I responded to an online posting for a writer/producer tonight.
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Television Writer / Producer (Senior) -
Hey, let's call a spade a spade before we go any further. We could not be any more excited about having this opportunity and this client willing to trust us. Who are we but some dopey small Recruiting firm and that these guys had enough faith in us to give us a shot at filling this is an honor I will take with me certainly to lunch...and possibly dinner but will absolutely be forgotten about by dessert so there you have it...
Let's get to it. The primary responsibility of this position is to WRITE & PRODUCE...Duh! Okay, more than that is to be a creative resource for all their network promotions on-air and online, as well as conceptualizing original show packages.
You'll be responsible for writing and producing compelling on and off-air promotion, radio spots and sales tapes that fully convey the tone of the network and oversee projects from inspiration to final delivery, including conceptualizing, writing, and managing editorial, graphics production, music composition and sound design.
You'll communicate concepts and ideas to editors, designers, talent, etc, making sure all elements conform to the brand look and the mission of the network as well as overseeing the writing and production of in-show and in-event promotions.
Sounds cool doesn't it? Well it is. Now how do you qualify for that job?
You'll need at least 5 years national cable or network television experience as a writer / producer and prior work in a sports or sports entertainment related role is an absolute must; and a related 4 year degree from a school you actually have to attend and not mail in for would be nice too. You'll also have a plethora or experience in short-form promotion required and unlike me have a top notch creative mind with equally impressive communications skills, especially writing, design and music direction.
So what else is it that you'll need? Well, experience overseeing shoots a plus. The ability to conceptualize beyond the ordinary is a must... and you must fully understand the value of brand building and be flexible, detail-oriented, deadline driven and a great collaborator.
So now you've read it (hopefully anyhow...hey a guy can dream can't he?) and are wondering does this one make sense for me financially? If $70-$90K works for you and you meet the requirements then we should talk right away...
The aggressively casual voice of the ad was weird but I sent a resume to the guy at about 6:30 this evening. At 6:32, the phone rang. His name was Mitch Beck and he was the recruiter. He told me almost immediately that the company was Versus, where I did one job over a year ago, so I knew there was nothing to talk about. He, however, had a lot to say.
The part of my resume about working as a producer for Howard Stern's show really got him talking, primarily about the fact that he was in radio for 25 years from the time he was sixteen and how he was doing Howard stuff before even Howard was. And how he was doing it in
And how he was being courted by Rush Limbaugh’s producer to be the “moderate Rush,” but he turned down the five million they offered because he was going to have to be something he wasn’t. And how he had a gig down in Orlando a number of years ago when he couldn’t get arrested and they were only going to pay him 50 grand, but the day the moving truck was to come to his house, the station cut the offer to 30k, which he was still willing to take. Finally, the next day they cut him loose because “they spent a million and a half to pick up Stern.” Soon after, he mentions that he was “number one in
And he hasn’t even gotten started. Because he asks me about Stern and I launch into my boilerplate about seeing behind the curtain and all that shit. And he, weirdly, starts praising Stern for knowing that “he should never be bigger than the advertisers.”
He mentions his “cutting-edge” method for getting stations to listen to his demo in the pre-internet days: buying a “high-end” answering machine which would re-cue his demo reel every time someone called his 800 number. Then, when the bill arrived, he would check which caller listened to more than half of his five-minute demo. I asked him how many offers resulted from this space age method and he said “none.”
Then he claimed he had been blackballed by a major radio consultant and he’s been “miserable,” because all he “ever wanted to do was radio.”
(As this is going on, his toddler daughter is playing in the background and he periodically has to chide her for doing something to the dog. At one point, he actually says “do you want a spanking?”)
But Mitch Beck’s eleven-o’clock number was still to come. Now that the door to raunch radio was open, Mitch took the opportunity to walk right through it by offering that he hopes that Opie and Anthony contract “dick cancer.”
“Those two shitheads,” according to Mitch, have been making his life a living hell for the last two-plus years. It all started innocently enough when O&A started to enlist their fans to disturb live, on-location news reports by acting like imbeciles in the background. So far, so good. Just another wacky radio prank. But then two of these sub-literate morons incited channel 2’s Arthur Chi’en to ask them “what the fuck” they were doing with an open mike. Chi’en gets shitcanned, ends up at channel 11, two halfwits laugh all the way home to their mother’s basements.
A few days after the incident, Richard Huff, who I think writes for the Post, writes a column excoriating the duo for encouraging the behavior. Mitch Beck, who says he often pens stories for Hockey magazine (and appears on some of the XM hockey shows, “not as a fan, but, like, an analyst”), writes an e-mail to Huff, who publishes it online with Beck’s e-mail address.
O&A read the letter on the air and broadcast not only Beck’s e-mail, but his home address and phone number. Remember, I’m quoting Mitch Beck here. As a result of his information being made public, Beck claims he was subject to death threats, inundated with subscriptions to gay porn magazines, bombarded with over 17,000 harassing e-mails, and was the recipient of packages full of everything from human feces to drugs to a raccoon head.
He claims that some of the O&A “pests” put his picture on gay websites. He got hundreds of invasive and menacing phone calls. He ended up closing his executive recruitment business for nearly three months to try to regain control of his life.
At one point, Beck claims, he answered a call on his speakerphone with his then-two-year-old son present. The caller made threats that Beck says terrified his son, who was plagued with nightmares and needed professional help. Mind you, I get this part of the story after Mitch claims that “my son is very smart! He was talking at seven months! Full sentences at ten months!”
His monthly nut is 13k. He told me that as a means of letting me know that his life savings are gone and he’s gone from yearly income of 400,000 dollars to about 150,000 last year.
He e-mailed Opie and Anthony in the hopes that he could appeal to them to stop attacking, but he was blown off by them, and, he claims, by XM management and by Richard Huff, who refused to get involved.
“I was on the air 25 years and I never attacked anyone!” he says, at about the 35-minute mark in the phone call. “Howard makes fun of people but he’s laughing with them, not at them. He’s not…”
He struggles for the word and I offer “hateful.”
“Yeah, hateful.”
You talk about plucking crazy right out of the ether. I should have known something was awry when he responded to my e-mail less than three minutes after I sent it. I just thought I had great luck and this guy just happened to be sitting there when my one-of-a-kind resume came zooming onto his screen and he wondered where I’d been hiding myself all along and has he got an opportunity for me!
To get some idea of how far it was from that, read below.
Chris,
Do me a favor and go to www.versus.com and fill out the application on line for the Senior Writer Producer position. It’ll ask you for the way that you were referred to them and if you would please write my company’s name, Crossroads Consulting, LLC in that place. I think it also asks for a cover letter and if you could put that in there as well it would help me an enormous amount.
Once again, I want to thank you for the conversation. I know I did most of the talking and I’m sorry if I chewed your ear off, but as you might imagine it’s a pretty sensitive issue for me. You showed me a lot of compassion and heart and because of that I’m going to make every effort I can to help you find something.
Again, thank you and have a great evening…
His website is http://www.crossroadsconsulting.com/
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