Thanks a lot RTTP, I was fired from my radio station![views:3749][posts:27]_________________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 6:19pm - BobNOMAAMRooney ""] I was fired for "spending too much time on that blue web site" when I was supposed to be contacting labels. I was fired from my position as music director so I wrote a rebuttal, left it in the station today and might lose my show because I'll probably be under intense scrutiny for speaking my mind. For now the show is still going on tomorrow from 8-10pm. Here's some of what I said in the letter. The so-called problem with me being on “that blue web site” shows the problem SFR has with supporting local music, and plays a huge role in our irrelevancy. The blue web site in question is actually Return To The Pit, a local radio show that does a far better job of engaging hundreds of local artists than SFR could ever hope to do. Through RTTP I contacted numerous bands looking for a wider audience for their demos, EPs, and Full Lengths. Attending local shows (which were advertised on RTTP’s Events Page) I purchased albums out of my pocket with the intent of adding them to our new music selection. When I suggested this to Dave last year he responded favorably to the idea. However, this year there seems to be an unspoken rule that unless an album is mailed out by a label or promotional company it cannot be added to the rack. There have been numerous times where I’ve seen a local artist come directly into the station with their demo, asking us to play it just once. Of course as soon as they step out of the office the demo ends up in the trash. This is absurd. Suffolk and the greater Boston area are home to hundreds of excellent bands looking for a break, yet we ignore them in favor of playing the same quasi-underground garbage anyone can hear if they turn on a radio or MTV2. It is absolutely ridiculous that the re-release of a tired 10-year-old album from a band that was never relevant in the first place (Dimmu Borgir’s Stormblast if you’re wondering) is considered new music when we could give our station a distinctive local flair. Shifting away from uniformity toward locals would give us a strong reputation among local bands and increase our listening audience, if we do not we will continue to toil in obscurity. We cannot continue to ignore local music, as even the most prolific stations and shows suffer when it is ignored. Long-running "Nasty Habits", one of WERS most popular shows, lived by its support of local acts and died last year as listenership fell off as the show de-emphasized local music. One way to bolster SFR would be the introduction of local music racks, which DJs could play in lieu of the selection on the required new music rack. This along with separate local music directors responsible for contacting local bands, attending local shows, and hosting local bands on their shows would have a positive effect on SFR‘s prominence on campus and in the area... Again, for a concert to be successful SFR would actually need to have a connection with the student body though the prospects of that are bleak considering the fact that I learned of my removal from the e-board through a letter this past Friday, despite being in the station at the same time as the people who made the decision over the previous two weeks. If the “blue web site” was such a concern someone should have brought it up to me last semester (which it was and I explained it in a fashion similar to this letter). Perhaps we could have had a discussion of everyone’s web browsing habits, fun as myspace and yahoo fantasy football are I have a slight feeling they might have nothing to do with the e-board (though that is an unfair characterization of myspace as I have used it to contact bands and labels and I would hope others have used it for the same purpose). I think the concern is communication. Nobody wants to listen to anyone else at the station and rather than addressing problems at meetings we would rather listen to ourselves speak, grandstanding about events that will never happen for five minutes or so before sending everyone home. I explained why I visited “that blue web site” and my problems with contacting a certain label multiple times last semester, yet apparently nobody felt like listening. Even when I was not receiving new adds from my labels I came into the station and logged new adds that were the responsibility of other music directors. I joined SFR not to be talked down to or lectured about computer labs as if I were a grade schooler, but to have fun. I can have fun without the e-board, thank you, though I would have liked the chance to defend myself if someone was willing to listen. |
| ________________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 6:42pm - DomesticTerror ""] boycott!!! |
| ________________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 7:10pm - VoidExpression ""] Damn, Suffolk's station sounds shitty. Leave the required playlists to commercial stations and stop jocking promoter's nuts. That sucks man, if you are itching to do radio come on over to WRBB (Northeastern). We're free form and need all the metal shows we can get! |
| ______________________________ [Jan 31,2006 7:23pm - wade ""] well written. |
| ___________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 7:38pm - dreadkill ""] very well written. if they don't at least think about reconsidering their decision or making some kind of effort to connect with their community, then they are all retarded. that was really a great letter. |
| ______________________________ [Jan 31,2006 7:41pm - nick ""] i think this calls for a forum skin color changer. |
| ______________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 7:52pm - the_reverend ""] you think that they are actually going to read it? radio station politics eat dick. there have been situations like that in the past with WUNH. |
| ________________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 8:11pm - DomesticTerror ""] the_reverend said:you think that they are actually going to read it? radio station politics eat dick. there have been situations like that in the past with WUNH. so what if they don't. He's a man of principle, and at the very least he'll :duffbeer:get a beer from me for it |
| __________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 8:18pm - niccolai ""] Are you sure that's all they fired you for? No offense intended, but usually people don't just get fired without doing multiple things wrong with a few warnings first, ya know? |
| ________________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 8:23pm - VoidExpression ""] If your station is run by bitchy retarded students they do. |
| ____________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 8:31pm - anonymous ""] VoidExpression said:That sucks man, if you are itching to do radio come on over to WRBB (Northeastern). We're free form and need all the metal shows we can get! Really? As a Northeastern grad who never did anything radio related, I am intrigued. |
| __________________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 8:31pm - BestialOnslaught ""] Err that was me. |
| ______________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 8:35pm - the_reverend ""] scott, did you read that off a car bumper too? |
| ________________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 8:44pm - VoidExpression ""] BestialOnslaught said:Err that was me. I've only been here for a couple of years and it seems from what I've been able to gather that we are coming out of some substantial dark ages where the station was in serious disrepair. Our power hasn't changed (9 mighty watts), but as of right now we've worked our way back to a decently run station with some interesting programming, along with some not so great stuff, but thats what community radio is all about. And we are one of the few pure free-forms left, so that's always exciting. Getting the students to listen is pretty much a lost cause, and our signal isn't strong enough to really reach into the community (we webcast though), so we're in kind of a weird spot. We're always looking for more people, and having alums on the staff always makes us happy. |
| ___________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 9:21pm - dyingmuse ""] bob, you are a true metal supporter! \m/ good luck with the show man! |
| ________________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 9:30pm - DomesticTerror ""] the_reverend said:scott, did you read that off a car bumper too? no. the only one i saw today said "eat shit, retard" |
| _______________________________________________ [Jan 31,2006 11:23pm - BobNOMAAMRooney nli ""] niccolai said:Are you sure that's all they fired you for? No offense intended, but usually people don't just get fired without doing multiple things wrong with a few warnings first, ya know? The only other thing related to my firing (which I discussed in the full letter, just felt like putting up the stuff related to local music) was that I was the hip-hop music director and we had a paltry hip-hop selection. I tried explaining that since we're a college station that doesn't even have an AM transmitter I faced a daunting task in getting mainstream hip-hop adds that DJs wanted to play. The problem of me not getting adds was compounded when the head music director took me off my other labels and gave them to two new music directors who came in mid-semester. Still I came in every day I was scheduled in the office and put new adds that were other music directors' responsibility into the system when asked to do so. The letter was the first warning I received, even though we're supposed to get one verbal and two writtens before being terminated. |
| ___________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 2:25am - Moran NLI ""] Well, if you were the hip-hop director, what were you doing on a metal web site? |
| ________________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 2:33am - BobNOMAAMrooney ""] Moran NLI said:Well, if you were the hip-hop director, what were you doing on a metal web site? I took on the hip-hop position this past semester and was told I could still contact other labels and bands when I expressed concern that I would run into the same problems as the person who previously held the position. |
| _________________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 7:49am - davefromthegrave ""] your radio station sounds like a piece of shit |
| ____________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 9:41am - RustedAngel ""] you could have just went to: http://text.returntothepit.com/forum.php to avoid the 'blueness'. |
| _____________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 9:44am - the_reverend ""] that's what I was going to say. that's what I do. oh and I know someone else that got fired for RTTP. |
| ________________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 11:31am - ryanfromhbbsi ""] 9 watts? psshhh i have 40 watts available and i dont even have a license. if you really want to make good radio without having assholes looking to fire or censor you, the best way is to go pirate. you have to remain a bit anonymous so you dont have the fcc tag ya, but you have complete freedom. im here to help any metalheads on the path of tormenting the fcc |
| ________________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 11:37am - ryanfromhbbsi ""] if the stations transmitter site has a regular rubber insulated 50/75 ohm coaxial feed to the antenna, all you need to do is stick a needle through the middle of it and clip the ends sticking out off so the coax short is undetectable to the eye. this could fry out the final output section of the transmitter if its a POS, but if not, it'll at the least prevent the signal from getting to the antenna |
| ______________________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 11:50am - BobNOMAAMRooney nli ""] UPDATE: Got a response, and I'm now back on the e-board as the local music director. |
| _____________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 11:58am - Christraper ""] hahahahaha rock on dude |
| _______________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 1:13pm - ryanfromhbbsi ""] right on. well just clock my ideas into the memory bank incase they get all confuckulated with you again |
| ___________________________________ [Feb 1,2006 1:36pm - Sinislazy ""] nice work dude! |