Des Moines and back in one day. Ten hours in the car with David. Almost nobody I’d rather travel with. Laughed my ass off. No voice mail, no email. Passed adult book store on trip home and made David turn around so I could take a photo for the masthead. So cold my shaking hands ruined the shot. It would have been a killer. “Adult Videos & Toys.” Just in time for Christmas.
A coworker came by my office today, held up a little cup, and told me to draw a name. When I asked why, she explained it was for my Secret Santa. I said I’d be glad to contribute some money but didn’t think I wanted to have a Secret Santa. Too late, she explained.
“I sent an email around yesterday and it clearly said to contact me by 5 p.m. (yesterday) if you didn’t want to take part in Secret Santa.”
Seems the Secret Santa program is opt-out only.
“I got a couple of hundred emails yesterday,” I explaind. “If one of them had ‘Secret Santa’ for the subject line, I probably didn’t open it. Can’t I just give you some money?”
“No. Someone already has your name and if you don’t participate, I’ll have to go back to them and have them pick another name,” she explained.
“Uh, what’s involved in being a Secret Santa?” I asked.
“You buy a small ($5.00 limit) gift for your Secret Santa pal each week for the next four weeks,” she replied.
Right. I gave my wife a check for our 28th wedding anniversary. I won’t be searching the mall for a clever gift for a coworker. I came off sounding like an asshole that didn’t want to join in the holiday fun and my coworker huffed out.
While it’s too late to be Jimmy Stewart, maybe I can offer some alternatives to Secret Santa. You could buy a card for the person in the next cube. Or bring in some fudge to share. Remember, it dosn’t matter if they get you a card or some fudge, it’s the giving that counts. But that’s no fun and there’s no…mystery. So how about this: Secret Scrooge.
The SS is chosen by lot. Nobody knows his or her identity. Early in the morning (before anyone else is at the office) on the last work day before Christmas, the Secret Scrooge leaves a sealed note on the desk of coworker, informing him or her that they have to work Christmas Eve AND Christmas Day. They don’t have to do anything, they just have to be at their desk. And — here’s the fun part– they spend that time trying to guess the identity of the Secret Scrooge. Can we count you in? It’ll be fun.
Oversold again. Expressed my fears and concerns to Clyde. He feels it is a mistake to turn down business. I say there has to be a “good programming” limit. The newscasts just aren’t good quality programming with two minutes of spots.
Another charming little nugget from my 1984 (first year at Learfield) journal. I believe our newscasts were 5 minutes long in ’84. Four minutes of news content, one minute of network commecial inventory. When we sold out, we “double-spotted” (3 and 2) and got away with it. Not sure if we could today. Note the total absence of irony in my “mistake to turn down business” reference. Was I precious, or what?
While cleaning up my home office I came across an old spiral notebook that’s been gathering dust for a long time. I flipped it open to take a look before tossing and discovered a journal I kept during much of 1984, my first year at Learfield. Seems I had the blogging bug way back then. I promise not to make you relive 1984, but I might share an entry from time to time.
June 3, 1984
Left Kennett at 7:45 a.m., arrived Jefferson City at 1:15 p.m. Beautiful day, beautiful drive. Coming over the hill just outside of town, saw the city in among the rolling hills. Beautiful.
Went to the office and visited with Jeff Smith. I’m doing my best to keep a good positive attitude, but I’m scared shitless. I honestly believe there’s no one they could have hired who would be any better at this job than me. Anyone would face the same problems I’ll face and I know that I can handle them. Every instinct tells me this is a genuine milestone in my life. The other path was a kind of defeatism. A ‘giving up’ and setteling for less. This is the time; this is the job; this…is…it.
I had forgotten how nervous I was those first few weeks. And my rah-rah, motivational tape approach to things. It seems a little silly now but I think all that stuff helped get me through a few tough spots. See you at the top!
Phil posted our spam/virus stats for September. 95% of our inbound email is spam. And I’d say that percentage holds true for the crap that hits my USPS mail box. A bunch of shit I didn’t ask for and don’t want. As we used to sing back in the 60’s… deep in my heart, I do believe… there will be a day when we only see/hear messages that we want to hear. It’s closer all the time. So spam on you annoying turds. Make it while you can.
I’ve always blogged with an awareness that the people I work with (and for) might be reading what I write. In fact, I know that some of them do pop in from time to time. Hi, guys.
While I post with some frequency on radio, media, blogging, journalism, podcasting and such… I rarely write about our company specifically. For lots of reasons. Today we’ll get close to the line and try not to step over.
Our company has gotten big. Not General Motors big or Microsoft big, but a lot bigger than when we started, 30 years ago. Back then, it was Clyde and Derry (and a few others) making it up as they went along, breaking all the rules, trying and doing all kinds of things that Big Companies said you couldn’t or shouldn’t do.
And, as the name suggests, the company has always beeen about communications. First as a wired (telco lines) network delivering farm news and markets to a handful of radio stations. Very few people were doing that back then because it was damned expensive and nobody really saw the need or the opportunity. Clyde and Derry did.
In the early 80’s, Clyde figured out having his own satellite uplink would allow him to reduce costs and control a powerful distribution channel. We could ‘communicate’ programming (content) to listeners (via the radio stations) in a way that others could not. More on the satellite/distribution thing in a minute.
So we have our own satellite uplink and channels and things start to take off. We build/acquire lots of radio networks. We’re scaling nicely and the company is growing. And it continues to grow. We still feel like and –in many ways– operate like a much smaller company. Handful of smart guys running the company from the top of a very flat org chart. But we’ve gotten big. And we have some big cash cows that we love very much.
You see where I’m headed with this, right? How do you get big (which has lots of advantages) without losing the Small Company “bag of rice and an AK47” flexibility and attitude? Because if the next Clyde and Derry are out there in the bushes (and you know they are), they have The Mother of All Networks at their fingertips and it doesn’t cost them the millions our Clyde paid for his first uplink. It’s virtually (get it?) free. And far more poweful because it’s global and two-way and blah, blah, blah, blah. You’ve heard it all.
Big is good. The Queen Mary is a very comfortable ride. And as long as we don’t have to make any sudden turns, we’ll be fine.
They’re painting all of the offices along our hallway so I’m homeless for a couple of days and the webcam is offline. The office make-over is taking forever and god only knows the price-tag when it’s over but Learfield will be one very nice place to work when everything is complete. I can’t imagine working in nicer surroundings. And today the company had a cookout, just for the hell of it. Someone invited the the guys doing the work on our building so we were all sitting around drinking beer and eating ice cream and feeling fortunate.
I’m hanging out in our new sports operations center and hear the haunting sounds of someone playing the mouth trumpet. I was surprised and delighted to discover our own Ryan Kormann riffing away. About this time, Rick Kennedy steps out of his studio to join in with Musical Hands. He insisted that he wasn’t warmed up and was a little nervous, but his musical gift was obvious.
I’ve posted a few times about the year-long renovation project that’s been underway where I work. Big push to have the new Sports Operations Center ready by the first football weekend (September 3, 2005) and they made it.
I stopped by with my camcorder. Once they get this thing fully tweaked, they’ll bring in a professional and really capture just how nice this facility is. Until then, here’s a little taste (6 min, 14 meg, wmv). If you have any trouble watching this, drop me a line.
The firm where Barb works had a fund-raiser today for the hurricane relief effort. Her boss, prominent attorney and fun guy Harvey Tettlebaum, agreed to wear a clown suit if they raised $2,400.
And everyone in my department at Learfield Communications received this email late this afternoon from our chief financial officer:
I’ve scheduled an off-site meeting the afternoon of September 14 at Clyde’s (our CEO) house. This is a very important meeting and I expect you all to attend if you can. We will watch the movie “Office Space” and drink beer. Please mark your calendars.