My show was humming along..or so I thought. Now, to preface things a bit here, stations of the day typically recorded portions of an On Air Personality's work for later critique sessions in person by a Program Director or remotely by mail to a consultant or corporate manager. One morning after my show, Eric handed me a typed memo from our Los Angeles Consultant at Drake Chenault, Mike Kinosian. As I read it, I became increasingly numb, and quite frankly, angry. His critique of my air time basically said that I sucked. Wait a minute, we're number one, how can I suck? But there it was in black typed words and white crepe copy paper, you suck! Well, it really didn’t say “you suck”, but that’s what I saw. Mike categorized each of the points on my sample taped show that he heard me doing completely wrong to his dissatisfaction. It was a full page of dissatisfaction. The gist I got was that he wanted Dick and Eric to work with me or can me. To me, this was a major wake-up call.

Most guys in smaller markets never get this kind of dress down from a Major Market consultant. After I had some time to think about it, I took another view of what I was doing and worked on what I needed to improve my show.  I had to take Mike’s perspective as an opportunity to become more audience focused and form some goals. It was a chance to break out of the bubble that I lived in. In retrospect, it was a key moment in my broadcasting career. That memo was an important lesson in humility. I still have it to this day. I keep it because it’s an important reminder that you can’t achieve success without being able accept defeat and learn from it. Learning new skills and ways would be decisive to my accomplishment, advancement and survival in broadcasting and beyond. After all these years, I think a thank you is owed to Mike Kinosian.