Skip to main content

10 Things I Liked About My First Day as KOPN Community Radio General Manager

Today was my first day as general manager at KOPN community radio and I was pretty excited about it. I really do think I have found a professional home where I can make a difference and where we can be a leading force for good in the community.

Here are 10 things I liked about my first day.
  1. The music collection is massive and diverse. I had never seen the whole thing before, and it kind of freaked me out.
  2. Volunteers were in and out of the office all day (even when I arrived at about 7:00 am).
  3. The volunteers all had time to talk with me and share what they thought I should know on my first day, what was important to them.
  4. One volunteer, Rhett, gave me a great idea and now I am planning an informal coffee where I will sit in a coffee shop and anyone in the KOPN family is welcome to come hang out with me and help build the KOPN community.
  5. Interactions throughout the entire day reinforced the whole "KOPN is a community" idea.
  6. Great meeting with board president Dan Hemmelgarn and outgoing interim general manager Tao Weilundemo, who are both being so helpful.
  7. Staff Sarah Catlin and Jill Sheets were both great to have around. I am looking forward to becoming more and more of a team.
  8. The programmers -- the folks running the radio shows -- really are cool, and they know so much about so much that I do not.
  9. I really do like my personal office. It overlooks downtown Columbia and is very cool.
  10. In the afternoon, I sent an introduction e-mail to everyone on the newsletter list (over 1000 people), and I have been getting "welcome" and "congratulations" sponsors from people throughout the community, some I know and some I do not. That is totally making my day (and probably my week!) 
Can't wait for tomorrow!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ugh. Apparently, Sometimes Radio Stations Just Stop Working

This was kind of a tough week. Not only did the station go off-air, it happened twice, for two totally different reasons (and this is not something that happens frequently). This story starts at 3:45 AM, when my phone first rang. Honestly, I mostly ignored it and fully intended to go back to sleep, but I am kind of an insomniac, so I found myself getting out of bed. Once in my living room, I checked to see who had called and soon found myself talking to one of our long time show hosts, Lee, who told me, "Sean, the station is off the air." Lee explained that the station had stopped broadcasting a few minutes earlier, he had tried a few things to reset it, those things had not worked, and now we had to get serious about figuring it out. Roughly 30 minutes from the time the phone first rang, I was at the station, doing my best to make the situation better, rather than worse (did I mention I am not a tech guy?). My first call was to Jay, our technology and facilities mana
Post a Comment
Read more

Community Radio Merchandising: A Potentially Cool Innovation

Recently, KOPN community radio launched its first of what amounts to a new marketing program. It is pretty innovative and we honestly have no idea if it will be a good idea or not, but there is almost no risk and it could be pretty cool. Here's why we decided to do it: could increase sales could generate media coverage provides good reasons to communicate over social media the idea will appeal to a large portion of our membership and audience it contributes to our brand as a world contributor and sets us apart in that way, in line with our mission no significant risk or cost To explain the idea, here is the press release we sent. Wish us luck! FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2017 CONTACT: SEAN SPENCE sean@kopn.org; 573-823-1308 KOPN WILL LOAN STORE PROFITS TO DEVELOPING WORLD ENTREPRENEURS Local radio station will use the Kiva.org online platform to make loans around the world (Columbia, MO) KOPN
Post a Comment
Read more