See a preview of the next episode here.
Email is a wonderful tool sometimes, but it can be a bit problematic when you think you've sent an email to your coworker, but instead you've accidentally sent it to the owner of the home shopping network. Oops. I'm Jimpolling and this is my view from the middle. I've mentioned a few times during this podcast series the fact that I spent most of my career working for and heading up the Florida News Network FNN. As a matter of fact, from the time I started at the network until I retired, the network changed owners five times. There were six total owners and there was only one I didn't work for, and that was the owner who started it all to begin with. Throughout I maintained my position as operations manager or director of operations, and I always reported to a general manager. Throughout the ownerships, there were a total of ten general managers that I had to report to, and of course I've always had the programming, technical and new staff reporting to me. We'll talk about being in the middle. So I've had my share of personalities to deal with from. Both above and below. I've also experienced general managers and owners who were infected with what is commonly referred to as Ivory Tower syndrome now Ivery Tower syndrome is worthy general manager is disconnected from the employees in the trenches and thus the reality of the business. Now, don't get me wrong, Not all ten of the FNN general managers or the five owners had this affliction. I was pretty lucky for the most part. There was really only one major offender that I'll talk about later. One version of the Ivory Tower syndrome happens when people who know just enough about something to be dangerous. These are the people who have read something on the Internet or have been told something by one of their buddies who purports to be an expert. All of a sudden, weekend warriors who surped the people whose job it is to make something happen. Most of these guys come about it innocently and don't really mean any harm. It'll take a bit of work to convince them they need to go in a different direction, but eventually they'll come around. I had this experience with the late bud Packson Low. Bud Packson was the owner of Paxson Communications Corporation, the forerunner of the network now called Ion Media Networks. The group bought FNN and a bunch of radio stations from some other owners. I was also running one of the all news radio stations, WWNZ in Orlando. Bud was an interesting guy. He, along with Roy Spear, founded the Home Shopping Club, now known as the Home Shopping Network. The concept of HSN actually started at a local radio station Packson owned. A local advertiser was having trouble paying his bill and so paid the station in can openers. Yes, can openers. However, needing money more than kitchen utensils, Bud had an all air personality at the station. Go on the air and see well the can openers for nine dollars and ninety five cents each. They sold out and a new industry was born. Bud was a visionary man. He knew it. One of the inside radio stories about Bud that I tell frequently is about the time I was sending out emails in a rather hurried fashion. Back then, our email system had all the employees of the company listed alphabetically by first name. I don't know why, but that's the way it was set up. You would open the email program, click the two button, and pick from a list of recipients listed in alphabetical order by first name. So I'm at work one morning running FNN, and I'm shooting out emails left and right to people who work for and with me. One of those was directed toward our engineer Brian. In the email, I said, send a d MOD to our affiliate in Fernandina Beach. A d MOD is a satellite receiver used by the radio stations to receive our radio programming. See now you learn something about Thirty minutes later, I hear an overhead page in her office, Jim pulling Bud Packson for you online too. Now, this was the early days of the company, before it became a big, blinking, faceless corporation, and it wasn't all that unusual for Bud to call one of the local markets and talk to a manager. But I really couldn't figure out why Bud would be calling me on this particular day. Still, I picked up the phone and punched line to Hey, Bud, I said, cheerfully, how are you today? What's a DMAD and why am I sending one the Fernandina Beach, he said, without any introduction or social lamentities. It was at this moment I realized what I had done in my haste to send out my flurry of emails that morning, I had accidentally clicked on Bud Packson from the list of recipients instead of Brian, my engineer. The names were right next to each other in the alphabetical listing of employees in the email program. Oops, not to be right, I'll die. Rapidly collected myself and said the obvious. Oh that ah, never mind, Bud, we can handle that one. Thanks for asking. Though. Once I was able to start breathing again and checked for a pulse, realized that Bud probably knew what had happened and wanted to have some fun with me. Another Bud moment was not at my expense, but I was there to witness it. I was called to a meeting at the Home Office in Clearwater, Florida, along with about six or eight operations and engineering types from the various radio markets. Were there to talk about upgrading equipment. I got there early, and so did a few of the other participants. There were four of us sitting in the conference room when in walks Bud Packson. Now Bud is a really tall guy. He had to be six foot eight inches, a good head taller than I was, which made him physically intimidating, as well as the fact that he was the guy whose name was on the company that was printed on our paychecks. I swear Bud had to duck to keep from hitting his head on the doorframe as he entered the conference room. Without so much as a hello, how are you nice to see or anything, he bellows, who has a legal pad? One of the engineers shot up and grabbed a pad, and thinking he was about to take notes on the next big genius idea that was sure to take the world by storm. After all, it could hurt to be Bud's note taker as the brilling ideas flowed from his brain to his mouth to this legal pad. The legal pad could be bronze someday and placed in the Bud Packson Museum with the note taker's name position right beneath Bud's on the plaque. I do right here, Bud, said the excited engineer. Good the great man said, as he flung a fifty dollars bill onto the conference table. You're taking lunch orders. I want a tuna. Well, so much for the name on the plaque. Say what you want about Bud Packson. But if he hadn't bought the Florida News Network. When he did, it probably wouldn't have survived. But sometimes Bud would display classic Ivory Towers syndrome symptoms. Now, before I go on, I need to tell you about a fellow by the name of Rick Green. Now. Rick was made GM of FNN under Packson's ownership. In my forty plus years of broadcasting, I have to say that Rick was the best general manager I ever worked for. Rick was one of the smartest guys in the room and had a talent of cutting through the muck on a subject to make sense of it. This is not to say I didn't have an occasional disagreement with him, but from my position in the middle, sometimes disagreements with a GM can actually be beneficial to the collective good. Rick was on my side when it made sense, and he let me know when it didn't. Rick was one of these why can't we just managers. We would be shooting ideas around about something and Rick, not really fully understanding the implication of what he was asking, would say, why can't we just and then spout off something that at times was totally impractical or impossible to do. It spawned some arguments, but he would eventually see a reason once the facts were explained. To his credit, he wasn't afraid of looking silly by throwing out ideas he knew and I knew he wasn't an expert on the subject matter, but he would vet his position thoroughly just to make sure there wasn't a loophole somewhere that would make the idea work. Ninety nine percent of the time, Rick would back down when he realized the realities of a situation before any damage could be done, but that remaining one percent was golden. Sometimes times, those of us who have been doing things in the industry for a long time needs someone who hasn't been involved to throw an idea out on the table that may, on the surface seem ridiculous at first, but Rick had a disarming way about him that allowed me to stop and consider his ideas and many times use them to make some things happen that had never been tried before and were ultimately successful. Take notes, kids, this is what a good general manager does. Okay, enough with the Rick Green fanclub. Talk back to Bud Packson. When Packs and Communications purchased FNN. One of the things Bud wanted to do is upgrade the way in which our signal was distributed to radio stations throughout Florida. We were using an aging, old analog technology system that was on its last legs. Bud requested that Rick and I research the systems available and give him a proposal. Okay, so buckle your seat belt here. Here's some inside baseball on how a network operates. There are two main types of satellite systems available for commercial radio distribution. There's a system that used what is called KU band technology and another that uses C band technology. Now, ku band is the kind that uses the tiny dishes similar to those used by Direct TV and Dish network television companies. But as any direct TV or Dish network customer will tell you, those satellite systems are subject to what is called rain fade. When heavy rain filled clouds come between your dish and the satellite, your television signal can go out. That's because KU band technology, although cheaper to implement, is very susceptible to rain fade. This phenomenon is even worse in radio distribution because the power used to push radio satellite signals is significantly less than what is used by the television companies, and as such is even more likely to rain fade. C band systems are less likely to experience this problem. These systems are more expensive and a little harder to get licensed than KU band systems, and require much larger dishes twelve and ainel half feet in diameter, as opposed to the tiny little eighteen inch or thirty six inch rooftop antennas you see on Direct TV or Dish network customer houses, which is part of the reason why TV satellite companies don't use seaband. Can you imagine having to install a twelve foot satellite dish on your roof, but you could have a fairly heavy rainstorm dumping into your seaband received dish and never lose the signal, whereas a k you've been saying, no, we'll drop out of the first sign of rain clouds. Can you imagine listening on the radio in the fourth quarter of an NFL football game ten seconds to go, score is tied, it's first and goal on the one yard line, and your team has the ball. There's the snap, then blotto, the satellite signal dies because a rain cloud came overhead at the radio station where the received dish is located. Listeners would get out their pitchforks and head for the station. So obviously seaband is the better choice for commercial use in this situation, especially since summer rains in Florida are a daily occurrence. FNN, in addition to producing hourly news, sports and business newscasts, also at the time, delivered radio talk shows and distributed the radio play by play for such teams as the Florida Gators, Florida State Seminoles, Miami Hurricanes, Florida A and M Rattlers, University of South Florida Bulls, University of Central Florida Knights, Miami Dolphins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Florida Panthers, Miami Marlins, Tampa Bay Rays, Orlando Magic, and Miami Heat, among others. All these game broadcasts were sent to radio stations throughout the southeastern US via our satellite system. Despite all that, Bud wanted us to buy a KU band system, or as he would mistakenly refer to it as a K band system. Rick mentioned to him in preliminary discussions that it would be susceptible to rain fade and cause harm to our business and reputation, but he didn't want to hear it I get eighteen channels of stereo music on my k band antenna and I never get rain fade. Well, it's true, he never got rain fade. He also had a huge five meter antenna that was picking up television sideband carriers. It took a lot to rain fade that kind of a system, even if it was k Band. I sat in meetings with Bud Packson where he signed purchase orders for millions upon millions of dollars worth of new equipment, some of which seemed a bit extravagant. It was like Christmas Morning for the engineers, seems whatever they wanted. He bought so to nitpick over our new satellite system because of cost seemed a little odd and short sighted. But nonetheless, Blood was adamant that a KU band system was the. Way to go. He had an acquaintance at the Kansas Information Network KIN who told him that ku band was the way to go. Now. I later learned that this acquaintance didn't really know any more about it than Bud did, since they were only in the process of refurbishing their network with a new system and it hadn't been tested yet another Ivory tower manager, it seemed. But everything we knew about satellite systems told us that ku band was a bad idea, So Rick put together his presentation for Bud flip charts, graphics and all based on that idea. The trouble with visionaries who hit it big with great ideas such as the Home Shopping Club is that they think that every idea they have for the rest of their lives is a great idea, no matter how stinkle they really are. I saw a documentary on the History Channel once about Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford. His company was a huge success when they introduced the Model T. The car outsold every other car in America and made the other car makers obsessed with finding a way to best it. Because of that success, Ford thought that every idea he had from that point forward was a great idea and wouldn't let anyone else tell him otherwise. As a result, the company declined to the point of almost going bankrupt. It took his son Edsel, to alter his thinking and finally get the company moving again. Since the Home Shopping Club was such a huge success for Bud Packson, those of us orbiting around tended to doubt ourselves rather than Bud. When found in an argument over an issue, well almost all of us. Rick Green was ready to stick to his guns. The day came to deliver the presentation, we were all left the home office of Packson Broadcasting in Clearwater, Florida. Rick was standing at the head of the conference table with his flip charts on a tripod and was describing how the new network would operate. Bud was at the other end of the conference table, listening quietly. I was somewhere in the middle of course, watching and gritting my teeth awaiting Bud's reactions. Rick flipped the chart or to reveal one that was entitled KU Band versus C Band. Before he was able to utter the next sentence, Bud's hand came down onto the conference table with a loud slap bull He said, I want a K band system. Then he went off telling us about his eighteen channels of stereo music on his K band dish and how all the information about rain Fade was exaggerated, talked about Kansas Information Network, blah blah blah blah blah. Rick sat down somewhere during that tirade and never did get to finish his presentation. I remember thinking to myself, Bud said, both The drive home from Clearwater to Orlando was a quiet one as Rick and I both tried to figure out what to do next to try and save this whole deal. We both knew that if Bud got his way, we would be in serious trouble. When we arrived back at the office, I decided to call Jim West. Now, Jim was the chief engineer of the Worship Channel, a television network owned by Bud Packson and located in Tampa. I figured Jim had Bud's ear and just about everything. Also, being a TV engineer, Jim was intimately familiar with the type of satellite systems available, probably more than I was. I told Jim about our meeting with Bud. I also explained to him how our radio network operated, and he completely agreed that KU band technology would be a disastrous choice for us. He said he would mention it to Bud a few days later. Much like how ostriches carry their heads in the sand, Rick and I simply chose to ignore Bud's rant about k band and turned in the proposal for a sea band satellite system. Bud signed off on it with no comment. I never spoke with Jim West about the topic again. But I can only assume he was successful in getting Bud off the KU Band kick. Whatever happened, we just forged ahead and never looked back. Oh when you remember buzz acquaintance at the Kansas Information Network, Well, he learned his lesson the hard way. The first winter on their new KU band satellite system saw so much snow fade, the winter version of rain fade, that they completely pulled it out and started all over again with you guessed it a sea band system. So much for the eighteen channels of stereo music. My experience with Ivory Tower managers and owners didn't stop with Bud Packson, but it was a big influence during my forty plus years in broadcasting. So I can't fit it all into just one episode of this podcast. So in the next installment, I'll tell you about a famous television evangelist who bought FNN but didn't really know what it was, and the general manager who fired the office worker he was having a secret affair with when she bought him a penis cake. I'm Jim Pauling, and that's my view from the middle