The Drama of Good Bye: You Can Keep It

The Drama of Good Bye: You Can Keep It

Good bye's. Usually, I like to skip 'em because quite selfishly, I'd like to have all the wonderful people I know living within a 100 mile radius of each other. So I'd cheekily say things like "Its not good bye, it's 'I'll see you later.'" But doesn't that sound like something we say to protect those we love?

It can't always be "see you later," right? Sometimes, it really does have to be "good bye." So who am I protecting, really, when I mark this huge change with a very casual, and usual hug and "later gator!"

I just quit my job. I put in a two month notice which felt like torture. Two months of people asking questions about my unnamed successor. Two months of people wondering "Where are you going to live?" and "do you have a job lined up yet?" I get that these questions are probably out of concern for my well-being, but most likely curiousity because who in their right mind quits their job with nothing else planned? No back up. No Plan B. It was just two months of saying "I don't know."

Dammit, there is a lot of insecurity that comes along with that phrase. I don't know. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I don't know. "What's your major?" I don't know. "Do you want to get married?" I DON'T KNOW!

So two months of build up and a whole lot of "I don't knows" later, everything felt so, damn, dramatic. Everything was the last time of this, and the last chance of that, or the only time I'll get to do this. How exhausting!!! It really was for everyone else, too; the whole "Maggi's Final Parade" was all planned by everyone else. (The only thing I made a really big deal about was having lunch at the bakery down the street from my apartment. They had the best gourmet cupcakes, ever. Red Velvet with a cheesecake middle and vanilla frosting. Hello! Salivating yet?) Instead, I was way to busy with training my replacement, packing, forwarding mail, finding a vehicle that could get me across the country to my general destination, and tying up the last few general loose ends that you NEVER forsee coming. So if this was the last time, friend, to hang out or eat at our favorite place, why was it up to me to make it happen? There is suddenly a whole lot extra on my plate.

Now, not to sound like a selfish asshole who doesn't care about her friends, because I do! I really do! I WANT to hear about your promotion/break up/mamma drama/insert your life stuff here. I'm just a little preoccupied to reach out and find out what that vague Facebook post was about. I love you, but right now I need you to bat me over the head and TELL me what the heck is going on, because I just made a huge life decision and I'm trying not to question myself every day.

So, with two months of answering a bunch of the same questions with "I don't knows," letting go of arguably one of the coolest gigs AND training my replacement, perhaps it IS me that I am protecting with a simple "See you later." The pressure is already there. I just don't want to heighten the drama anymore by giving you the proper good bye you probably deserve. You see, I already have 2500 miles in front of me to think about what I just did, and what I decided will be my life in front of me. There's no turning back now. The decision is made and I have to follow through. That's dramatic enough. So, for tonight, I'd like to just have a drink with my friend like nothing is ever going to change.

Interns: A Not So Secret Love Affair

Interns. I love them and I need them.  Why did I wait so long to “hire” them? I wish I could really hire them right now!  Let me back up.

I have been dilly dawdling on bringing on an intern since I started here over a year ago as the Program Director. I struggled to learn this position and build a new station, essentially from the ground up. My thought was perhaps, that an intern would get in the way or maybe that I would wind up teaching them more than I would be learning to be successful in my position. Boy, I could not have been more wrong.

One of them (yes I have more than one, two in fact) we’ll call them Intern A, had been emailing me consistently for 11 months before I called them in to talk. I instantly fell in love!  Intern A talked a lot in school about how great of a time they were having working together with me. A professor contacted me and referred over Intern B who is equally as wonderful.

Here is why they are so great as humans: They both bring different perspectives to the table. They each have different gender identities, experiences (one is really into TV and the other really into country music), levels of passion, and different strengths and weaknesses. Where one is really strong, let’s say in producing commercials, the other is really great at coming up with compelling on air content or internet research. They work together and help each other and they are both so happy to be in the building.

Here is why they are so great for the building: They are both so happy to be there. Simple as that. It’s like I forgot that magic feeling when you get a new opportunity; to be able to walk into a room and show off even the few skills I have.  By teaching them and watching them teach each other, I become a better talent, and quite frankly, a better human being. Their fresh energy is contagious. I want to come up with exciting things for them to do each day. I want to set an example for what they should expect in this business.

Today, in fact, I was helping Intern B put together a solid demo tape, so they could have something tangible to help get a job. It was challenging to describe exactly what a program director will be looking for and how some of the audio they put together just wasn’t “it.”  The eagerness to please was adorable. My desire to help them get stronger and advocate for themselves is more important for them in the long run, so rather than just accepting the work because a) it was really cute how they wanted to impress me and I want to be impressed or b) it wasn’t as good as mine (maybe, that’s so subjective) and that means less competition, I really listened to what Intern B presented and critiqued it. Critically. I had to get out of my comfort zone and say why I thought something could be better.*  That, was really difficult for me.

So, why did I wait so long to get an intern, or two? I don’t know. Fear. Business. Who knows. I am sure glad that I have two of them that bring so much to the table and actually help me become a better talent, a better leader, and an all around better human being.

To my interns and interns everywhere...thank you.


 *Note how I said something could be better, not something isn’t great. Intern B’s work was okay. It was passable. But I wanted their demo to really showcase their strengths, which I recognize because I’ve been working with Intern B for a couple months now. A new program director, however; won't so easily be able to spot those great qualities unless he pounds them over the head with it in that demo! Again, it was still really difficult for me to say that, but the reward will be when Intern B gets a great gig. I guess I'll deal with the awkward "sorry to hurt your feelings" guilt.

 To the Left: Here are the two people who make me work harder and therefore make me a better on air talent. Samantha and Dominick right at the beginning of their internships.

Look! They bring treats unannounced...I trained them so well. (Okay, I've actually NEVER asked them to get me coffee, so this was pretty amazing)








 I have however, sent them on shopping sprees to update the Prize Vault I keep for my listeners.











Here we are after a great lesson in throwing away all of your show prep when something else better comes up! 'Go with your gut' was that days mantra, literally. (We were arguing about whether or not to order your food online or over the phone, so I said, "Wait a minute, let's talk about this on the air." The phones blew up that afternoon!)


Want to know them better?
Contact Samantha here.
Contact Dominick here.

Answer The Phone: A Radio DJ’s Guide to Getting Live and Local

Live and Local: you’ve heard it more times than you’ve watched Friend’s reruns.  Those ridiculous promotions meetings and meetings with your PD about how to get the station to sound more Live and Local. What does that even mean?  In a small market, where funds are as hard to come by as interns, the challenge of making your station sound  “Live and Local,“ seems like a never ending uphill battle where you always lose.  The only way I have figured out how to keep my GM from saying those dreaded words “We need to sound more ‘Live and Local,‘” is by answering the damn phone.

Answer the phone!  This still seems to be the way that most GM’s and persons in charge find that a radio station sounds “live and local.”  I’ll save the “how to get a listener to call me” blog post for another time, but while I recognize the challenges of getting a phone call in the first place, as a personality, why aren’t we taking more advantage of each golden opportunity, as few and far between as they come. So here are a few sure fire things that have worked for me in the studio.

When a listener does call, RECORD it! You have no idea what they are going to say, what they might want, how chatty they might be or what they might think about a particular topic.

Doesn’t matter how chatty your listener is, they are probably calling just to request a song, which will be extremely difficult to play that request soon unless it happens to be in power, or heavy rotation.  That is why you SAVE the call.  Just because a listener calls to only request a song, doesn’t mean  you can’t use that phone call later in the show, or even later in the week.  I’ve been known on slow show prep days to use phone calls that are months old!

Now that you have the listeners attention, remember, this is a golden opportunity to sound live and local. Keep them on the phone for as long as you can! Ask them anything.  You’ve been show prepping, you know about the town. Ask her about how excited she is for spring because the new ice cream shop opened up around the corner, or ask her about the construction that makes traffic on 45/52 about 10x more horrific, or even ask her about her day.  All of these questions could lead to other follow up phone calls! 

You may think that there are enough ice cream shops in town, but adding a new one just makes you excited for warm weather and never having to eat the same flavor twice this summer. What’s the best ice cream in town? BAM! Now you’ve got a town wide debate that could cross over onto your social media platforms well after you’ve discussed it on the air.

The traffic sucks. What is the best back route to avoid that terrible construction?  Now you’ve just connected someone in the know, with ALL OF YOUR LISTENERS!  You have now just become a place people can turn to for great ideas and solutions to problems all of your neighbors are facing.

Asking about her day just makes her feel heard and understood.  She’s not the only one who had a lousy Monday at work. Make her the voice of all your other loyal fans, who haven’t happened to call yet.  The struggle is real, but that doesn’t mean any one of us should go through it alone.

A request is nice. A request is easy.  But ask your listener about their life…and you’ve got a fan for, well… life!  Plus, they’ll call again and you have instantly made your show sound LIVE (because you play the phone calls on the air) and LOCAL (because you ask them to talk about life in your town).

The beauty about getting one person to call in, is that other people hear them on the radio and it becomes engrained in their head that it is in fact OK to call and it is encouraged.  Hopefully, within six months, your show is THE place to call and get heard and get on the air.

Lastly, make sure to THANK them for calling.  Calling people on the phone is not fun, for anyone.  Think about it, we live in a texting, FB messaging, tweeting, don’t look directly or speak directly to my face kind of world. So when some one decides to actively engage with you via old school methods like voice calling. THANK them for their time, because it is valuable, and they just made your show better without compensation. So thank them. Bonus points if you throw in the “Thanks for calling, and I’ll talk to you soon!”  They’ll remember, and call you again.  So Answer the damn phone already. (Mostly because you can't screen them in the studio, unless your studio has fancy equipment to do that.)