General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Party Loyalty [View all]cascadiance
(19,537 posts)It was "little things" then like:
1) the sales department putting a lot of pressure on our news producers to select news stories to air on late night news shows that have more to do with the nature of the content of the shows that preceded them on the station's channel, rather than those stories just being selected on their relative news value. Obviously this was done to help increase news broadcast ratings for bigger ad revenue then, but it was things like this I'm sure that started in many parts of the country that over time made our news more in to infotainment than being a public service for news.
2) those working in these environments were largely underpaid, or had a lot of staffing from unpaid interns. Since there was just a small number of companies owning the news outlets such as news, radio, and newspaper in that city (basically two companies), there was a "gentleman's agreement" that these two companies wouldn't report on each others' internal labor or other similar issues, that allowed for some mass firings that weren't reported when efforts to organize labor happened in those days. You had some of the engineering people organized in unions that had already been put in place and were hard to keep from happening (SMPTE, etc.) before the 80's, but other workers weren't so fortunate. I recall a good friend of mine that worked as a weekend reporter not making much more than I was and we were both close to minimum wage in those days, and he was very good at keeping a straight face at reporting on other company labor disputes dressed in a suit while they were unhappy with wages that were a lot more than he was getting. Keep that in mind when seeing many reporters today that perhaps are dealing with similar circumstances out there. Many would be more on our side and speaking more for us and unions today, if their circumstances weren't like this too, which in a shrinking oligopoly of companies controlling our media is far worse now than it was then. There were some then that defied these barriers, and still fought to be good and more vocal reporters, but those workers are a lost breed today and have largely been forced out.
These were big reasons that I got a second technical degree while working there then, and quickly got a new job while doing so that made more money than many of my managers were making then. People in media shouldn't be forced to switch careers though to be treated fairly.