Is it always this hard
to find staff?My new newbie announcer was sent from our sister company, a newspaper, last week. After a week in training she is on the air, supervised, and apart from a little natural nervousness has been doing quite well.
The studio is simple - if a little archaic - and you can flip in and out of automation if you need a break. The only things that have to be done live really would be joining the BBC for news and reading the weather and the occasional commercial script.
My own show is different because it is advertised as live from midnight till morning so I am a constant presence through the night.
Anyway, yesterday about half hour into the shift my new one starts to cry and says she needs more time to observe (at least two more weeks) she is overwhelmed at talking to everybody in Barbados and do I really think she is ready to be on the air.
Now I need someone for that time slot. My managing director and I have rotated through that slot since the first week of December rather than throwing it back to full automation bar the news and weather because we are working toward more "live" radio, not less. Yet despite our own needs, both of us would pull triple shifts before we put someone we did not consider 'ready ' on the air.
Last evening the two of us looked at each other in dismay because once a trainee is familiar with the system the only way to learn is to be on air and do the job.
I think the problem started at the beginning of the day when my director and I met with 'new' and pointed out that she was late in for the fourth time this week. And although once she is practiced at doing the set up she can come in an hour before airtime right now we want her shift to run from 1 to 7.
Two hours prep and four in the studio. Not come in at 1:45, go to the kitchen make soup, exchange endless text messages with her friends and finally make herself available around 2:30 and then break for lunch half an hour before going on air.
Any way you cut it, it is only a six hour work day, and although it requires careful attention, if you follow the log and are organized it is a snap. I had never actually DJ'd for myself before I started MTM. Always worked with an operator. All I did in the studio was turn on a microphone so the first time I did my shift here I had had fifteen minutes familiarisation with the controls and I got a lot of things wrong.
Two songs going out at the same time, mixing up the pots for the two CD players, switching the mic on but forgetting to pot up. And every mistake showed me how to do it right. With "new" I am right there to give direction so nothing dire happens but I am going to allow her to make some errors because it is the best way to learn.
I am feeling discouraged. "New' isn't sure she wants to be an announcer. If she doesn't find her place with us she is out of a job and that may be her only motivation for being there. And that is not enough.
To be good on air it cannot be just a pay cheque, there has to be something more. And going back to observation will not change the fact that when she speaks people will hear her. That is another issue resolved only by actually doing the job.
I need to find a way to make this work and as nurture and supportive encouragement don't seem to be getting anywhere I think perhaps it is time for the steel girder that runs up the center of this cream puff to make its appearance.
As someone once said to me, you can help someone get a job, you can show someone how to do a job, but you cannot help them keep a job. They have to do that for themselves.