The more I thought about the intern issue in radio today ... the more I realized what a sham that whole deal really is. And there's another, parallell issue, too, that I bet nobody expected.
It's not just KFNS. And it's not just radio. It's the whole culture that has developed in broadcasting (and maybe print, too, although I have less first-hand knowledge there) over the past ten or fifteen years.
The concept of interning in any business is, as originally established, an excellent one. A legitimate student would assume a position within a company relevant to the student's academic pursuit and, in turn for performing meaningful work that presumably would add to the student's knowledge base, receive credit at his educational institution. The student would be "graded" in some sort of acceptable review format by the supervisor at the company, the student's advisor would ensure that the work was actually meaningful and that the company for whom the student worked was making it an educational experience that helped the student and the company at the same time.
And, in my experience, there was always...always...one more element. The student was paid by the company for which they interned. Maybe minimum wage, certainly not a whole lot more, but the student was paid. And if the student was interning in an academic environment, they got a break on some element of the cost of their schooling, rather than cash.
It does seem unfair, doesn't it, to make a person pay tuition and then work additionally for free to earn credits? But that looks like that's the way it's shaping up today at commercial radio, and has been for a pretty long time. And it's not that way only for educational-interns, either. Radio stations are bringing in young wanna-be's and "allowing them" to work for free in all aspects of the station operation withiout starting them off with at least some odea of the real responsibilities of someone who is part of a team at a federally-licensed broadcast facility. And that's just wrong.
No, this is hardly as serious a problem as all the rest that a station faces in employment practices. But it's a practice that is more than mildly reprehensible, smacks of a lack of ethical base on the part of management, and may, in fact, put a station at risk legally if there is a problem in which the unpaid intern is involved. At least by paying the intern minimum wage, the station is able to put a definable face on the relationship.
Maybe that concept is completely beyond the business philosophy of current management and ownership, I don't know. But someone at a management level needs to give it some thought.
And that parallell issue, that I bet nobody expected, is surprisingly more widespread than anyone at any level of station operation wants to admit.
That's the issue of allowing air talent to work for no pay. This happens for a variety of reasons. One is that the air talent simply begs for the air time and promises to do it on a volunteer basis because they want the exposure. Management, seeing dollars saved, acquiesces.
Ooh, boy, is that a trainwreck waiting to happen!
All it's gonna take for the station to learn a very expensive lesson is for the volunteer air talent to "take off" on the air and drop a "defamation dime". You think the lawyers are going to go after a volunteer air talent who is subsisting on ramen noodles and driving a 1985 beater? Nope, they're going after the presumably much deeper pockets of the station license holder.
The other side of this is the station that brings a talent onboard and pays them with a few minutes of time to sell each hour they're on the air. The reality of this deal, which looks wonderful at first, is this: not everyone is a salesman. Broadcast sales is tough work, and, truth be known, it's a full-time job unto itself. Not everyone is connected enough to have an established client base they can bring to the party. Not everyone can, regardless of ratings, deliver a steady flow of business to clients for whom they do spots. A lot have tried, and all but one that I know in this market have returned to the fold of faithful employees, happy to get their corporate checks on a bi-weekly basis.
The saddest part of all this is the email that I received recently that told the tales, from inside knowledge, of a few well-known radio types who are actually doing one version or another of the above management scams. I won't name 'em, because I don't want to embarass 'em, so no speculation, please, in your comments.
I will say this, though: on-air exposure is truly not what it's knocked up to be. Not at that price. It's like vanity publishing, and you know what a scam that is.
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