Career Grief: You Haven’t Worked in Radio Until You’ve Been Fired
The conversation on career grief with continues thanks to our readers
My recent posts on career grief have landed in a manner that I didn’t expect. Many of you — people I know as well as complete strangers — have reached out to say that they related with Amy’s and Scott’s stories. That they were empowered by taking a leap from the only career they had ever known, or said that losing their job was the best thing that could have happen to them in the long run. And many of them admitted to not appreciating the grief they felt.
I asked some of you to put your grief into words, and then I reached out to some other people to see if they would join the chorus by talking about the changes in their careers (voluntary or otherwise) and share their grief story. We’ll take a pause from Kids & Death for the next couple of weeks and run these stories beginning with today’s entry from a longtime acquaintance.
And, if you have a story to share on this topic, reach out at jaredpaventi@substack.com or by clicking reply.
You haven’t worked in radio until you’ve been fired.
It’s a well-known proverb among on-air talent in the radio industry.
I began my radio career as a morning show producer at a major market station at 21-years-old. It was my love. It was what I always wanted to do. By 30, I was hosting a morning show in that same city and had just won market personality of the year. I believed my own headlines. I thought I was good. Too good to be fired. I was the outlier, the exception to the rule.
And then it happened.
The dreaded and feared came calling on February 15, 2007. The studio hotline rang at the end of my show. The program director wanted to see me in his office. As I sat across from him I heard chunks of what he was saying: “We’re gonna let you go…it’s not anything you did or didn’t do…we have to cut costs.”
The gravity of the situation wasn’t sinking in. I was too preoccupied with my own inner monologue: “Wow, this is how it happens…it’s finally happening to me…I’m losing my radio virginity!” As he walked me to HR for my exit interview I was stoic. Too prideful to act like a dead man walking. After all, I had just been baptized.
“Now I officially work in radio!”
My stoicism quickly faded to self pity when I got home and realized that my colleagues were still at work and the radio station was going to go on without me. I made an executive decision to spend the rest of the day on the couch navigating my way through a 12 pack of beer as I tried to blame others. “I work harder than them.” gulp “Why me?” gulp “I’m better than them.” gulp “I must not have kissed up to the right person.” gulp. Then my thoughts shifted inward. I questioned if I had failed to take the appropriate steps to control my career, got complacent, and let it control me instead. Six beers in, I generated the self-assurance that I was talented and that I would land on my feet. By the time the 12-pack was gone, I succumbed to tears at the realization that I was out of work. A 30-year-old with a mortgage, wife, two kids, two weeks severance and a COBRA package. Drunk. On a Thursday afternoon.
The next day, after taking my kids to school and daycare, I started emailing radio stations in the market to let them know I was on the beach. Surely they’ll want to snatch me up, I thought. And they did. I got a hit right away and found out there was a producer opening for a nationally syndicated morning show based in town. I wouldn’t be the host, but the pay was the same because it was the No. 1 heritage show1. I was hired a week later and the rest is history, right?
Not so fast!
It was during the radio ratings dead time between Christmas and New Years in 2010. My No. 1 show was on a glorious two-week hiatus from waking up at 3 a.m. I was about to begin my third year as their producer and audio ninja. It was a Tuesday. My phone rang. “We need you to come to the studio.” I knew what that meant. I was about to surrender another key card.
Oh well. I hated that job and I hated who I worked for. Over a slice of pizza during my first month on the job, the host of the show told me that I wasn’t naturally talented. I will now admit that he was the most talented person I ever worked with. I could have listened to him. I could have learned from him. I should have let him push me to greatness, but my ego got in the way. I thought I was a self-made talent who was already great. I didn’t need his opinion. He just pissed me off! Looking back, he was right. Somewhere deep down, subconsciously, I knew he was right and it made me pissed at myself. I wasn’t mature enough to own that fact, so I put it on him.
From that day forward I was filled with discontent. As time went on, it showed in my attitude and my work. I knew it. He knew it. As I sat at the conference table with HR, I was told he was cutting costs, but in reality I’d become a disgruntled employee and he’d had enough. This was my fault. I understood that and yet it didn’t bother me. It does today, but at the time it didn’t. In fact, I waded into the murky waters of unemployment this time in a much different headspace. There was no day-drinking pity party. I had a plan.
Two years earlier, shortly after being told I wasn’t talented, I decided that I needed to diversify, so I went back to college part-time and began working on my masters degree in education. Academia seemed like a logical second career choice because it would provide the stability that the radio industry didn’t. It had jobs and job security in spades. When asked, I told people that the radio industry was shrinking rapidly and I didn’t want to be one of those sad casualties of radio who dragged his kids around the country from gig to gig. That was true. But, what I didn’t tell them was that I was petty. I hated who I worked for and I needed an exit strategy so I could storm out of that show with guns blazing one day when I had finally had enough.
So there I was: unemployed again, but with a plan. However, there was one issue with my plan: timing. I had not finished my masters yet, so I would need to finish my degree while bridging the gap financially before I could become a teacher. That’s when reality set in. I was going to have to scratch and claw to survive until I could switch careers. I was filled with regret for the opportunity that I had just squandered. Although the grass had a lot of brown spots, there was plenty of green on that hill I died on. I should have played my cards better.
That show was radio’s white buffalo: nationally syndicated, privately owned by the multi-millionaire host and, unlike most of the radio industry, flush with job security and opportunity if I had only embraced it. My biggest regret when I reflect on my radio career is that I screwed that job up. If I hadn’t, I’d probably still be there riding the gravy train. But I was a prideful, angry young man filled with hubris who couldn’t stand his employer, despite being compensated handsomely for what really was an outstanding job.
But, back to scratching and clawing. It was a new year: 2010. I was a few credits short of my masters degree and I had tuition and bills to pay, plus mouths to feed. The weather was gray and dreary. My severance had run out and I was collecting unemployment as I stared out of the windows of my house day-after-day feeling paralyzed with fear and inadequacy that no one was calling to offer me a job. My optimism for bridging the gap was as gloomy as the weather. I was depressed and disappointed in myself. I carried on in that loathsome state for nearly three months until I was able to land a low-paying job producing commercials for the radio station cluster that fired me in 2007. I voiced and edited spots for clients like Walmart and Harley-Davidson for most of that year. I was overqualified. The job was simple. And so was the pay. But, I was biding my time until I could pivot to a career in education.
It was late 2010 when, out of the blue, the radio company approached me about a promotion. It was a big one. A life-changing one. They were interested in sending me to the second-largest market in the country to produce the morning show for their biggest-name talent. Intoxicated on the feeling of being desirable again and blinded by the glitz and glitter — not to mention the salary — I jumped in with both feet, picked up and moved across the country.
It was a mistake. I knew that after a week in the building. I was filled with regret that I had abandoned my plan and chased the limelight. It wasn’t that I disliked the host or the job. It was the radio industry itself. I had grown to despise what I once loved. I lost touch with my inner 21-year-old. My heart was no longer in it. The two previous job losses had scarred me far deeper than I realized. I had zero confidence, zero love for the game. I felt like a fraud. The writing was on the wall. It was over. I was burnt out. I wanted it to end.
That spring, I finished my final graduate class online. It was a sunny Friday afternoon a few weeks later when it arrived via FedEx: a piece of paper that said Master of Education. I had felt so depressed about my current situation, I actually forgot I had graduated. That’s sad. When I saw my diploma I knew it was time to make my move and hang up my headphones for good, on my terms. It wasn’t a linear path. It wasn’t logical. I ended up moving across the country in the twilight of my radio career to chase money and take a dream job that I quit months later. It didn't make sense to anyone. When asked, I told people I was just tired of waking up at three in the morning.
I’ve come to realize that the entire final job move was really no more than an attempt to bridge the gap than it was an attempt to cover those deep scars from 2007-2010. It was a misguided spiteful attempt to prove to past employers that they were wrong about me. I should have embraced the job and tried harder to rekindle my love for radio, but I didn’t. I should have been tougher or more resilient. I chose flight over fight. I let myself down. I was a quitter. I was done. I resigned the first week in July, moved back home, and settled into a job teaching middle school journalism and broadcasting.
The events of 2007-2011 were fuzzy for many years. There’s still a lot that I can’t remember. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s cramming a lifetime of memories from a crazy, fast-paced radio career into such a condensed period of time. But somewhere along the way I went from viewing losing my first job in radio as a rite of passage, to losing a second, quitting a third, and having self-diagnosed PTSD that lasted most of my 30s. I started taking an antidepressant in 2012.
Deep down I still feel like a quitter. I have ghosts. I’ve had vivid dreams in which I apologize to the host of that show for how I handled him telling me I wasn’t talented. I seek his mentorship, but I can never do that. He passed away unexpectedly in 2013.
I’ve been a teacher now for 13 years. The job is simple and so is the pay. Teaching has provided the job security I sought. It’s outlasted any job I had in radio. In the last 5-6 years I’ve wondered why I didn’t parlay my experience into a second career that paid better than teaching and would have challenged me more, but the reality is that no other career paths even crossed my mind back then. I’m pretty sure my lack of confidence clouded my judgment. I thought that I couldn’t do anything else professionally and those who can do, do; those who can’t, teach. It was a give up.
Regardless, teaching is a good, honest living, and an opportunity to impact lives. I do miss the thrill of radio. It’s not every day. I still consider myself a radio guy. I no longer have a creative outlet and that feels empty. I have to consciously remind myself that radio jobs are few and far between now, that the industry is a shell of its glory days, and that makes me sad. I can’t bring myself to stop reading the trades every morning. Somewhere in my head there’s still hope that I could find the right opportunity to crack the mic again. In reality, that’s a pipe dream. The industry continues to shrink and I continue to get older.
I’m okay. I’ve stopped taking my antidepressant, but I still wonder if I’d be working in radio if I had only played my cards differently. I was simply too scared to exit another job on someone else's terms; pride wouldn’t let me leave it to chance. I regret it, but at the time it was paramount that I control my career and not have it control me ever again, even if that meant quitting one of the best jobs in radio. Regardless of whose terms I left on, I turned myself into what I always wanted to avoid being: a sad casualty of radio.
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Jared here. In radio terms, heritage means that it’s a long-time, high performing show or station.