Gail Force Productions

I grabbed these off www.allaccess.com which is an online industry magazine. These are the latest firings from Cumulus. I guess it is good to know that it wasn’t just this market but is sad that so many fine people are out of work. And this list is just from the last few days. I didn’t feel like going into the last several weeks and finding all the people they let go. And it isn’t just Cumulus. It is all the big Corporate Radio companies that are slashing jobs.

Downsizing At Cumulus/Houston?

ALL ACCESS hears the budget cuts have made it to HOUSTON, with Adult Hits KHJK (JACK FM) PD DAVE DILLON out.

More details soon.

ALL ACCESS has learned that the budget axe has fallen at CUMULUS/TOLEDO, with nine layoffs so far, including Alternative WRWK morning host KEVIN MURPHY. We hear WRWK will now be music intensive – no jock at all; Country WKKO middayer BILL MANDERS, a 38 year TOLEDO radio vet; Oldies WRQN night slammer BUDDY CARR; Country WKKO night crawler CRAIG SNYDER, who’s been with WKKO since about 1988; Hot AC WWWM afternoon driver DAVE FULLER and morning producer/Promotions Asst RYAN YOUNG; Cluster Traffic Mgr. TIM MCMAHON; WXKR/WTOD/WLQR/WRWK Promotions Director TOM STAUDT and Sports WLQR pm drive host MATT MELZAK.

Some are reportedly being retained for part-time.

Re-alignment of duties reportedly has WWWM/WRQN PD RON FINN going from doing live middays on WRQN to voicetracking the shift, leaving FINN to team with WWWM host LYN CASYE for WWWM AM drive. CASYE will also VT nights on classic rock WXKR.

Three Exit Cumulus/Youngstown

CUMULUS/YOUNGSTOWN parted ways this morning with 3 veteran air personalities, Classic Rock WYFM (Y-103) night time legend DAVE MESSERSMITH is out after 23 years on the air, and Country WQXK (K-105) night jock BURTON LEE and morning show co-host K-MAN.

YESTERDAY Top 40 WHOT reportedly let all part time air staff go.

Will all 3 stations will now run syndicated programming in the evening?

CUMULUS Classic Rocker KSAN (107.7 THE BONE)/SAN FRANCISCO eight-year veteran PD LARRY SHARP exits his post. Sister AAA KFOG PD DAVE BENSON will assume his duties.

Yikes. You know that Cumulus and other companies won’t be filling these jobs. They will voice-track, syndicate or just run music with station jingles. As long as the shareholders still get their money they don’t really care about the folks who have been in these markets for nearly 30 years! I thought my 15 years was a lot.

As for me I made my first trip to the unemployment office today. It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. With all the people who have been let go from their jobs this past week in Macon I thought there would be a pretty long wait. All in all I was there just over an hour and most of that time was spent filling out paperwork and then filling out an online form. I don’t really understand the need to fill out paper work and then do the same thing online but whatever. I was thinking that maybe I should get a job there since the gentleman that was supposed to be helping us was on the phone having a nice personal conversation. I was thinking does he think we are non-persons? That we are invisible and can’t hear him? He was so wrapped up in his conversation that I ended up helping one fellow fill out his online claim. I told him that it was first time there too but I would do what I could. So I pulled up a chair for a minute and walked him through some of the form. Maybe that got the guy off the phone because he hung up after that and started helping all of us that were confused as to what we were to do.

I am thinking that I am not going to qualify for much since I do work part-time. But at this point anything coming in is better than nothing. I find myself so hesitant to spend money. I had to buy gas today and was so thankful that the price has come down. I needed some groceries and went to Wal-Mart. I hate shopping at Wal-Mart. I don’t really know why. I think it is because it messes with my sense of order. Silly, I know but to me Wal-Mart is not orderly. It is too big, too busy and I just want to get in and get out. But I did find cereal that was cheap. Don’t buy it in the box, buy it in the resealable package. You get more and it is cheaper by nearly $2.00. Why is that? I can’t tell you the last time I have bought hotdogs but I bought them today. Well turkeydogs. Some veggies, milk, bread, eggs. You know, the basics. I seriously need to talk to Victoria. She still has a job with Cumulus and we have spent some time talking about how she shops smart. She uses coupons, discounts and she can buy 8 bags of stuff for the price of 3 bags of stuff. She needs to tutor me. I need to be tutored. I didn’t do to bad. I made it out of there for under 40 dollars.

Next week I am going to have to buckle down and really start looking for work. I have been auditioning for an on-line voice over company. You can audition for voice overs for radio ads, tv ads, website narrations, books on cd, things like that. I have got two jobs lined up. Yay for me! Hopefully I will pick up some more.

I have a friend who is trying to get some home improvement jobs lined up. He is good at ceramic tile, installing crown molding, chair rails, flooring. He has done work for me and we are going to try and line up some small jobs. I love doing small home improvement work. I love painting and designing a room. So he made up some cards and is going to pass them out. I even asked my neighbor if he would be interested in hiring me to scrape and paint the fascia around his house. It was rotting and he finally got it replaced about 5 months ago but he still hasn’t gotten it painted where new lumber was put up. So it is bare and exposed to the elements. I would be happy to do that job. For a fee.

So ends my first week of unemployment. I kind of took it easy this week although I was on the computer and auditioning for voice over jobs. Plus I went in every day to my part-time job. So thankful for Allen at COH for being so kind to me there and giving me some extra hours. I thank God that I have good people in my life. I have gotten so many nice comments on my myspace page from listeners. I appreciate that so much.

I guess if I get some time this weekend I will post Chapter 2 in my work biography. I have been reliving those days in my head for the past week. Now it is time to put them down on paper. Or in this case on the blog.

Do you have any money saving hints? I would love to hear them. Leave a comment.

Technorati Tags: Cumulus, jobs, shop smart, unemployment

Life changes, Nothing ever stays the same. So I am about to begin a new chapter in my life. All the chapters leading up to this one have been filled with great memories, sadness, happiness, adventure, mistakes, you know, all the things that make a story great.

Chapter One

My radio career began at the tender young age of 17. I worked from the time I was legally able. My first job was at River Forest Nursing Home. It was run by some sort of Mennonite group. My best friend in High School was already working there and convinced me that we would have “great fun” working together. So my weekends were spent clearing slop off the plates and trays of the residents of the home. First of all, the food that these folks got was nursing home food. For old folks. So it was soft, bland and not very pretty. If you thought it looked bad going out you should have seen it coming back in. I believe these poor souls were so unhappy that they were dumped into “the old folks home” that they took out on us lowly kitchen workers. Napkins were shoved down into the glasses with mashed potatoes dumped in on top of that. It was like a parfait of regurgitated food and paper.

Each tray had a small metal holder, like you would use at a party to designate the seating arrangements for your guest. You would put a pretty little card in the holder and everyone would ooh and ahh over how cute it was. Our card holders would hold the patients name card and all the dietary limitations that they had. After every meal we had to dig them out of oatmeal, eggs, squash, milk, coffee and potatoes again. They were laminated and we had to wash them off and stick them back into the holder for the next go round. I was 16. Not the romantic adventurous job I had in mind for my first foray into the working world. I will never forget the smell of urine and disinfectant that permeated that place.

One of the residents that I will always remember is Ike. Ike was somewhat senile. But he was still a randy old man. He had a cane that he used and anytime a pretty girl would walk by he would take that cane and smack her on the butt. Come to think of it she didn’t have to be pretty. We learned to stear clear from him and cling to the other side of the hall when he was making his way down it. He also had a tendency to let it all hang out on occasion too. If you know what I mean.

One bright spot in my day was talking to one elderly lady who still had it together. I wish I could remember her name. I think it may have been Olive. Both she and her husband were living in the facility. They weren’t in the same room. It seems the Mennonite woman frowned on that. Women in one wing, men in the other. But every waking hour those two spent it together. It was so sweet and it made me dream of having a love that would endure forever.

One thing that I did not want to endure forever was being a dishwasher at a nursing home. So I scoured the want ads. In my little town that would take about 10 seconds. Or less. But lo and behold I found something I thought I could handle. Being a dishwasher…..at the hospital! So I hauled myself up there after school one afternoon and applied. I didn’t have a car and getting use of the car was an act of congress. But the hospital was about a mile or so from school so I could walk every afternoon and my mother or someone would pick me up. I believed that this job would be much better than the nursing home. Wrong. Now when trays came back we not only got the food parfaits but syringes that nurses would forget to dispose of properly. This was before the AIDS epidemic so things were a little more lax. Band aids, Gauze, finger splints, whatever. It would end up on a tray for the dishwashers to take care of.

The hospital was old. The elevators were like something out of a horror movie. Well the staff elevator was. There was nice bright shiny one in the bright shiny lobby for guests to use. I dreaded having to ride that thing upstairs and down. It was dark. The hallway TO the elevator was dark. What was worse was having to go down to the basement to get supplies. Dish washing soaps, towels, cleaning supplies. Another horror movie set. Dark and mysterious. I always thought there might be dead bodies down there. The morgue. But to be honest I have no clue. And since the hospital only had something like 50 beds the chances that there Zombies were running rampant in the basement hallways were pretty slim.

My hospital bright spot was a boy. I don’t remember his name. I remember he was cute. You know, the important stuff. Unlike the nursing home the dish washing area was in a separate room off the kitchen. He and I would have water fights with the spray nozzles. We would laugh ’til we cried and the “mature” women in the kitchen would roll their eyes, shrug their shoulders and then ignore us.

The hospital is where I first learned to wrap baked potatoes in aluminum foil to keep them from drying out. Hey were talking 1976-77 here.

But even then the economy fell and I got laid off. It was back to the nursing home. Part-time. So in what would become a lifetime habit of mine I got a second job working at Jim Vetter Ponitac Buick as a receptionist/bookkeeper. For some silly reason they wanted me to help out with bookkeeping. I had to enter figures into a ledger. Me. The queen of transposed numbers. Then they expected me to reconcile it. Me. The queen of bounced checks. Ok..again. This was before everyone used computers that did all that for you. Needless to say I did all my entries in pencil. Eventually they threw up their hands and just had me on the phones. It was at this time that I had my first clue that I had voice people liked to hear. I would have great conversations on the phone with customers who called and who would tell me how much they enjoyed listening to me talk. I had so many compliments that I thought I always wanted to be receptionist.

So I was working part-time at the car dealership and part-time at the nursing home when the full-time position of cook came open at the home. I was offered the job since I had been pretty much doing all the cooking when I was there anyway. I was just out of high school 17 years old and I thought it sounded like a pretty good move for me but I wanted to see what else might be out there so I checked the help-wanted ads in the paper and saw an entry that intrigued me. Our local radio station, WLKM, was looking for part-time weekend help. Now this sounded like fun. Much better than poached eggs, dry toast and the other “gourmet” dishes I was cooking up. So I drove out to the studio on the outskirts of town and applied for the job.

I was taken into a studio, a mic was placed in front of me and I was given some news copy to read. I recorded it on a reel to reel machine and I was fascinated by the big black board with all the knobs, switches and dials. I loved the sound it made when you clicked the mic toggle switch. “SNAP”. I was hooked.

Amazingly, they took a chance on a 17 year old girl with no experience and hired me. It was a whole new world.

Stay tuned for Chapter 2 coming soon.

Technorati Tags: biography, jobs, radio