Coaches Corner by Sam Weaver
Deals, Deception & The Politics Of Power …
Recently, I got an email from an air talent dealing with office politics and trying to make sense of it all. Instead of going back and forth with long emails, I figured a quick call would be better. I hate recording and transcribing, but with his permission, I used AI to take notes so I could write this column.
Air Talent: I would like to keep my job so I will not tell you what station I am at and please don’t reveal my e-mail address. What I will tell you is that I work in the Southeast for a small radio chain. Sam, the General Manager of this station, is underhanded and cheap. There are paydays all of us wonder if our checks will clear. I would go to another station, but I’ve had no luck finding anything anywhere else. I do middays and program. Let me tell you about something I just went through. I was doing a remote and met an apartment manager of one of this town’s largest complexes. We got to talking and she said she had been trying to call the station to find out about advertising. I took her card and told her someone would be calling.
Coach: You’ve got me curious, keep going.
Air Talent: My remote was at a flower shop, and I watched this one lady walk around looking at flowers and asking questions. Before she left, she came over and said she liked how I did things. She wanted to know if I would be interested in doing her commercials and living rent-free in exchange for advertising. I told her I had nothing to do with sales, but I’d pass on her information and when someone from our sales department called her, she could pitch the idea to them. On Monday I gave her card to the sales manager and told her everything she had said. Okay, let me explain something, the sales manager is the owner’s girlfriend and has never worked in sales or radio. She’s always making major mistakes with clients, and we’ve actually lost some long-standing clients. To make things worse, the business manager is the General Manager’s brother’s wife. I know this all sounds crazy.
Coach: Not crazy, but tricky.
Air Talent: Yep. Anyway, in a few weeks I got commercial copy for the apartment complex. The next thing I know I’m doing a remote at the complex for a renter recruitment drive. The lady I met at my flower remote turned out to be the complex manager. As soon as she spots me, she runs over and tells me how much she liked the commercial I did. I thanked her and told her I hoped the station gave her a good deal. She said yes and that they loved her idea of exchanging time for free rent. Now I was getting excited because my lease was coming up and I figured since she had requested me for this remote, I was also going to get a chance to move as part of my endorsement.
She kept talking and said she would be advertising on our station over the next two years and that the sales manager, and her family were nice. I asked her what she meant. Then she told me they had just moved in and it was part of the deal for advertising at our station. She also told me that she’d requested for me to do her remotes and offered the free apartment as part of the personal endorsement. But the GM had told her that I was already living somewhere, but that I would still personally endorse her complex in commercials.
Sam, I couldn’t believe it. The Sales Manager made a deal for herself. What kind of crap is that? If I had another station to go to, I would have gone. Is there anything I can do about this?
Coach: Not really. There’s nothing you can do that would not potentially come back to bite you in the butt. You could go over his head to corporate, but it’s not worth it.
Air Talent: This guy gets away with stuff like this. We get visits from the VP of sales once a month. Check this out. Come to find out that my GM and the VP are cousins.
Coach: You’ve told me enough to understand your situation on the barter trade-out. There are three things I know. Your GM is cheap, shady, and has boundary issues with business and personal. Let me share something with you. I once worked for a stand-alone independent owner who thought station contest concert tickets and CDs were his private property. He thought nothing of sending his friends or their teenagers to my office for a free make-your-own prize package. It got so bad I had to have promotions hide things around the building so we could legitimately tell the owner we were out of stuff. I didn’t lie, we were out of stuff kept in that office. I never mentioned any other locations in the building. Regardless of my personal feelings, it was his business.
Air Talent: That sounds like our station. That’s funny. I have to remember that trick.
Coach: Oh, I’ve got other stories on how that station was operated but want to get back to what you’re dealing with. It’s the GM’s choice to do what he wants with barter and trade-outs, but the whole thing could’ve been handled better. So here is what probably happened with the apartment. The GM signed off on everything and it was probably his idea to move the Sales Manager, his girlfriend, into the apartment complex as part of the barter/trade out. There is nothing you can do but “keep on keeping on” or find another job. And by the way, nothing is free. The apartment would’ve been compensation for your endorsement and therefore considered taxable income.
Air Talent: This is the smallest market I’ve ever worked in. I took this job thinking something better would come along. But that was 5 years ago. Things seem to be getting worse for people like me in this business. Other than the GM, I like the people here. The money could be better, but I guess I could be doing worse. But this messed up situation over the free apartment just really gets to me.
And if you need some friendly advice, drop me an email; samweaver@samweavermedia.com or text me, (972) 672-4812.