Maybe someone can help me out with something: I'm interested in becoming a radio DJ or going into radio broadcasting. I have a few disabilities that require accommodations so I have asked some people in the industry how this would affect my goal. I haven't received much response from them. Can anyone on here help with this? Please contact me if you have any info...
Thanks

PS. I am in touch with the broadcasting departments at the local colleges and with the disabilities office but I need more input.

Chananya wrote:

PS. I am in touch with the broadcasting departments at the local
colleges and with the disabilities office but I need more input.

My advice as someone who spent over 10 years in broadcasting: don't bother
with broadcasting as a career, especially radio. Staffs in radio are about
1/10th of what they were in the glory days. Whereas a smalltown station used
to have maybe 8 to 12 people, today it's more likely that same station will be
part of a cluster of 3 or more stations with a staff of 5 running the cluster.
The DJ jobs will likely be voice tracks from freelancers, and if there are
any local DJs they will be the morning person and one at middays. Chances are
that the morning DJ will be decently paid and the midday person will not be,
but will also double as the program director and maybe the promotions
director, too.

On the engineering side, where there used to be one chief engineer per
station, it's more likely today that the one engineer is a contract person
overseeing 5 or more stations.

Equipment is way more stable today than in yesteryear so there is no need for
people to read the meters and babysit the transmitters. On the talent side,
with automation and the realization that most listeners don't care if the
content comes from a live person or a computer, the need for DJs is near
non-existent.

Your best bet is doing non-commercial community radio as a hobby. Seriously.

Chananya wrote:
Maybe someone can help me out with something: I'm interested in becoming
a radio DJ or going into radio broadcasting. I have a few disabilities
that require accommodations so I have asked some people in the industry
how this would affect my goal. I haven't received much response from
them. Can anyone on here help with this? Please contact me if you have
any info...

Assuming that you are in the US....

If you had said this twenty-five years ago, I would have told you that
radio is a great place to work. I have worked with board ops, DJs, and
announcers with all sorts of disabilities. Once had a board op who was
blind; we took the glass covers off the console VU meters so he could
feel the pins and made sure all of the carts were in the same order every
day since he couldn't read the labels on them. I've had announcers and
program directors in wheelchairs, which actually got us to clear some of
the crap out of the air studio and make a clear path through it. Radio
is... err... was... one of those fields where it doesn't matter what you
look like, who you are, or what disabilities you might have as long as
the final result sounds good on the air.

The thing is... the consolidation and deregulation of the past twenty years
has really made a mess of things, and that the current point in time I would
not recommend radio as a career for _anyone_, disabled or not. For one thing,
those stations that used to have half a dozen announcers and board ops, a
transmitter engineer, a traffic director, and a couple sales people on staff
are now being run by a single guy playing back crap that comes off the
satellite link... with no local station staff, the number of jobs available
is a fraction of what it once was, and the jobs are less interesting.

PS. I am in touch with the broadcasting departments at the local
colleges and with the disabilities office but I need more input.

Does anyone even still HAVE broadcasting departments? Now, I should point
out that if you aren't in the US, but you are in a country with a vibrant
and active radio community (and there are a lot of them out there) that
perhaps you should disregard what I said.

Go to a radio station and ask for a tour and a job. That's how everyone
starts out....
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

In article ,
(Scott Dorsey) wrote:

Go to a radio station and ask for a tour and a job. That's how everyone
starts out....

Indeed! If you bring ANY technical skills to the party, by all means
give me a call when I'm back in the office on 4/26! Engineering types
have pretty much all jumped ship, but there ARE still stations that
appreciate good technical talent.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

John Higdon wrote:

Indeed! If you bring ANY technical skills to the party, by all means
give me a call when I'm back in the office on 4/26! Engineering types
have pretty much all jumped ship, but there ARE still stations that
appreciate good technical talent.

Meanwhile, there have been stations (even back in the glory days of radio)
when they wouldn't let you come in. I got this rude shock when I tried to
visit the then KBRG (now KITS). The DJ welcomed me but the op mgr was there
and she booted me out the door. "We are a business. We're not an amusement
park" (or words to that effect). I was devastated. It took me a long time to
work up the nerve to visit another station.

I was working on some computers over at KDIA/KDYA a couple years ago when a
guy came in and wanted The Tour. Well, two stations, you'd think there was a
lot to see. But, being an automated gospel music station on the one hand and
an automated block program station on the other, the guy was basically shown
what might be radio if only there were DJs around. He was shown the two empty
control rooms, the tech area where I was wiping the dirt and grime off a
computer's innards, and the the equipment rack.

In article ,
(David Kaye) wrote:

Meanwhile, there have been stations (even back in the glory days of radio)
when they wouldn't let you come in. I got this rude shock when I tried to
visit the then KBRG (now KITS). The DJ welcomed me but the op mgr was there
and she booted me out the door. "We are a business. We're not an amusement
park" (or words to that effect). I was devastated. It took me a long time
to
work up the nerve to visit another station.

I cannot imagine anyone being that odious. When I was in high school and
still headed for the world of academe (as least as far as my parents
were concerned), I used to visit radio stations for the simple reason
that I was fascinated by broadcasting. After explaining my passion for
the industry, no ever denied me admission to examine any part of the
radio station I wished to see. I was welcome with open arms at every
station from San Jose to San Francisco. For instance, I visited KIOI
when it was owned by Jim Gabbert (which is when I met him) during most
of the time the station was at the Whitcomb Hotel and at 1001 California
St.

Needless to say, I have dutifully "paid it forward" whenever I've had
the opportunity.

--
John Higdon
+1 408 ANdrews 6-4400
AT&T-Free At Last

John Higdon wrote:

I cannot imagine anyone being that odious.

It has happened.

After explaining my passion for
the industry, no ever denied me admission to examine any part of the
radio station I wished to see. I was welcome with open arms at every
station from San Jose to San Francisco.

I was welcomed to most stations as well. The first was KEEN on Old Oakland.
Then KDAC in Fort Bragg, then KFMR in Fremont. I spent many times at the KFAX
daytime transmitter on the service road next to the San Mateo bridge, watching
the board op play back religious programs and time things out with pre-carted
promos, and the occasional live news feed from the SF studio. I visited KYA,
KFRC, KDFM, KJAY, KJOY, KSTN, KRON, KPIX, KTVU, KNTV, and I'm sure I'm leaving
out a couple here or there.

However, I was not allowed to visit KNBR, KCBS, KGO, KBRG, KLIV, or KLOK.

In article ,
John Higdon wrote:
In article ,
(David Kaye) wrote:

Meanwhile, there have been stations (even back in the glory days of radio)
when they wouldn't let you come in. I got this rude shock when I tried to
visit the then KBRG (now KITS). The DJ welcomed me but the op mgr was there
and she booted me out the door. "We are a business. We're not an amusement
park" (or words to that effect). I was devastated. It took me a long time
to
work up the nerve to visit another station.

I cannot imagine anyone being that odious. When I was in high school and
still headed for the world of academe (as least as far as my parents
were concerned), I used to visit radio stations for the simple reason
that I was fascinated by broadcasting. After explaining my passion for
the industry, no ever denied me admission to examine any part of the
radio station I wished to see. I was welcome with open arms at every
station from San Jose to San Francisco. For instance, I visited KIOI
when it was owned by Jim Gabbert (which is when I met him) during most
of the time the station was at the Whitcomb Hotel and at 1001 California
St.

I never found radio stations to be unfriendly places. But my
real introduction to them came from the inside. We had a neighbor who
had a job as morning man at a station 30 miles away, who lost his
driver's license for a while, and I ended up taking him to work, and
back home afterward for a while. Which meant that I was on the
station premises from sign-on, and in the studio, with a pretty
seasoned old-timer, for several hours each morning before driving back
to go to school. In short, a warm body who asked so many questions
that he got put to work.

After a few months of this, the general manager, who had a couple of
other stations and a TV station, called me in and told me that enough
was enough of doubling for the morning man---if I could get an RT
license, he could use what I'd learned at his other stations. So I
did, and he did.

This is going back sixty years, when keeping a transmitter modulated
meant either spinning platters (all 78's) or talking into a
microphone. The world was full of 250, 500, and 1KW daytimers who
needed someone who could walk into an empty building, flip the
switches on the transmitter, take the readings, and start modulating
the carrier. Of course, they expected you to do a half-decent job of
keeping things alive, following "the book" with spot ads, and the
like. But nobody really cared if you looked like a geeky kid, or
could get around physically. I knew a couple of pros who were in
wheelchairs.

Probably aren't many opportunities like this any more, between the
large ownership groups, satellite feeds, carts and other automation,
etc. etc. But I had any number of friends over the years who "did
radio" at one point or another for a while, but who never really tried
to make careers as radio personalities. But I think there was some
good learning in all of that, that carried forward to being able to
get up at a podium elsewhere, and do something a bit more cogent than
mumble "uh, err, well, like, I mean, you know....".

Hank

David Kaye wrote:

I was working on some computers over at KDIA/KDYA a couple years ago when a
guy came in and wanted The Tour. Well, two stations, you'd think there was a
lot to see. But, being an automated gospel music station on the one hand and
an automated block program station on the other, the guy was basically shown
what might be radio if only there were DJs around. He was shown the two empty
control rooms, the tech area where I was wiping the dirt and grime off a
computer's innards, and the the equipment rack.

See, you could make that into a fun tour, talking about the history of the
station and what used to be in this room and what used to be in that room,
and how technology has changed things both for the better and the worse.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

* Scott Dorsey wrote, On 4/16/2010 8:05 AM:
David wrote:

the guy was basically shown
what might be radio if only there were DJs around. He was shown the two empty
control rooms, the tech area where I was wiping the dirt and grime off a
computer's innards, and the the equipment rack.

See, you could make that into a fun tour, talking about the history of the
station and what used to be in this room and what used to be in that room,
and how technology has changed things both for the better and the worse.
--scott

When I was a student at the Ron Bailie School of Broadcast in the old
420 Taylor KBHK building we trained in some of the original 1930s NBC
control rooms. It was kind of exciting for a broadcast geek to know
the history and speculate what those rooms had looked like with
equipment from the building's historical NBC era.

JT
--