Look for a Job in a Smaller Market and have Better Luck

Originally posted on The Sound of Fury blog October 19, 2009:

I have done a bit of soul searching. I feel now like maybe Los Angeles would not be quite a good idea yet. But I think it was still a good experience going to interview over there. I still would like to work in that market. But it looks like I will have to do it the old-fashioned way and get a few years under my belt in a smaller market first. This will give me the ability to to move quickly through a station and gain a lot more experience through a lot more responsibility. I will probably end up on air. All the stations I have looked into, except the ones in Las Vegas (I thought it would be fun to try there too), have a small staff, and everyone does a bit of on-air work. This is better for me really I suppose. The markets I will look into are Pocatello/Idaho Falls, ID; Tucson, AZ; Kingman, AZ; Flagstaff, AZ; and for fun Las Vegas, NV.

I have already sent resumes to every station in Flagstaff around six months ago. But it couldn't hurt to send them more. They never called me back as it is. Maybe things might have changed. Maybe my first one was missplaced. They have new openings listed, but no one has called me so I will inundate them with paper until I get that call.

As I mentioned before, I already have spoken with someone from Pocatello, but I have not been able to contact them since. As I investigated this just now I came to realize that Pocatello and Idaho falls fall into the same broadcast market because they are so close to each other that the signals carry. The gapwest Broadcasting company has offices in both cities and they broadcast from both cities. I will send them both resumes, and since I spoke with them a couple weeks ago I know who to address the envelopes to. :)

I've investigated Tucson several times before. Once I even was called to interview for an on-air position that I had applied for. The problem was that I would be starting ASU a month later and I had applied to the job six months prior to that day. I would have dropped and taken the job, but I decided a degree would be more important than a job at the time. It had the potential to take me farther. And anyway, I had already paid my tuition and it was past the refund date. But that really opened my eyes to smaller markets and how much more likely they are to hire anyone instead being experience snobs.

Kingman is a TINY market, but all the same it has a couple of stations in it. It shares a lot of airwaves with Las Vegas as well. I don't know if this will have any bearing on the stations hiring decisions. The websites I looked at were pretty low budget. They weren't even as sofisticated as this Wordpress blog. But maybe right? Maybe I don't fit with the Kingman demographic, we will see!

As I said above, I will send to stations in Las Vegas purely for the fun of it. Maybe I get a job there, maybe I don't, wouldn't bother me either way. And think how much fun I would have during the day before and after my interview!

Anyway, I see this as a learning experience all the way around. I really felt like moving to Los Angeles would be the right thing for me to do. But after driving over there and going through the interview, I'm thinking that it isn't now. The whole experience just felt really wrong. And in the end I would have a job that wouldn't even cover my cost of living in that city.

Hoping for the best! I'll post more when I hear back from anyone I send a resume to!