The Rant D’Jour is from the WEEKENDER issue of today.
For once I write about something timely.
I certainly don’t mean to trivialize the Earthquake and the Tsunami in Japan…more
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Blog Post for Wednesday 3/16/11 – 34 degrees and a spitting cold rain. Just enough to make you miserable.
Work makes free
Work.
I know what work is. I’ve done it all my life. Some work is more or less fun. Some work excruciating. Some work done out of duty or obligation. Some work done because, there it is.
I have noticed as I age out of the demographic that advertisers cherish (25-54 or at least it used to be) that work takes on a different meaning to me.
Work used to be defined as what they paid me for. I could easily tell work from leisure that way. It’s not so simple anymore, at least for me.
I seem to be doing a lot more work for nothing, or at least no measurable gain. Take this painful exercise in , cough, literature. Take my blog, please.
Early in my broadcast career I worked for nothing. I was a announcer on a non-commercial station that paid no one but the thrill of being on the air was salary enough.
Now that I am out of a paid radio gig for years, I once again will work for nothing, at a non-commercial station, that pays no one.
I make that distinction because it’s important. A non-commercial station that pays no one is very different than a non-commercial station that pays it’s people. I will not get into a rant about public radio and the funding and the fact that they say “dubya” instead of “double you” here. Not here. Not now.
I am not even sure I am an employee of the station I work for.
And so I am not sure what I am doing is work.
But I still get a thrill from the work.
Does that make any sense?
This a long way around to say that I have agreed to (again) work for WFTE and produce my “Rising at Ten” shows for them.
I am told WFTE will broadcast with 3000 watts on 90.3 from Mt. Cobb and some sort of wattage from a repeater on 105.3 somewhere in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area.
I have no expectations here. None. I have no intent of being involved in any way shape or form in the direction of any of WFTE’s programming efforts beyond Monday-Friday from 10am-11am. I will not be attending station functions, marching in parades or going to meetings.
I am a content provider. And I am content to be just that.
Unpaid worker.
Sounds like a contradiction. Quite possibly it is.
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