The Industry

     You’re pulling up to an event, when all of a sudden you spot a flashy, decked out car. Who drives a car like that? I mean seriously. Then you look again and this time you tense up. It’s a station cruiser, more specifically a rival station’s cruiser. Whaddya do?

First let me set the scene. Last week when I was doing the mascot challenge, we pulled up to discover that the event was our rivals event. Then again, today I was at the Sidney Market (a cool market that takes over this little town) when the morning show host walks by (and I’ve always wanted to meet her, because I’ve been listening to her for years and years!) but I’m working at a competing station. This brings me back to the whaddya do?

Well first of all, I think it is important to remember the common message that I’ve talked about before. This industry is small, microscopic compared to other careers. So what does this mean? Well that rival station’s posse, might be your posse in a couple months. With that said, you definitely wouldn’t want to tick any of them off. If you find yourself in a situation where you are working the same event as a competing station, especially if it is their event, there are some tips you might want to consider:

1. Be courteous. Don’t park right beside their set-up. Don’t purposely go up to them and start something yadda, yadda, yadda.
2. Acknowledge. Assess the situation and if you deem it okay, introduce yourself. I can pretty much guarantee that you will run into these people again and again so might as well make nice and show that you aren’t there to take over, just to show your support.
3. Don’t let listeners pit you against another. If there are two stations at the same event you can bet you will hear at least a couple thousand times, “WOW serious competition”. Play cool. Don’t allow listeners to get to you by saying things like “their station is better” or “you guys play horrible music”. As soon as you buy into this taunting, fueled by listeners, you will end up burning industry bridges, which is as bad as it gets.
4. Respect. This sums everything up. Never bash other stations, NEVER bash your own station and respect each others territories and jobs. At the market today a couple people said “I prefer The Q” to which I said “Oh that’s cool, I know some people at The Q, they are great people but you should give us a shot you might be surprised”. That way I wasn’t bashing the competition or our station and not insulting the listener (because they are ALWAYS right!). Remember, if you see another station at your event or vice versa, we are all just trying to do our jobs, so don’t give each other reasons to start a battle.

In the couple weeks that I’ve been working at Jack/The Ocean, these situations have happened almost every single time and almost every time it was started by a listener. Although radio can’t survive without listeners, they can also be the biggest pain in the butt because they feel like they know the business better then you… and you have to go with it. This brings me to the note of patience. Any job in the world has some degree of patience and radio is high on the list, because we are a public industry. If something starts to bug you follow these steps:

1. Stop. Stop talking, stop engaging in the conversation, just stop. 
2. Take a breath. 
3. Think. Use the grey matter to find a suitable solution.
4. Act.

It sounds trivial, but it works.

Luckily this is pretty common sense, so when the morning show host from a rival station walked by my booth tonight, we both locked eyes and exchanged a couple words. She is training to do a massive bike ride and so I asked her about it. “Hey, how’s the training going” to which she said “Great, except my butt is always sore…”. Then I laughed, she chuckled and we both went our separate ways. We acknowledged each other, showed that we are civil and I got to exchange a couple sentences with a childhood idol WOOT!

Have you ever had to deal with any of this? Let me know!

-Mitch