[BC] Dealing with the Brain Challenged

[Jerry Mathis]

Rich, I'm in agreement with you on almost everything, but I'm puzzled about your reaction to the "Brain Dead DJ's" thread. You're right when you say that without the air talent, we'd all be missing our paychecks. And IMO the majority of the air talent are intelligent, capable people who are good at their jobs. They deserve respect, and the recognition of their contribution.
 
There are ALSO a number of DJ's or air talent who, while they are GOOD at their designated job, are absolutely clueless technically. Now hold on, let me finish. Early in my career I used to criticize and bash these people too. It took a while and a little more maturity on my part to recognize and accept that not everyone is as smart as me. I will admit that I caused a lot of misery to some good people, something that I later wished I could undo. What I learned was to recognize that people are very good at some things, and are very bad at others. The tipping point was when I discovered that this situation applied to, of all people, ME.
 
So now, I try to get to know the air talent at the stations where I work. I learn early on just how technical they are, and whatever level of talent they have in that area, I have learned to work WITH them, to do the things they can't, and AROUND them so they can be comfortable in their jobs and NOT BE EMBARRASSED by what they don't know. In return, I have earned good friendships with almost all of the air and programming staff at my stations.
 
BTW, this same principle applies to the SALES STAFF, and not to mention MANAGEMENT, although they (management) deserve somewhat different consideration sometimes (such as a 2X4 upside the head  :)  ).
 
Having said all of that, there are, frankly, some air talent that are a dumb as a box of rocks, and they have no desire to improve themselves, and many of them are so conceited that they think they are above it all. I think THESE are the ones that have been discussed more than any in the thread on BDDJ's.
 
I appreciate your sensitivity to the issue, but possibly, maybe, you over-reacted a LITTLE?  :)
 
--
Jerry Mathis

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 9:49 AM, Rich Wood <richwood at pobox.com> wrote:

> 
>Maybe it's my sensitivity to the seemingly endless threads about how
>useless talent is, in spite of the fact that that's where your
>paycheck comes from.

>We recently had one of the most mean-spirited threads titled Brain
>Dead DJs. If there were an active list for programmers and talent I
>suspect there might be an equally mean-spirited thread about brain
>dead engineers. I won't even go near the comments about engineering
>consultants.