Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Most folks here probably remember all the WUOG hootin' and hollerin' that went down on the Internets and elsewhere a few months back. Well, WUOG's current general manager Erin White quickly responded with a message board on WUOG's site and now also a survey (in partnership with UGA's Business School) - all to take on the complaints and the compliments to make the station better.
Now, months later, we thought we'd catch up with her to see what's going on at the station and to get some insight into how it all works...
To clear it up for everyone once and for all, what is WUOG's philosophy?
Hrm, that's a good first question! WUOG's music philosophy has been historically stated, "if they don't need us, we don't need them", which can be scary and alienating to people who don't know what we're about. Recently we've been retooling the way we explain WUOG's philosophy; it hasn't fundamentally changed in the past ten years, but the way we've talked about it has.
So, to answer your question, WUOG's music philosophy is thus: we have a noncommercial license, so our only obligation is to play the best and most varied music we can, rather than to sell a market to advertisers. We help out the guys/gals who make damn fine music and who aren't getting much help from other media.
So how/why did this recent PR push (the discussion boards, survey, etc.) come about?
This summer, some folks launched an anonymous Myspace site about WUOG and effectively nailed some grievances to our door. Their method left something to be desired, but they had some valid points. WUOGers got the message pretty quickly, hence the discussion board, which I posted within a couple days of the Myspace site going up. Personally, I'd much rather people kvetch to us in person than anonymously through someone else's site! The exec board has used the comments on the message board as a reference during the past months to see what we should be working on.
The current survey is being conducted by some students from the Music Business Program who are externing at the station this semester. We've been wanting to do a marketing survey for a while, so they're doing this for us and suggesting some moves we can make in the next year to promote the station.
What kind of results have you seen so far?
I haven't seen any results from the survey personally; we'll be hearing from the Music Business team in a few weeks. But I can predict what the results will be: not a lot of folks know WUOG's mission statement or philosophy, and we need to get the word out to increase listenership and decrease misunderstandings about what WUOG's doing.
This past year began a slow move toward a more accessible image of WUOG. We're not changing our philosophy, but we're trying to change how the station is perceived. This exec board has been moving in that direction since January, busting a move for WUOG, and the new exec board that's starting in January '07 has already started to make plans about advertising WUOG's mission statement and philosophy like crazy next year. I'm pretty excited about seeing that happen. I'm also pretty excited about this board in general; they've got a lot of potential to do some cool things with WUOG while maintaining the spirit of the station. They'll build on the foundation that this year's board has laid down.
In general, what have most people been saying they liked about the station? What have they disliked?
This summer, there seemed to be a whole lot more dislikes than likes! We had a pretty crappy few weeks dealing with lots of criticism from community members, but it was good to hear this kind of stuff from them and realize that they care about WUOG a lot.
Mostly, the dislikes included our local music request policy, our insufficient back catalog, the RealPlayer stream, us being off the air during the day for a few weeks because of the chemistry debacle, not having community members as DJs, bad telephone courtesy from jocks, and general un-professional-ness over the air (which was both a like and a dislike, for some).
The likes were our specialty programming, all the live shows we've been doing on-air recently, the website, us not sounding like WRAS, our music philosophy...it was smaller words of encouragement like this that kept us all from completely pulling our hair out this summer.
How have things changed, if at all, in reaction to both the likes and dislikes?
We've definitely taken what everyone's said into account. This summer we had a "customer service/phone courtesy" training session for jocks, and we'll most likely have another in a few weeks. We also had a seminar from a former WUOG jock who's gone on to a career in radio, and he talked about how not to sound like you're clueless when you're talking over the air. Now, we're not aiming to sound like professionals (that's what every other station is for!) but it's good when you sound semi-with-it. The message board is still up; we're doing the survey, too. We've incorporated another local music show on Monday nights from 6-7pm, and expanded local rotation.
We also held 'Seize the Airwaves' earlier this year, which allowed community members to DJ for an hour for a donation to a local charity. Next fall, we're gonna do it again, but with lower donations and a hell of a lot more publicity so more people will know and want to participate.
Do the DJ's ever noticeably cringe when hitting 'play' on certain songs? If so, which songs?
Ideally, no! The way our rotation used to work, jocks pulled out a card for a new CD and had to spin a track from that CD; we felt like that was the only way that the less, err, "pleasing" music would get played. It also led to some incoherent shifts and a lot of wincing from the DJs who might not've enjoyed twenty-minute free-jazz songs. Now rotation is set up so that the folks who love indie-pop can craft DJ shifts with the more melodic newer CDs in rotation, while the kids who dig noise can pull those records out to play. By all accounts, the new system has done well, DJs have been spinning some coherent, fun shifts, and the weird stuff is still getting played. From what I can figure, most DJs are pretty content with the music they play, unless they don't read the review. Then that's their own damn fault.
How has your time as GM been?
It's been great, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. I've been "in office" since January and the term's only a year, so I'm on my way out, sadly. It doesn't feel like I've had enough time to do everything I wanted to do. GM's been a challenge, figuring out how to make the most people happy while maintaining my own sanity. It got a lot easier once I realized that the ship is steering me, instead of the other way around.
I know y'all don't have a real rating system or anything, but what would you say are your most popular features/shows?
Sound of the City (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 8-10pm) is probably our most popular show, since we start off each show with Live in the Lobby and play two solid hours of local stuff. SotC has been a listener favorite for years and years. Number two would be all of Sunday afternoons and evenings--that's when we play folk, bluegrass, blues, americana, and jazz. It's good stuff. Also popular are Who Put the Bomp? (our Friday-night oldies show, 8-10pm), Loud Fast Rules (metal, Tuesdays 10pm-midnight), and Blank Generation (punk and new wave, Wednesdays 8-10pm).
'Course, I think everything's pretty good.
Not to fuel any flames (so you might make this for a job other than WUOG), but what's your favorite way to slack at work?
When I'm up at the station, hanging out with whoever's DJing is fun. Usually me slacking at WUOG means I'm typing a paper that's due in-class in an hour.
Oh! To answer any questions TDJ readers might have: no one at WUOG gets paid, including the exec board. Hardcore staffers will be up at the station between 10 and 20 hours a week, but it ain't all work. Work and play are often the same up here. Aw.
What's it like to work the 3AM shift?
"Hellish euphoria" is probably the best way to describe it. Unless you're a night owl, around 4:30 you hit a lull and your body says, "why are you doing this to me?" But you know, the people who've DJed the 3-6am shift are the folks who stick with WUOG the longest and are some of our best staffers. I came in hearing the legend of Chris Lozo, who DJed a 3-6am shift two semesters in a row because there were tons and tons of DJs. He later became Programming Director, the host of our punk show, and a pretty prominent figure at WUOG.
Just for fun - can you ask around to see who the most often requested local bands are? (Not ones with the one week "get all your friends to call in cause our album just came out" full court press - the ones that stay popular other than say, R.E.M. and Widespread Panic.)
The Drive-By Truckers! They get requested very often. WUOG's number one fan, Richard Worley, calls up several times a day and will usually request the Truckers or Bill Monroe. Of Montreal and Neutral Milk Hotel also get requested pretty frequently. (The running joke at the station is that Jeff Mangum lives on the four-and-a-halfth floor of Memorial Hall in the John Malkovich closet.) I'll sometimes get a call for Hope for agoldensummer, too, or Madeline, or Bill Mallonnee, or Bob Hay and the Jolly Beggars, or Love Tractor...
Some jocks will play local requests, and some won't. Our local request policy is in place to prevent bands from requesting themselves, but jocks exercise good judgment and ultimately make decisions about what gets played based on whether we have it in the archive and whether they feel that song fits into their shift.
That's about it. Thanks for having me/WUOG over. I feel like there's a whole lot more that could've been said, but I didn't want to put anyone to sleep. I just wanted to let all you kind Athenians know that WUOG staffers love getting your phone calls in the DJ booth, because that keeps us going. We appreciate hearing from you at 3am and 3pm.
Also, I personally want to hear directly from you about WUOG, good or bad. Seriously, I'm all ears. If any of you TDJ readers have any questions or anything you'd like to talk to me about, please send me an e-mail. I check my mail a ridiculous amount and am usually pretty quick about getting back with folks. I look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks, Erin - both for the input and the work you've done at the station this year!
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