Promotion Commotion, Ten Years Later

I'm taking a breather from essaying about life in quarantine to discuss something personal:

I don't normally broadcast this out of fear of jinxing myself, but I had a job interview in Schaumburg on Thursday. I thought it was going to be a phone interview, but I was asked to drive out for a socially distanced sitdown. (Yes, it's essential work, and I can't elaborate further.) It occurred to me while driving out of the city that not only was my interview one town over from my old office, it was on the 10th anniversary of when I was replaced.

Four months ago on Facebook, I wrote a lengthy post comparing and contrasting where I was in 2010 as we approached the new decade. I discussed my last radio gig, but not what led up to losing my job. To sum up another long post, I had my EOE-obligated job interview on February 8th, then spent the next 11 weeks waiting for a decision that was supposed to take 14 days. I discovered by accident that at least two rounds of interviews were held without my knowledge. During my last week in the office, I noticed people were strangely avoiding me, and Administrative Professionals Day came and went without a mention. I was the receptionist, for chrissakes.

On April 30th, I was summoned to the business manager's office. It was about 90 minutes before the office closed for the weekend. The manager informed me that after some deliberation, it had come down to me and another candidate... and they went with the other candidate. This business manager, someone who made absolutely no effort to get to know me in the time we shared an office space, watched disdainfully as I clean out my desk. The traffic/billing manager --my actual boss-- escorted me out to the parking garage while fighting back tears.

The timing was awkward, to say the least. I had my Level E (graduation) show at Second City the next day, and I had mentioned that to people in the office. None of my now-former co-workers showed up, and even though the show went okay, I felt numb. The next day, after my last training center class, some of us went out for drinks across the street. I had a train to catch, so I only stuck around for a half-hour. Before I left, I said thank you and farewell to my classmates before noticing that my voice was quivering. I noticed then and there that I was waking up the next morning to nothing. As I walked from Corcoran's Bar to Sedgwick Brown Line, it was my turn to fight back the tears.

That was what was on my mind after my job interview on Thursday. Inexplicably, one decade and another ratings quarter on the outside looking in, the management at my old station hasn't changed. A number of other people, including my old direct superior were forced out for myriad reasons. Almost everyone I've been in touch with had comtempt for the general manager, but especially that business manager. The corporate office in Camarillo, CA couldn't care less who's in charge as long as the Chicago branch is turning a profit. Maybe its more symptomatic of commercial radio in general, but the cutting of corners to stay in the black is absurd. Six different people have come and gone in my former position, no one lasting more than 2 1/2 years.

As time has marched on, I've only grown more embarrassed to have ever worked for Salem Media Group. It's just another outlet for right-wing misinformation, something I barely tolerated in the late 2000s that I can't bring myself to listen to now. The same people that are encouraging armed protests against stay-at-home orders, that insinuate Jewish elected officials are somehow Nazis, are stirring outrage over temporary inconveniences, that gloss over President Trump's failures. They are (albeit indirectly) enablers of unnecessary chaos, gaslighters of the highest order.

So, while I was in the neighborhood, I took a selfie of myself flipping the bird at my former office. I figured it was the least I could do.

Clearly, I'm not ready to forgive. I don't know if I ever will be. I'm a bit more pragmatic than I was 10 years ago. I did everything I could to not burn bridges, but things have grown too dire and too polarized. My work situation is imperfect (for now) but I've made peace with the fact that I'll probably never work in radio again. I'm too out of the loop. Someday, I hope to write a book about my time in radio, with a plot structure not unlike "Gulliver's Travels." My two years at Salem were going to be the last chapter of the book. Unlike Swift, I'm grasping to find any kind of happy ending.

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Random Notes, January 2019

Beating the cold with some hot takes:

+ Trump caved. Everyone except maybe his most ardent supporters could see it coming. His petty little hostage situation ended in, at best, a short-term failure. That it happened the same day Trump cheerleader (and former Nixon crony) Roger Stone was ensnared by the Mueller investigation is hardly a coincidence. Two years into the most mercurial presidency in recent memory, Trump is either learning to pick his fights or admitting he isn't perfect. Could we see a glimmer of self-awareness anytime soon?

+ Climate change is happening. Extremes in temperatures are gradually destroying habitats worldwide, and water levels are rising. Anyone who dismisses the concept of global warming (or uses it like an epithet) doesn't comprehend standard deviation. Also, yes, I am writing this as the wind chill is hitting record lows in the Chicago metro area.

+ I've set a personal goal of 750 followers on Twitter by mid-February. Will you help me out?

+ Before I forget: this month marks 10 years on Blogspot. Some of you may remember when I started this blog on TV.com/Gamespot, then "synced" my blog between the two hosts, then shifted over here. Even if you haven't read all 613 of my dispatches (the most recent 400 or so posted here) I thank you again for following along.

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His Uncle's Nephew

Monday, October 30th marks ten years since my uncle, Jim Swiglo died. It was the culmination of a whirlwind two months where he went from hospitalization to hospice to death. I was not aware until he told me that September that he had terminal pancreatic cancer, but I did not know until several years later that he kept his medical issues under wraps until the secret was no longer sustainable.

Indirectly, Jim's death was the catalyst for me to start taking improv classes. I was in a creative rut at the time; I was dissatisfied by doing stand-up, and frustrated by the lack of performing options in the suburbs. I had to broaden my horizons in some way, and commuting to Old Town once a week was a start. Jim was 52, living with his mother, and seldom traveled. I did not want to become him, and I still don't.

As such, my social circle bears next to no resemblance to what it looked like in Fall 2008. Granted, some friendships disintegrated, but most of my high school and college friends are either too busy or too far away. I'm very selective about who I communicate with from Salem Radio Chicago --where I was employed at the time-- but most of them no longer work there. I attempted to go out on Halloween with "Sandra" (the topic of two past blogs) but I really just wanted to talk to someone. Even in a close family, I felt alone in my mourning. In 2018, improv and comedy dominate my social life; I felt like I had a much stronger support system when my parents passed in 2016 and 2017, and I'm beyond grateful.

Given how young Jim was when he passed, I do wonder what life would have been like had he lived into his mid-60s. I fear that he would've almost certainly voted Trump, and would have been oblivious to #MeToo. He wasn't socially conservative per se, but even in 2008 his backward attitude about women would have been hard to ignore. He died before the Bears signed Jay Cutler (who he would've hated) but he would rub the Cubs' World Series title in my face. There are little quirks of that I don't miss: his random singing, his tendency to chew gum with his mouth open, the way he would tuck his undershirt into his underpants. In spite of that he was a good man, a generous soul who put family first.

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Radio Dazed

From 1999 to 2010, I worked at a radio station in some capacity. This ultimately fruitless pursuit of a life's dream could be broken down into four chapters. Chapter one would be my 3 1/2 years with WDGC-FM, my high school station. Chapter two (and to some extent, the epilogue) took place at 90.9 FM WDCB, my first paying job and as well as my first taste of professional radio. The final chapter was my two tumultuous years at Salem Communications' Chicago branch. The third chapter, however was relatively short but carried the longest-term consequences.

I was persuaded into going to community college after graduating high school. I was dead set upon attending North Central College in nearby Naperville, but the cost of tuition for a four-year private school forced my hand. As I was wrapping up my associates degree, I did some research on other schools, partially out of curiosity. I discovered that not only did Illinois State University's radio station (and school of communications) offer a higher quality program, but it was more cost-effective. After a short discussion with my parents, I set my sights on transferring to ISU in January 2006.

After settling into my dorm room at Watterson Towers and purchasing my textbooks, my first order of business was to get acquainted with the student radio station. I had first visited Z106 when I was on campus the previous October; I was impressed by the quality of the station's aesthetic and the various IBA accolades it had received over the years. I attended an open meeting where each department director (music, promotions, news and sports, etc.) introduced themselves and explained what they were seeking in a staff member. I ended up applying for four departments: rock music staff, rock DJ, traffic/billing, and sales. I eventually worked in three of these departments, but was only hired for the rock music staff.

For my first semester at Z106, I largely kept a low profile. I was happy to be there, but I didn't want to make waves. I tried out as a rock DJ again in May 2006, with a new programming director proctoring the auditions. Because of a miscommunication, I didn't know I made the cut until two weeks before Fall Semester started. After that, my presence around the office grew incrementally. By my third semester, I had been assigned to a special project reorganizing the station's manager handbook (the station bible, so to speak) and held two on-air shifts. After spending the Summer of 2007 interning at the station, I was on rock music staff, a rock DJ, an undergraduate teaching assistant, and working in the station's traffic/accounts receivable department. I had made a plethora of friends and contacts, and graduated in December 2007 thinking the impact I had made at Z106 would transition into a long career in the radio industry.

I soon discovered, however that staying in touch was easier said than done. Of the three people that made the greatest impact for me during my time at Z106, there's one person I've only run into twice since graduating (both in the same weekend in 2011), one I last saw the month after I graduated, and one right before I graduated. Social media helps, but the opportunity to have lunch or even grab a beer is scant to physically impossible. I blame part of that on geography, but also on a mountain of miscommunication.

Sometime in late 2009, I noticed that I was unfriended on Facebook by a fourth Z106 cohort. This particular girl was short in stature but big in personality; she was an aspiring comedian of sorts, and had created a persona of being bubbly and vapid. (Her signature bit of sorts was asking "what's a Porter Moser?" after our men's basketball coach was sacked.) At the same time, the station could be a hornet's nest of drama, and her cliquish and entitled mindset sometimes drove that undercurrent of tension. At the same time, I was on good terms with her (so I thought) and never had a personal issue with her.

After realizing I was unfriended, I waited a few days to message this girl and talk things out, but I never got a straight answer. I sent a friend request, which over six years later is still pending. When the station held its 30th anniversary reunion at Homecoming 2011, I approached a group of people that I was cordial with, with the girl in question somewhere in the middle of the cluster. Since I really hadn't discussed the situation with anyone, and didn't want to look squirrelly, I approached everyone in the group with a handshake and a hug. When it was this girl's turn, I embraced her gingerly and moved on to the next person; as I did so, she clenched a teeth for a split-second and muttered "well fuck, he's a hugger."

I don't think we spoke for the remainder of the evening.

Though this girl is not the only former co-worker to unfriend me on Facebook, she might have been the most astonishing. A couple of my old peers simply weren't that close, and as near as I can tell there's no tension between us. Another co-worker, the assistant traffic director during my one semester in that department, unfriended virtually everyone in our office and has totally fallen off the grid. One girl that I nominated for Staffer of the Semester (and ended up sharing the honor) proved to be humorless and easily offended. Granted, she wasn't that easygoing to begin with, but she was reliable and I admired her work ethic. In a way, her unfriending me in late 2012 felt like looking the gift horse in the mouth.

Admittedly, I am driving down to Normal in early April with some trepidation. The visit will be succinct; I'm attending a wedding in Texas the same weekend, so my time back at Z106 (now just WZND) will be somewhat abbreviated. There are a few people that I know will be happy to see me and vice versa, but it will be tricky to navigate around some of the drama and unresolved tension that lingers on after all this time. My career in radio didn't work out, and for most of the Z106 staff in the mid-to-late 2000s, they also saw their broadcasting pursuits sputter out a few years after graduation. We were a group of disparate college kids with a common goal. And we're gonna celebrate.

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My 10th Anniversary Blog

Ten damn years.

When I wrote my first blog entry on the then-nascent TV.com in June 2005, I really wasn't sure what was the point. I was curious about the concept of having a blog, especially on a site where I was a prolific contributor yet also somewhat anonymous. I had my niche --SNL, classic sitcoms, late night TV-- and I made some acquaintances through that. The double-edged sword of CNet buying out TV Tome (and its forgetten sister site, Movie Tome) and the perception of selling out was what actually allowed the new site to become more of a community. We weren't just screen names and post totals on a lo-fi episode guide site, but human faces with human feelings. That layer of anonymity was gone, though some chose to hide behind some kind of veneer. These were halycon days, a period of unabashed nerdiness that lasted about five, maybe six years.

Of everyone that made TV.com hum in the later part of the 2000s, I'm one of the last remaining. I still enjoy the luxuries of being an editor --well, what's left of them, anyway-- though the forums and actual community has atrophied. Most of the people I knew on the site have become friends on other outlets of social media, and the Facebook group Return to TV.com has maintained the conversation in exile. It's not the same, but at least most of us have stayed in touch. The temptation to quit TV.com altogether ebbs and flows in my mind.

If this 10th anniversary blog doesn't sound that celebratory, I have two reasons why. First, I consider my anniversary with the site to be February 1st, 2003, when I launched my TV Tome account. Even though I've been the editor of the SNL episode guide almost immediately after the conversion, it was my contributions in the 2 1/2 years prior that earned that position. I built my status by being prolific in the SNL forum as well as the now-defunct sports discussion board, then submitting info to fill the gaps in Late Night and Late Show with David Letterman. I rose through the ranks at astonishing speed, making the leap from Level 1 to Level 7 within my first two weeks on the new site. Before the level-up system was more or less abandoned last year, I was on the cusp of Level 64, not anywhere near the all-time submission champ but still comfortably in the top 25.

My second reason is that I struggle to seperate my personal life from the half-assed veneer I created. This blog (which I "similcast" with TV.com from 2008 to 2012) became an outlet for me to discuss anything I wanted. My weekly updates are and always will be ramshackle; I'll talk politics one week, music the next, then those two plus my family the week after that. It goes without saying that my life is significantly different than when I was 20: I'm slogging through another temp job, both of my parents still have recurring health issues, I've been living at home a lot longer than planned, and overall I'm just forcing myself through the peaks and valleys of adulthood. On the other hand, I'm far less introverted than I was 10 years ago, my dabbles in writing, comedy and improv have become almost a part-time job onto itself, and I've finally come to terms with the fact that my radio aspirations were never meant to be. (I haven't totally ruled out voiceover work.)

Navel-gazing aside, I want to thank anyone and everyone who has ever read my blog for commenting and interacting over the past decade. I am grateful for the support of my friends and family, including the people I've never met in person that have taken a foothold in my universe. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think anyone was interested, and you've been vigilant and then some.

Ten damn years.

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