- Jul 11, 2001
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This is a bit odd. I volunteer at a college radio station (many years!!!), and we're emerging from pandemic contrivances. We have been broadcasting FM since the late 1960s' originally at 10 watts and upgraded to 500 watts by FCC mandate (minimum 250 watts) about 1981. In the internet era, we started streaming, which is very common for all kinds of broadcast stations these days.
We have had an annual fall fundraiser for many years, which is coordinated in terms of the mechanics of handling of funds, letters to contributors, security (credit card numbers, identities of contributors etc.) by the university.
During the first 2 years or so of the pandemic we basically shut down staff coming to the station, but we continued to broadcast and stream 24/7 by virtue of DJ's each in their own way putting together their shows and uploading them to our Google cloud space. Our 1/2 time engineer (he does some other work for the university) worked out scheduling these recordings (submitted in advance by a week or more) to be broadcast (via FM and streamed) at their appropriate times. I put together my shows at home, once a week, a 3 hour show, which continued to air the same day of the week and time as before the pandemic (and now that we're back broadcasting from the station studios, I continue to do so... we've transitioned back to the station offices/studios over the last 1/2 year or so), only requiring all DJs to broadcast in-station only since November.
In addition to the engineer, our Operations Manager (like the engineer and station manager, a salaried position, the DJ's are 100% volunteer) did yeoman service keeping things organized, doing major management. This is impressive in that said Operations Manager is also a grad student at the university. Meantime, our long time station manager "was there" in some capacity (my perspective was occasional postings to one or more of our several station personnel restricted list-serves) but more or less seemed not very involved. She finally retired about 3 months ago after about 30 years at the station. So, we have a new station manager (the university coordinated recruitment and the decision, and he's been our new station manager for almost 2-3 months now).
Now, one of our long term DJs (not as long as me) got an idea maybe a week ago that the engineer and Operations Manager had done such a terrific job in keeping us afloat in difficult circumstances that it would be a neat idea to give them a special gift, presumably at our holiday party (a pot luck at the station, with a few things contributed by the station itself, platters, this party being the 1st in 3 years because of the pandemic), which is in 6 days and he sent about 15 or so of our well over 100 DJs an email suggesting this after speaking (remotely, I'm sure, probably by email) with another long term DJ who's co-manager of our large record library. Now, the engineer will almost for sure not attend the party. He's about the 6th engineer we've had since I've been a staff member and I don't think I've ever seen one at one of our parties. However, some of those engineers were "much loved" by some staff. The Operations Manager and station manager will for sure be there, I figure. That's the way these go.
So, by virtue of the single email I received about this ~3 days ago, these two agreed it was a great idea and agreed they'd each contribute $100. We get the email, but mine comes a bit later from the 2nd guy saying the first guy got a bounce-back for me because he had a really old email address for me (odd because I have had quite a few email exchanges with him in recent times, but he evidently never updated his address book). So, the 2nd guy forwards his reply to the original email to "all" to me, explaining that guy #1 didn't have my current email.
I have sat on this about 3 days now without replying. Partly because it's so informal. Guy #1 says in his email he'd be happy to coordinate it all by email.
Seems to me this isn't being done right. I don't mistrust this guy (guy #1), but seems to me it's not appropriate for him to say give me the money and I'll work up the gift, whatever form it takes, likely gift certificates. Seems to me he's prevailing upon us to exact our trust in him, not out of character, IMO. There must be some facility that would work better for something like this.
I am pretty sure the new station manager is 100% out of the loop in this, and of course, the Operations Manager and part time engineer are unaware. Guy #1 loves this scenario, clearly.
I was thinking today I should email these guys (#1 and #2) and ask if this thing is "getting traction" because the email I got makes it clear that they were looking for reaction from the 15 or so people cc'd on this.
We have a lot of new DJs, way more coming in than we used to, over the last 6-9 months, the great majority being students at the university. We are open to community members although we only recruit those once a year. The students get in way more easily, are recruited on campus. The pitch for contributions for our engineer and O.M. were not sent to any of those people, just those ~15 old guard DJs, probably all of whom are not students.
What do you make of this?
We have had an annual fall fundraiser for many years, which is coordinated in terms of the mechanics of handling of funds, letters to contributors, security (credit card numbers, identities of contributors etc.) by the university.
During the first 2 years or so of the pandemic we basically shut down staff coming to the station, but we continued to broadcast and stream 24/7 by virtue of DJ's each in their own way putting together their shows and uploading them to our Google cloud space. Our 1/2 time engineer (he does some other work for the university) worked out scheduling these recordings (submitted in advance by a week or more) to be broadcast (via FM and streamed) at their appropriate times. I put together my shows at home, once a week, a 3 hour show, which continued to air the same day of the week and time as before the pandemic (and now that we're back broadcasting from the station studios, I continue to do so... we've transitioned back to the station offices/studios over the last 1/2 year or so), only requiring all DJs to broadcast in-station only since November.
In addition to the engineer, our Operations Manager (like the engineer and station manager, a salaried position, the DJ's are 100% volunteer) did yeoman service keeping things organized, doing major management. This is impressive in that said Operations Manager is also a grad student at the university. Meantime, our long time station manager "was there" in some capacity (my perspective was occasional postings to one or more of our several station personnel restricted list-serves) but more or less seemed not very involved. She finally retired about 3 months ago after about 30 years at the station. So, we have a new station manager (the university coordinated recruitment and the decision, and he's been our new station manager for almost 2-3 months now).
Now, one of our long term DJs (not as long as me) got an idea maybe a week ago that the engineer and Operations Manager had done such a terrific job in keeping us afloat in difficult circumstances that it would be a neat idea to give them a special gift, presumably at our holiday party (a pot luck at the station, with a few things contributed by the station itself, platters, this party being the 1st in 3 years because of the pandemic), which is in 6 days and he sent about 15 or so of our well over 100 DJs an email suggesting this after speaking (remotely, I'm sure, probably by email) with another long term DJ who's co-manager of our large record library. Now, the engineer will almost for sure not attend the party. He's about the 6th engineer we've had since I've been a staff member and I don't think I've ever seen one at one of our parties. However, some of those engineers were "much loved" by some staff. The Operations Manager and station manager will for sure be there, I figure. That's the way these go.
So, by virtue of the single email I received about this ~3 days ago, these two agreed it was a great idea and agreed they'd each contribute $100. We get the email, but mine comes a bit later from the 2nd guy saying the first guy got a bounce-back for me because he had a really old email address for me (odd because I have had quite a few email exchanges with him in recent times, but he evidently never updated his address book). So, the 2nd guy forwards his reply to the original email to "all" to me, explaining that guy #1 didn't have my current email.
I have sat on this about 3 days now without replying. Partly because it's so informal. Guy #1 says in his email he'd be happy to coordinate it all by email.
Seems to me this isn't being done right. I don't mistrust this guy (guy #1), but seems to me it's not appropriate for him to say give me the money and I'll work up the gift, whatever form it takes, likely gift certificates. Seems to me he's prevailing upon us to exact our trust in him, not out of character, IMO. There must be some facility that would work better for something like this.
I am pretty sure the new station manager is 100% out of the loop in this, and of course, the Operations Manager and part time engineer are unaware. Guy #1 loves this scenario, clearly.
I was thinking today I should email these guys (#1 and #2) and ask if this thing is "getting traction" because the email I got makes it clear that they were looking for reaction from the 15 or so people cc'd on this.
We have a lot of new DJs, way more coming in than we used to, over the last 6-9 months, the great majority being students at the university. We are open to community members although we only recruit those once a year. The students get in way more easily, are recruited on campus. The pitch for contributions for our engineer and O.M. were not sent to any of those people, just those ~15 old guard DJs, probably all of whom are not students.
What do you make of this?
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