FIRED, FIRED EVERYWHERE

I was thinking, recently, about getting fired. I'm not worried about getting fired because I'm retired and I can't get the ax from doing nothing. At least not that I'm aware of. The thought was prompted by a friend's recent blog about being “blown out” of a recent job and the inventive way he handled it. I had a long and relatively distinguished career, but the mere fact that it was in radio came with the understanding that I would be “shown the door” any number of times. The exact number was up in the air, but losing jobs was pretty much a given. Nature of the business, you know. When I read my friends blog, I began to reminisce about some of the ways I had received “the news.” A few were pretty “run of the mill,” but honestly, some were downright innovative. In the late 70's I worked at a very big rock & roll station in Philadelphia where I was proud to have the #1 morning show in the city. It was the first two-man morning show, ever, in rock & roll radio and my partner had recently been sent packing. Since I was only ½ of the morning team, they tried anything they could think of to get me to leave, but I had a family which included a newborn and wasn't about to give up what had become a pretty lucrative position. One day the general manager asked the entire staff to come into his office to view slides of a recent station promotion. This was a guy who would put his arm around my shoulder at station events and parties and declare, “He's like a son to me. He reminds me of me when I was a young, up and coming DJ.” He went out of his way to make me feel special, because I was generating revenue for the station. As they all found seats in his office and huddled in to watch the show, I stepped in and was greeted with, “What are YOU doing here?” from the man who had now taken his arm from my shoulder and was reserving his compliments for the next guy who “reminded him of (himself) blah, blah, blah....” I still didn't get the point until the new program director, who had taken over from my now ex-partner, called me into his office and said, “Close the door.” Jokingly, I asked, “Why are you firing me?” The smile quickly left my face when he responded with, “It's interesting that you should ask that because, yes.....yes I am.” I wasn't really shocked. Stevie Wonder could see THAT coming. I moved to Chicago to work for one of the biggest and most respected radio stations in the country. I was given what I asked for to do the morning show and the GM told me that he was a fan of my show in Philly and was happy that I was there. For the next year and a half, I sat in the morning show chair on the FM side of the station as it changed formats and call letters 3 times. I was hanging on pretty nicely until I was called into the office and told that they were going to begin simulcasting the AM morning show and that I would be moved to overnights. I was used to getting up at 2:30am to go to work but, now I was expected, for the first (and last) time in my career to come in at about the same time that Letterman was going off. It was a challenge but, I told them that, even though they had put me into the graveyard position, they were going to get the best overnight show in the city and things were going well. Until the GM met with one of the bigger “names” in Chicago radio. I questioned him about it and he told me, “It was just lunch. You have nothing to worry about.” A few days later, my phone rang at about 10:30 in the morning. It was the GM and he was very pleasant as he told me that this “name” that he had lunch with had accepted the morning position and that, although it wasn't personal, I was out. I was fired again.......OVER THE PHONE! I was able to land on my feet and, eventually began working at a little start-up that became a huge network. It began as Satellite Music Network and I was privileged to be there from the very beginning. We physically built the studios and experimented with ways to better deliver programming to radio stations worldwide by satellite. It had never been done before and I was the first one to turn on a microphone. We got bigger and better and, as usually happens, sold.....a couple of times. We became the ABC Radio Network and I spent 24 years doing the morning show on my particular format. I must have gotten pretty comfortable because when I was called in to the VP of programming's office on the day I was to start my 25th year and told to clean out my locker, I was a wee bit taken aback. Most people who put in that kind of time get some sort of recognition for their contributions. All I got was a security guard to escort me to the door. My favorite firing, however, came earlier in my career when I was doing an afternoon drive show on a small station in a very small town in Connecticut. The station was so small that they sold most of their time slots. Early in the morning and in the evening, just before sign off, was “The New England Polka Express with Cousin Stan.” Middays was “La Voz Latino Americana (The Voice of Latin America) with Walter & Omar.” Then came Pastor Wendell from the Farmington Avenue Baptist Church and an hour of soliciting enough funds to keep up the payments on his Cadillac and his mansion in West Hartford. I would come on in the afternoon for 4 hours of “easy listening” music that was programmed to be as non offensive as possible with such core artists as Doris Day, Al Martino, The Clebanoff Strings and Mantovani. I had recently been offered a job at a bigger station in a bigger town and had gotten wind of my impending doom. Apparently someone took offense when, while running the controls for the pastor's noon show, I became fed up with his hypocrisy and, instead of his theme music, I played “Sympathy for the Devil” behind his parting words. The cloud was now over my head and I knew it. This was going to be my last show. So, instead of a particular Mitch Miller tune, I put Jethro Tull's “Aqualung” on the turntable, put the needle on the very first track, turned on the microphone, got in my car and drove home listening to the station. Just hearing what came out of the GM's mouth as he scratched the record to get it off the air far was more entertaining than anything else I had done on the air to date. Hell,after that little stunt, I would have hired me based on creativity alone.