That Tony Call-In -- How Did They Know?

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Pretty cool of Tony Romo to spontaneously pick up the phone and dial The Hardline.  And The Line did a nice job with the on-the-fly interview.

Danny described the call-in on The Orphanage this morning.  I was wondering how, when they get an unsolicited celebrity call, they ensure that it's the real guy.  I guess it doesn't happen too often, but I do believe I heard Danny say that that is a concern when this they get an unexpected call from somebody claiming to be  .  .  .  somebody.

Tony Romo hoping to delay diaper-changing duties during a glittery
DFW function by dialing up his pals at The Hardline

I wonder how they handle it?  You don't want to offend a major catch for the showgram by showing too much skepticism, but neither do you want to be scammed.  So do you just chat for awhile and hope you can convince yourself that the voice is right?  (Actually -- I thought the voice did not sound a whole lot like the Tony we hear interviewed on the teevee -- although not doubt it was him.  Just saying the producer faces a difficult task.)  Do you ask some identifying question, and if so, how would you ask a question that any follower of the news wouldn't know the answer to?  Do these stations have secret lists of phone numbers of the Local Famous they can check against the incoming call?

Anyway, if any insiders can give us some anecdotes on schmoes trying to call in as notables, please let us hear from you.

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GRUBES UNLEASHED

Well, that didn't take long.

Folks, if you want to talk Ticket, there is only one destination for you.  You're there now.

Michael Gruber was an early adopter of My Ticket Confession.  He was the first ever commentor on this site, and from time to time he would drop us a line with information or answers to questions. Nothing too inside or proprietary, just stuff that listeners might want to know.

Turns out, he had a few other things on his mind.

If you follow this site closely, you may already have seen what follows. Michael penned some comments to the last post expanding on his decision to move on -- but he also took the opportunity to unburden himself of some observations on station operation and treatment of the JV. 

Every once in awhile someone will say something on the air that will give us a glimpse of what goes on behind the scenes.  We make educated guesses based on the very rare drawing back of the curtain.  Speaking only for myself, I delight in overinterpreting and jumping to conclusions based on the occasional odd inflection and unexpected pause.  Keeps the site interesting, even when I'm wrong.

I daresay we have never heard anything like some of Michael's observations from anyone who worked there, although hints of some of what follows will sometimes leak onto the airwaves. 

They don't require any further comment from me.  They speak eloquently for themselves.

I should add that I sought and received Michael's permission to rerun his thoughts as a featured post.   I have edited them very slightly for length.  His comments (and the comments to which they respond) appear in full in the previous post, if you want to check them out in context.

Michael first expands on his decision to leave The Ticket:

"In an ideal world, of course I'd rather stay at the Ticket and play drops until my hands fell off. But despite the awesomeness of the job, it's not a career no matter how hard I tried to make it one. And being a career board-op without a degree just doesn't lead to many opportunities to move up, or even expand current responsibilities. I was stuck, basically.

.  .  .  .

"June 3 would have been my tenth anniversary with the station. In that time I have gotten to do so many fun things and meet so many awesome people, I could probably write a book. I'm fully aware that the majority of that goes away in a few months once the aftershocks of my departure totally end. If no one knows who the hell the I am after that, I'll manage to survive. I've gotten more than I could ever dream out of the "local celebrity" lifestyle.

".  .  .  .  I plan on going for a business degree, but that may change. Regardless, I know that I want to LEARN and try to better myself. Especially the last few years, my focus on life has become way too narrow. All I worried about was the Ticket, baseball, Pepper Theft, and hanging out (drinking) with friends. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think I can be more than that. Seeing all the things my parents have done is intimidating at times, but it's a great blueprint for how I want to live the rest of my life. If I can achieve even a small percentage of what they've accomplished, I'd be damn proud. There's more to life than the Ticket, and I want to experience as much of that part as possible now that I'm moving on. I'm 26, so I hopefully have another 75ish years to live. The Ticket will have taken up a tenth of that time, but what a wonderful time it was.

"And I'll say it again...the decision to leave the Ticket and go back to college was mine, and mine alone. Maybe I'll regret it, but I doubt it. I'd hit the glass ceiling at the Ticket, and I have just enough inner drive to not be happy with the status quo.

"Hopefully that explains my decision a little better. I'm not bitter in any way, though I am disappointed with the way some things were, especially the disaster that was/is the move to Victory. But in the grand scheme of things, it's just a blip on the radar. My experience at the Ticket was the best time of my life, and hopefully I made some small dent in the history of it."

In response to a commenter making the intriguing suggestion that Michael purchase The Ticket, Grubes starts to warm up, echoing some thoughts expressed frequently on this site:

"I would love so much to buy the station and let everybody earn the money they deserve while working with the best equipment available. It's a shame such an amazing and unique station is run with a cookie cutter, anti-spending, "make the quarter/month's budget" mentality by those geniuses in Atlanta. I'm convinced the station could be even more successful if treated properly. But, alas..."


In response to the suggestion that perhaps the clumsy move to Victory played a role in his decision to leave, he writes:

"I will allow that the move probably helped "push" me a little bit...But only in terms of leaving in time for the summer semester rather than the fall semester. Like I said, my leaving was inevitable. The timetable just got pushed up by a few months. :)"

As far as his own potential at The Little One was concerned, he mused:

"I think a yuk monkey role would have been absolutely awesome if that opportunity arose, but realistically I don't feel I speak well enough to do that or am clever enough to do the kind of bits yuk moneys do. I feel like I become decent at throwing in a one liner from time to time, but I tended to stammer and stumble over words beyond that.

"I considered seeking producer roles when they came up, but I just couldn't reconcile leaving the board for a minimal pay raise and a supposedly better role. If I was going to be part of a show, the best role for me by far was board-op. Playing drops for BaD Radio and the Hardline was perfect for my skill set, mentality, sense of humor, etc.

"That's why the idea of management tended to float around in my head. As a P1, I know how I'd like things to be, and I feel like I got along with everybody in all departments well enough that I could be pretty good at that.

"But in the end, I'd pretty much maxed out what I could really do at the station without a degree. Hurts to leave, and I shed many a tear in the weeks leading up to my departure, but I'm excited to see what the future holds...Even if I'm not famous anymore! Haha."

Did you catch that "the idea of management tended to float around in my head"?

Well, look out, management.  A floating thing sunk the Titanic:

"Really, if I had my way, I would just let the shows police themselves. I know that's an awful way to go about being program director of a station, but seriously...The "newest" show on the station is Norm and he's been doing it since 2000. Every show has been #1 basically for as long as I can remember.

"It's silly to micromanage how many freaking times Norm does a Twitter segment in a week, or when a certain bit like porn birthdays is "played out". There's enough internet savvy P1's to let us...er, them, know when a bit is played out.

"The other way to know something is played out? When the guys on the show stop laughing at it. Working at the Ticket really sharpens your view on how funny things are because there's such an insane number of funny and creative people working during the week and on weekends. Most guys have a pretty good barometer on when to cut bait on a bit. No need to intervene.

"So while there technically wouldn't be a whole lot I'd do on the programming side other than leave the shows alone, I would spend more of my time on trying to make the work environment as positive as possible. Everyone should be treated like they matter...just because you're a board-op or intern doesn't mean you're less of a human or matter less to the station. Unfortunately, there tends to be such a classification of people by their jobs that it can wear on the self esteem for those that aren't in a more prominent position. It's tough as hell to move up at the station because jobs hardly ever come open. People do what they can to stick around as long as possible, so why treat them poorly in addition to that?

"The Ticket is a fast-paced station. Everything is live, and no matter how well something is (or isn't) planned, nothing is guaranteed to go perfectly. Whoever makes a mistake is going to feel bad already. What's wrong with just pulling someone aside and discussing what happened in an even tone? Knowing that a rip session is on the way makes you even more likely to make a mistake and that much slower on the trigger. Just human nature. I'd rather someone make a mistake in the name of entertainment than hold back and create "bleh" radio. That can be found elsewhere.

"I know that's a very Utopian way of viewing things, but as someone who was lucky enough to go from outsider to insider and now back to outsider, I think my ideas would essentially maximize productivity and by extension, ratings."

And, he adds modestly:

"I think."

I think so, too.  My thanks to Michael for writing and for allowing me to re-post his thoughts.

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RIPPED FROM TODAY'S TICKET HEADLINES

Well, the interruption by management of Dan McDowell's BaD Radio Reports segment as he was reading an internal Cumulus memo has really got the P1 Nation in a lather.  Coincidentally, I have a BaD Radio two-parter in the works, but in a rare display of actual timely posting, Your Plainsman offers a comment on the whole megillah.

The P1 Nation identifies strongly with the on-air guys.  And the on-air guys tease (and sometimes do a lot more than tease) Ticket and Cumulus management.   When Mike R growls "Why doesn't somebody come in here and buy this thing," he sounds pretty sincere to me.

(Although you might have noticed that he hasn't said it in awhile.  I haven't heard it lately, anyway.  Perhaps  .   .  .  perhaps his employer spoke to him about it.)

In any event, there is a tendency on the part of your average listener not to feel kindly disposed towards Cumulus management.  And MyTicket Confession has from time to time taken management to task for failure to take steps to improve The Ticket's signal, for declining to keep the hardware up-to-date for that nice young Michael Gruber, and the like.

But this time, I'm with Cumulus.

And it has nothing to do with the fact that it was Dan doing the report.  I'd feel the same way if it were, oh, say, Mike R or Junior.

Human resources is a difficult function for all companies.  It must be especially difficult when a company's product consists of "talent," which tends to be egotistical, high-strung, and not exactly risk-averse.  And it must be really, really difficult when there is a gigantic disparity between the compensation of on-air guys, on the one hand, and the guys who are supposed to be trying to keep the on-air guys on task and on time -- the producers -- on the other.

While a lot of guys trying to break into radio would find the producer job very desirable, the guys who actually make it to the front lines undoubtedly find themselves pulled uncomfortably in many different directions.  The hosts are demanding, and the management responsible for overall broadcast quality and regulatory compliance has its  own bunch of requirements that the young and lightly-paid producers are expected to observe.

Before BaD Radio got shut down for a segment-and-a-half, Dan was reading a memorandum from management to producers.   He actually managed to get out the two main points the memo was making, which were (1) the producers are the "most important" guys on the showgram, and (2) they work for management, not for the hosts.

Now:  That may sound ridiculous, especially item (1).  But put yourself in Cumulus management's shoes for a minute.  It is not only required to supervise producers, it must motivate them to do the job they're there to do.  As noted, part of that job is to keep the hosts happy, but a big part of the job is to produce the station's product -- make sure that a satisfactory presentation goes out over the airwaves.  They don't get paid a lot to do that, and they sometimes don't get a lot of appreciation from the talent.  (Sometimes they do.)  It is entirely sensible, and in some sense no exaggeration , to tell producers that they're critical to the showgrams' success, and that they are ultimately beholden to their actual employer.  A little hyperbolic to say that they're the most important?  Maybe, maybe, but well within the tolerances of human resources rhetoric.

That might not be a message that the hosts would particularly want to hear, true though it may be.  That is why the memorandum was internally confidential.

But Dan didn't just pass it around the station, which would have been bad enough (someone else must have been doing that, since someone gave it to him) -- inexcusably, he broadcast it to the world.  When he learned he was getting cut off, Dan offered up "this is comedy," but it was very obviously nothing of the sort.  It was a way to ridicule underlings by exposing the delicate and rather insecure position that they occupy, and that they occupy for wages perhaps, oh, maybe 10% of what McDowell banks?  If that?  It is frankly incredible that Dan thought it would be acceptable to disclose an internal company memorandum not even addressed to him over the public airwaves.  (It would have made almost no difference if it had been addressed to him.  Let's see if he reads the written communications he received from Jeff C or Dan Bennett after this little episode, which, I suspect, were far more interesting.)

I work in a very large organization.  I am not an executive.  I am not even a manager.  I have no ownership interest or stock options.  Like any wage slave, I have the occasional issue with my overlords.   So I usually sympathize with the issues the on-air guys have with Cumulus. 

But at least I not so dim as to fail to recognize that management is not dumb and has its own issues to deal with.  The difference between highly-paid on-air guys and highly-paid Cumulus guys is that the latter have in their care the risk capital of the Cumulus shareholders.   Part of their task in guarding that risk capital and trying to make it grow is to direct the activities of their employees, which they are entitled to do by their own lights, without worrying that their every utterance is going to be shared with a public that does not bear that risk, that only enjoys the product.  They're entitled to advise the producers that they're both critical to the showgrams and a direct link to management, and entitled to do it confidentially.   I would love to know what Rich Phillips -- prominent on-air guy and local suit -- thought of Dan's excursion into intracompany communications. 

(By the way, I'm not even considering the gross breach of what is undoubtedly written company policy represented by disclosure of that memo, which would be a firing offense in many organizations.)

I'll have more to say about Dan McDowell in a day or so -- much of it favorable.  But if  I were that other Dan -- Bennett, not Balis --  I would probably invite that gent to relax at home for a few days.

Sorry, Confessors.  I like to be in step with the Great P1 Nation, but fair's fair.  McDowell was way out of line and the only regrettable circumstance out of the whole episode is that Jeff C couldn't get to his phone any faster.

BaD Radio Repor -- Uh, Not So Fast

In the next few days I will be posting a two-parter on my General Unified Theory of BaD Radio.  How timely that the spotlight is on Bob and Dan after Dan's BaD Radio Report on an internal memorandum from management to showgram producers was prematurely terminated by a phone call from some Cumulus overlord.  As usual, you can check it out at The UnTicket.

(Grubes was unintentionally hilarious when Dan asked Tom if he wanted to be part of the segment, and Grubes -- who may have had an inkling that the anvil was about to come crashing down on Dan's head -- simply said, "He's on the phone.") 

No real comment on this episode for now, but since BaD Radio had this spot of drama yesterday I thought I'd take the opportunity to tease the upcoming two-parter, wherein I offer my General Unified Theory of that showgram.

Have a fine weekend, Confessors everywhere.