On What I Do For a Living…

Sister Pie Honey Bunch (you know how I love you…) wasn't ready to be done with the whole Q&A session… and quite honestly, I'm not sure that I've ever really addressed this.  I know that I have in emails back and forth between readers, but when she left me a comment and said here's a question I can't find the answer to:  What is your career? I had to stop and think on if I ever gave you the low down on what I actually DO all day (besides capture mice, photograph rabbit funerals, fix broken pipes, assemble entertainment centers, coach softball, chat with cute boys, install wordpress blogs, lead the youth at church, referee fights, complete science experiments, cart kids all over God's creation, blog, twitter, play on myspace, etc.)

I don't think I did.

So where shall we start?

Here's the short answer.  If I were to hand you my business card, you would see 8 local tv station logos, with my name and Corporate Director of Research and Sales Promotions in italics underneath.  Fancy title, no?  It makes me seem so intelligent, so professional, and I know, you're probably shocked that the moron coming to you live from this little blog would hold such a position.  But it's true.

But what I like to tell people?  I'm somebody.  As in, somebody needs to figure out how we can sell this…somebody needs to have that report on my desk first thing tomorrow morning… somebody needs to implement a training session on ratings… somebody needs to figure out what in the world the networks are doing in the fall…

That somebody?  Is me.

If you live in Mississippi, Missouri, or Georgia, there's a chance that I have something to do with your local television stations.  But no, I won't tell you, at least not publically, what stations that I work for.  That all goes back to boundaries… and keeping my professional and personal life separate.

Now, I'm sure you're wondering what that fancy title requires of me.  Because from most I get the deer in headlights look when I tell them what I do.  My job is two fold, really…  (And for the record, I've been in TV since I was a senior in high school when I interned at the local NBC affiliate here in Roanoke… and have had a PAID gig in TV since 1998… so this December will mark 10 years….)

My job is to come up with compelling ways to convince advertisers that they should advertise on television as opposed to radio, newspaper, billboard, etc (or how to couple TV with those mediums to maximize their message) and then why they should buy our station instead of the competitors.

I do the former with industry research and the latter by anlyzing the Nielsen ratings.

The programs that you love are fueled by the number of people watching them and that's recorded by a company called Nielsen.  Perhaps you've heard of them.  They measure who is watching what and then four times a year, I get those reports.  (Some markets get it daily, but ours are too small to have that.)  If the shows do well, they get to stay on.  If they don't, then they get axed.  Like Men In Trees… only 3 episodes left and it doesn't matter that I have watched religiously since the premiere almost two years ago.  I am not a Nielsen family, and therefore, what I watch doesn't count.

However, there are some shows that do REALLY well in some markets and BOMB in others.  Because they do well nationally, they get to stay but if they BOMB on our stations, it's my job to make them appear like they do well.  Meaning, I have to mathematically make these programs look like they are going to great… which involves statistics, research, etc.  Math.  I hate it.  I've never done well with it.  However, I love what I do and am pretty good at it.  For example, ABC released their fall line up Monday.  I went through yesterday and tried to come up with sound rationale on how well those programs would perform in our market based on similar programs, time period history, how well other programs did premiering behind Grey's, etc.  It sounds complicated, but for me, I guess it's just second nature.

Although sometimes?  You just can't polish a turd.  But I try hard.

And I get to train people on ratings and estimates and help put together sales promotions.  And travel.  But no where interesting… not really.

So that's my real job.  That's what pays the bills.  I love TV.  I love working with multiple stations and networks.  I love working virtually (our entire corporate office is virtual).

However, as I've alluded to in the past, I also have my own business.  That's the fun money, the vacation fund, and I truly love that as well, but not to where I want to do it on a full time basis.  As I've said before, it's a paid hobby, utilizing the knowledge that I have and my background.  (And yes, my company knows about my business… in fact many of our employees own some sort of business in addition to the TV gig.)

So that's what I do.

And I should probably get to doing it now, or I'm going to be out of a job…

Until next time…