Radio and Unions

Uh oh! It's the "U" word.

Recently I was reading an article on line which detailed salaries and benefits for people working in the broadcast industry. Guess what folks? Its pretty dismal for those of you working in the radio portion of the craft. All too often I hear of people complaining about the lack of benefits or low pay; that the industry is going to hell in a handbag and its not what it used to be.

One of the main reasons it used to pay and offer better benefits is because many shops back in the 40's, 50's & 60's were heavily unionized and as such bargained for their terms and conditions of employment which were much more favorable then their non-union counterparts.

In the radio heydays, you had Musicians in the AFM, Directors in the DGA, Engineers in NABET or IBEW, announcers in AFTRA, Teamsters in support groups. It seemed like just about everyone in medium or major market station belonged to a union or guild. Then the 1960's arrived and with it a resistance to unions by corporations looking to reduce their overhead.

Company's started phasing out their unionized house orchestras/bands to save money and once the drama and entertainment shows went away, directors were no longer needed. Finally stations started eliminating on-air operating engineers in medium markets, instead turning over the controls to the Disc Jockey's. Most major market stations held out until the early 1980's and finally turned to combo operations at almost all music stations. Today many stations that maintain engineering staffs are the news/talk formatted stations. In many cases they are non-union, the unions having been bought out years ago.

So why have a union in the first place? If you sit down and think about it; when you purchase a new car, whats the first thing you do? You sit down with the salesman and bargain over price and when you agree you draw up a contract stipulating the terms of the purchase (paint color, seat material, A/C package, etc); you do this to protect yourself; its a simple business deal. Just like having a contract to spell out the terms and conditions of your employment relationship with your employer.

I wonder how many of you realized that most executives from corporations all have personal service agreements (PSA's) which are labor contracts; just like the ones the unions have. It spells out the terms and conditions of their employment; how much severance pay they get; their medical benefits; pension, stock options, vacation, spending accounts, etc. So my question to you the reader is: If Executives need a labor contract; how come you don't???

Say what you will about unions, but they definitely have their place in society. I've always been a supporter of the labor movement in this country; indeed I've seen so many good people get screwed over thru no fault of their own and being that the United States has among the worst labor laws in the industrialized world, excepting South Africa, its no wonder that unions are needed.

Unions now comprise a very small part of the radio workforce; that's the way management likes it; they have almost total control over their employees and want to keep it that way. Only until employees realize the benefits of being union will they continue to be exploited and used.

Combo Vs. Dual Operation

Ever wonder what its like to work with an engineer on-the-air? In today's typical music radio station, at least those who haven't gone automated or full satellite, the typical set-up is the so-called "combo" operation; that is where the talent also performs most if not all of the technical operations that occur at local radio stations.

The rule of thumb is that you might find Engineers (or Board Ops/producers)at mostly talk formatted stations in mostly major markets or a few scattered medium market stations. Most stations, citing the cost of maintaining an engineering staff that large have no interest in any other operation besides combo.

Studio engineers are a holdover from the early days of radio with disc jockey's; when stations where entertainment facilities where you had network programming; live bands and unstable transmitters to be tended to. Nowadays with most operations being computer assisted or even operations that are fully manual, most jocks find themselves sequestered in a room talking to themselves with no interaction with other human beings.

As a small child, being that my father worked in radio, I had to opportunity to visit with him when he went to other radio stations in NY City. Stations like WNBC, WOR, WABC, WNEW, WHN, WCBS, etc all had full staffs of engineers for all on air operations.

As technology improved, the need for engineers decreased and most companies could justify terminating their engineering staffs (or in the case of union shops, through buy-outs or third party letters)without affecting their air product. Disc Jockey's gladly accepted the combination of jobs since they weren't negatively affected by it; tho' it came back to haunt them 20 years later when voice tracking/automation/satellite technology came in to being.

One time during my days at WNBC Radio, we used to use a lot of part time talent on the weekends from various east coast cities. This one woman from the Philadelphia Market was making her first appearance at the station on an overnight shift. To make a long story short, she walks in to the control room while I was pulling music and commercials for the first hour. She sat down in front of the console and started looking at all the buttons,faders and other do-dads that were on the board. I curiously asked her what she was doing. She said she was familiarizing herself with the board because she was due to go on the air in an hour or so. I explained to her that she'd be in the next room (studio). She went into the room and was looking around; she came back inside as asked me if this was some sort of joke; there was no console in there. I patiently explained to her that at this station, we were a union shop and only engineers could operate the equipment; the jocks did not touch anything technical. The panic stricken look on her face was priceless; she'd never worked with an engineer and wasn't too keen on learning now. she asked me if it was ok to stretch a mic and cable into the control room and let her run the board anyhow and she wouldn't say a word if I slept in the engineers lounge while she did her shift. Needless to say she found out that I meant business and I ran the board as scheduled. She did fine and at the end of her shift, told me she never wanted to do combo again.

In today's radio world, most small market stations have no engineering staffs at all, rather hiring a contract engineer to handle the transmitter and major technical situations; some medium market stations might employ a Chief Engineer and most major market stations have at least one full time engineer and some may have 2. I only know of one FM Station that still utilizes on-air Engineers in a music type format and its even a classic rock formatted station to boot!

When I first broke into radio, the station that I went to work for, WNBC Radio, was a union shop (NABET), had a complete staff of engineers, around 17 I think at the time and our FM station, WYNY-FM, which was across the hall likewise had a full staff of engineers as well. We did all the technical work, whether it was on air, in the newsroom, transmitter or field remotes.

Of course the radio division was sold in 1988 and by then the radio stations were reduced to 4 engineers at the AM and 4 at the FM station upon sale. The jocks were running the boards most of the time, except for AM drive and production. It's gotten even worse since then. Just a handful of stations how have on-air engineers, like WABC, WOR and WNYC. Someday, they'll go the way of the rest of the on-air radio engineers and jocks who've been replaced by technology and the internet.

Oh how I miss the old days....

Welcome to The Radio Operations Desk

Welcome to the Radio Operations Desk blog. When I was in the process of creating this blog, I had to come up with a name for it and after much thinking, I decided on this name; why? Because I think it has meaning of being all encompassing; that is, where everything takes place.

Whether you want to hear of radio stories or technical talk such as studio design of days gone by or current designs; you'll hear it here. You might even hear me discuss the use's of microphone placement or when its best to use isolation transformers, but either way I'm sure for those true radiophiles, you'll be in your zone.