still exists them) and think any of the above was worth getting in a tizz about? Will I think the evening and day I spent comfort eating, crying and running it off stomach cramps was actually worth it?
No. So perhaps that DOES rule out the option of being a bigger jobsworth in a smaller company. After all, I'd quite like to spend time on my journalism course, writing my next book, or having sex with my incredibly hot and equally fantastic comfort-food-preparing boyfriend.
So there's option 2... apply for a BBC job, which I have done, and it's totally different and looks amazing, so amazing that I felt fucking amazing just applying for it.
Or there's option 3, leave radio.
Leave radio?
I haven't had a REAL job since I was 21, and then I was just serving coffees and selling swimming tickets in a leisure centre. Maybe a bit of hoovering. God, doesn't it sound like a dream some days though.
Anyway, rant over, there's some wine to be drunk tonight, and I've got to get to the other side of London to have it.
Bet you I rock up on Monday morning with a pack of ideas and a little glimmer of hope. I always do.
Hopefully it'll last beyond 10am this week.
No comments:
Post a Comment