I’m a bit embarrassed to mention this but I screwed up (along with some others) right in the midst of my highly successful national overnight talk program .
The USA radio network was a huge organization primarily furnishing top of the hour news 24 hours a day to a very large number of radio stations across the country.
Sometime in the mid 90’s I wanted them to pick up my show. I figured we’d get a huge boost in stations who would enjoy just staying on their satellite after their hourly news ended...stations that would like to have live overnight talk.
We negotiated by phone...agreed to this and that including revenue sharing etc and a start date.
We were coming down to the wire on the date for the switch from my current syndicator to the USA Network when I called the guy who was in charge and ask him about the production setup for the broadcast of my show. I wanted to speak with the board operator and discuss the phones and commercials etc and was shocked when the man told me
“What production...what control room operator?”
“Wait a minute...what are you saying here?” I replied
“ Stan, we thought all we had to do was just carry the show...that you would be responsible for the phones...spots...etc.”
I cringed.....we had suffered a colossal “lack of communication.”
I just took for granted I could broadcast from my Miami studio to their network and they would handle calls for the show and commercials I had already sent them.
The switch was due in just a few days and promos had run on the network all ready...but we immediately put it on hold and the next day had a very short conference call with the big brass...who said we’d have to cancel the arrangement as they were not prepared to go to the trouble or expense of staffing for my show at their end.
A real life business experience of the kind I hope you never have to go through!
stanmajor@aol.com
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