[BC] Re: Radio Is Not what it Used to be

[Tom Bosscher]

Donna Halper wrote:
 >I asked the CE about it, and oh did he get off on a rant
 >about no time to train people, people don't listen anyway,
 >people are stooooopid, etc.

    There's a winning attitude. There is no doubt that engineers today 
are much busier than 20 years ago. At the same time, if you have an 
engineer who sits back by the furnace and all he can talk about is 
nanowebers per heating degree day, he deserves to stay there.

    A major part of a full time engineers job is to be a people person. 
Stop and ask each announcer what they need to help them do their show. 
At one station here in town, back when the digital system was being 
installed, the announcers had picked "the" spot where they wanted the 
monitor. CE came in and put it on the other side, where it was very 
difficult to read. "I'm not going to put it there, too hard to get to 
the cables". So a staff of 4 or 5 people suffers everyday for one person 
who might have to change out the monitor once every two years. (hint, 
put in AC and video extension cables, makes it easy to swap out).
    I've seen way too much of this type of engineering attitude. If you 
get the air staff to respect you, by doing what they need, you can get 
just about anything done on the station.

    As far as the ever growing work demand, a very common "boss" mode is 
to push and push a person to see what they can get away with. Most 
engineers will keep working more and more hours, thinking they are a 
failure if they can't handle a seven station cluster in 60 hours. Hint, 
you can't. Think they have one salesperson for all those stations? Just 
stop when your hit your 40-50 hours. Most everyone will understand. In 
addition, keep notes on what you have done, and write a report every 
month that goes to ALL department heads. Most have no idea what you are 
doing for them, much less the other managers.

       tom bosscher