Forum.RttP{Thanks a lot RTTP, I was fired from my radio station!}

I was fired for "spending too much time on that blue web site" when I was supposed to be contacting labels. I was fired from my position as music director so I wrote a rebuttal, left it in the station today and might lose my show because I'll probably be under intense scrutiny for speaking my mind. For now the show is still going on tomorrow from 8-10pm. Here's some of what I said in the letter.

The so-called problem with me being on “that blue web site” shows the problem SFR has with supporting local music, and plays a huge role in our irrelevancy. The blue web site in question is actually Return To The Pit, a local radio show that does a far better job of engaging hundreds of local artists than SFR could ever hope to do. Through RTTP I contacted numerous bands looking for a wider audience for their demos, EPs, and Full Lengths. Attending local shows (which were advertised on RTTP’s Events Page) I purchased albums out of my pocket with the intent of adding them to our new music selection. When I suggested this to Dave last year he responded favorably to the idea. However, this year there seems to be an unspoken rule that unless an album is mailed out by a label or promotional company it cannot be added to the rack. There have been numerous times where I’ve seen a local artist come directly into the station with their demo, asking us to play it just once. Of course as soon as they step out of the office the demo ends up in the trash. This is absurd. Suffolk and the greater Boston area are home to hundreds of excellent bands looking for a break, yet we ignore them in favor of playing the same quasi-underground garbage anyone can hear if they turn on a radio or MTV2. It is absolutely ridiculous that the re-release of a tired 10-year-old album from a band that was never relevant in the first place (Dimmu Borgir’s Stormblast if you’re wondering) is considered new music when we could give our station a distinctive local flair.

Shifting away from uniformity toward locals would give us a strong reputation among local bands and increase our listening audience, if we do not we will continue to toil in obscurity. We cannot continue to ignore local music, as even the most prolific stations and shows suffer when it is ignored. Long-running "Nasty Habits", one of WERS most popular shows, lived by its support of local acts and died last year as listenership fell off as the show de-emphasized local music. One way to bolster SFR would be the introduction of local music racks, which DJs could play in lieu of the selection on the required new music rack. This along with separate local music directors responsible for contacting local bands, attending local shows, and hosting local bands on their shows would have a positive effect on SFR‘s prominence on campus and in the area...

Again, for a concert to be successful SFR would actually need to have a connection with the student body though the prospects of that are bleak considering the fact that I learned of my removal from the e-board through a letter this past Friday, despite being in the station at the same time as the people who made the decision over the previous two weeks.

If the “blue web site” was such a concern someone should have brought it up to me last semester (which it was and I explained it in a fashion similar to this letter). Perhaps we could have had a discussion of everyone’s web browsing habits, fun as myspace and yahoo fantasy football are I have a slight feeling they might have nothing to do with the e-board (though that is an unfair characterization of myspace as I have used it to contact bands and labels and I would hope others have used it for the same purpose). I think the concern is communication. Nobody wants to listen to anyone else at the station and rather than addressing problems at meetings we would rather listen to ourselves speak, grandstanding about events that will never happen for five minutes or so before sending everyone home. I explained why I visited “that blue web site” and my problems with contacting a certain label multiple times last semester, yet apparently nobody felt like listening. Even when I was not receiving new adds from my labels I came into the station and logged new adds that were the responsibility of other music directors. I joined SFR not to be talked down to or lectured about computer labs as if I were a grade schooler, but to have fun. I can have fun without the e-board, thank you, though I would have liked the chance to defend myself if someone was willing to listen.