Dammit, Jim, I'm an Engineer, Not a Fireman

[Dale H. Cook]

From time to time I am approached by stations that want me to work for them, but although they say they are looking for a contract engineer what they really want is a fireman. They want someone they can call when something is on fire, and after the flames are out they don't want to see or pay that person again until something else is on fire. I have recently been approached by some station clusters under a few different owners who are looking for an engineer because the engineer that all of them used died a few months ago. They all apparently want a fireman.

In my mind that is not contract engineering, because there is nothing to contract about. A contract engineer contracts, for a monthly retainer covering a predetermined maximum number of monthly hours, to undertake predefined maintenance of the station physical plant and to be on call for emergencies. A fireman is not a contract engineer because he is not under contract to provide maintenance.

Stations say that they cannot afford a retainer. That seems shortsighted to me - they cannot afford to pay someone to keep them on the air, but they can afford to be off the air and losing money, sometimes for days, while they are trying to find a fireman to put out their conflagration.

I have been in radio engineering for 40+ years, and serving as a salaried chief engineer, or as a contract engineer, for radio stations (and one small TV station) has been the major (and usually the only) source of my income for 30+ years. I am too old to be a fireman, and have no desire to work on a physical plant which receives no maintenance.

What say you?

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Excellent word picture!

[Kmagrill]

Many years ago, I watched a presentation by a radio sales guru named Pam Lontos.  One of the exercises she did was pin dollar bills all over someone's suit and they pretend to be the prospect.  Their job is to tell the salesman that they have no money, which, of course, is clearly absurd.  The excercise is for the salesman to overcome the objections of the buyer and show how the benefits of the station overcome the costs.  You have taken step 1.  You have them talking.  Now, you have to overcome an average of 7 objections before closing the sale.  Selling a service into radio is no different than radio selling itself to clients.  If you overcome the objections, you will get the sale.   When negotiating, never say "no".   Instead say, "that doesn't work for me, because...".  That lets you explain, overcome the objection and keep negotiating.  When someone says NO, the negotiation is over.  Good luck.

[RadeoEngineer]

Retirement is a pleasure.

[ellenparks]

This isn't just a symptom of radio it's industry all over the country.  Yet, business still believes that by cutting everything to the bone they can beat the reaper so to speak and keep running or, worse yet, they run the one engineer to death keeping aging stations on the air.  It's just a throwback to the 1860's live with it.

[kenglish]

Dale, I heard basically the same story from some major market guys about 30+ years ago (at AMPEX training, I think).
Stations hire some bright, energetic engineer to come in, on the premise that he's going to be there a long time.
He works hard to fix everything, fine-tunes their system, makes lots of improvements.
Boss comes in and says, "We don't need an engineer now...everything's working. Bye, bye."

To some stations, the engineer is just a glorified "light bulb changer".

It just seems to be getting more and more universal.

[OKCRadioGuy]

It seems to me that it's becoming a huge divide between stations that are willing to do things right, and those that won't.  The real thing for contract engineers to do is simply seperate themselves from those with a bad repuation for doing things wrong.  Unless they have a good reputation or have huge sums of cash stacked up before you travel, let them burn. The help they'll get is exactly what they pay for.

[BobOnTheJob]

Some pay a retainer, some don't. But the ones that don't opt for the retainer pay from the top line on the rate card when they do call. And those are the ones that make me smile the biggest when the phone rings.

[Bengalsfan]

Some pay a retainer, some don't. But the ones that don't opt for the retainer pay from the top line on the rate card when they do call. And those are the ones that make me smile the biggest when the phone rings.

And I don't put out one fire until the previous fire has been paid for.  I know of an engineer near us Bob, who allowed a station owner to run up tens of thousands of dollars in service over several years.  That owner recently died and the chances of that contractor seeing his money are slim to none now. 

yes, the ones that don't pay the retainer get the highest rate....and don't get anymore service until the account is at a zero balance.  Amazing how quickly an owner can find their check book when the station goes off the air and nobody to put it back on.

I'm happy to be a fireman, as long as stations pay the fireman rate.

[SirRoxalot]

I'd say that Dale assessed the situation succinctly in four short paragraphs. You could pretty much send them to a prospective client with minor changes, and let them decide if they wanted to hire you or not. It sounds like Dale really doesn't want those clients who aren't smart enough to pay for regular maintenance. At some point in life, that sounds like a reasonable choice to make.