"I only shot a ni---r". Yup, Florida.

[calimary]

79. Welcome to DU, nil desperandum!

Glad you're here! Yes, it's galling that competition is just part of life. I find it an increasingly problematic part of life. It's weary-making. Most of the time I just don't feel like competing anymore. I got out of broadcasting and retired awhile back, and I don't miss that part of it AT ALL. Even while we had a little radio group among the bunch of us in the local press corps that did believe in and practice cooperation.

I certainly saw cutthroat. LOTS of it. Was the victim of some of it, too. But our little radio group - people at ABC Radio, the BBC, what was then Mutual, what was then Westwood One, Premiere, some people from the local stations, a few syndicators, and myself at the A.P. - we pooled our resources. Nobody ever did without a mic cable or an extra set of batteries or spare cassette tape if we needed it. Someone among us would always share. We'd regularly save each other's asses that way. Somebody arrive late to the press conference? No matter. They could get a dub afterwards from one of us, or if they needed it immediately, one of us would always try to find the piece of tape and patch our machines together to feed it across to them. It was always so pleasant and not what you'd ordinarily expect. But we were all friends, and we all felt as though we were all in this together, even though we worked for competing operations. It made things a lot more pleasant than the alternative.

I've seen press conferences where some competitor yanked a competing network's mic cable out of the mixing board, equipment was found to be missing, or the record button was turned off. Or they'd hog one of the few phone lines (back before everybody had cells) set up to feed tape or talk to the studio and wouldn't let anybody else use them. Bookers from competing morning shows stealing guests before the guests could go on where they'd been booked. People who won't share or help out, for neither love nor money. People whispering in the boss's ear to turn that boss against the person with the job the rumor-spreader coveted. Stuff like that. Cutthroat. They usually wind up getting their comeuppance. But unfortunately, it too often comes long after you're not around to see it, much less enjoy it or watch it play out.