Not asking for help when they could really use it

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Back during my very brief stint at college, I volunteered at the radio station; I was thoroughly inspired by one of my favorite sitcoms of all time: WKRP in Cincinnati.

Well, apparently now the radio station has the frequency to reach all across the campus, and quite possibly even further so than that.

Back when I was there though, they could--I kid you not--only amplify to directly outside the building that the radio station broadcast from.

This didn't faze me though...my Uncle is a disc jockey/station manager at a Nashville, Tennessee radio station( though back then he was simply getting high honors in Naples/Ft. Myers, Florida)!

So, I asked him if he could help us out, as he might know something, and he told me he'd be more than happy to assist!

What could possibly go wrong?

Oh.....well apparently for whatever reason the folks I worked with at the station didn't want help from a dude who'd been in the business for at that point about 20 years.

Was it just me, and my quirkiness being Autistic, or do you think these people were just motherf---ing idiots?

That really gets my goat. It drives me crazy, when people do that. If people need help, they should just ask you to help them.

And I was certainly more than willing to, I assure you!

Some people think asking for help is like admitting they can't do it or can't handle it.
Me not asking for help is saying "no one else can do it like I can" or "I'll just do it myself so it's done RIGHT".

THEORY: You were threatening to disrupt the hierarchy.

The institution both wants to do positive things and maintains the current status hierarchy. Sometimes it chooses one, sometimes the other.

Maybe they felt the school would take away their job since they were not able to make things run correctly without asking for help. Not wanting help from others is a common problem with incompetent managers. What I used to do is trick my managers into thinking it was their idea instead of mine.

But knowing how to ask for help is such an important skill!! No one will always know the answer to everything. Even people who are experts have to consult other experts--and that's part of why they're experts; they know who to ask when they don't know something!

(It's an important skill for us, too, incidentally; there'll always be skill gaps, but if we know where to find help, then we can generally handle things. Very important to teach special ed kids that.)

Maybe they didn't want to reach a wider audience.

Oh, I think Aardvark got it.

College campus radio stations are not authorized by the FCC to cover more than the area of their campus. Most of them are only running about 250 watts max, as opposed to a commercial station's 50-100 thousand watts.

If they transmit any further than the limits of their campus, the local commercial stations would have a problem with them stepping on their signals and stealing audience, which translates to ratings which translates to ad revenue which translates to paychecks.

I think when they told you they didn't need any help, they meant their signal could not LEGALLY be increased, so there really was nothing to be done.

Happens. I could cite cases, but while pile it up? Sometimes I wonder who is really socially disadvantaged.

No, because like I told, you the signal now does go over all of campus, if at least not most of it. And gee...it took 'em 7 years to get there; they could've had that 7 years ago.

Ah the "disrupting the hierarchy" thing; this is why I do so love "rocking the boat", and no....I wasn't trying to do that on that occasion.

I can give you at least one example that this is not necessarily true. WRUV at UVM is a commercial free college run radio station that has been in existence since at least the late sixties. They cover the entire Burlington Vermont listening area, and not just the campus. I am certain there are others. If they can do it, I'm sure others can as well.

There are many though, that do not have the licensing allowing as much power or coverage as WRUV. Regulations differ from station to station, depending on which state they are in, what their frequency is, and how power assigned to them will affect other stations in the area. Whether they are AM or FM makes a difference as well.

What a station is or is not allowed to do by the FCC is determined on a case by case basis.

Source: I've had several friends and acquaintances in the business over the years. Most had done a lot of time at both college and commercial stations. Radio was, at one time, on of my "special interests," so I asked a lot of questions, and studied quite a bit on my own.

Chances are the station the OP was at probably was under some restrictions. Still, help from a professional veteran seems pretty stupid to turn down.

to be fair, they didn't even sound like they were taking me seriously about it.

Ah, how NJ seemed to neglect my enthusiasm; well, they no longer enjoy the benefits of it.......

They may not have been. College stations can often be run by what I call "mini-megalomaniacs." I volunteered at one two different times (not WRUV). The first time, I was late once because my JOB required me to work over (this was before cell phones,and there was no phone to call from at the job). When I arrived, the station manager had been on the air before me and was still there waiting for me. She started yelling at me the second I walked in the door, telling me if it ever happened again I was "off the air." I asked her exactly how much she was paying me to be there, and told her I would never be late again, then turned and walked out. I didn't go back for several years.

The second time I volunteered, there was a different manager who had arbitrarily decided that Metallica music was never to be played on the air. I got a request to play them one night, did, and was yelled at yet again. This time, I didn't quit, but politely told him, "First, you do not pay me to be here. Second, the exculusion of Metalilca is censorship." The censorship issue hit him where it hurt, because he happened to be very anti-censorship, and hadn't looked at it that way. He had simply assumed that no one would ever disagree with him on the point.

"Touche" was all he had to say. He still had to make a point of saying, "No more than once a week though."

No offense to all of you in your twenties, but it has been my unfortunate experience that MOST who have not yet reached the age of at least twenty-five, simply do not have the skills to be decent managers. Most run the show on ego alone.

On principal, it is best not to give any advice unless you are asked for it. It's only when you've made people take the initiative to ask that you are likely to be compensated in goodwill, favors, and the like. Even if you can see something bad happening, sometimes there's not really anything you can do and you can't save people from themselves.

In my case a guy wanted to borrow a heated sample line for engine emissions tests. I told him about problems he may encounter with water condensation if he doesn't heat the line, but he didn't want to hear it. He may have been upset about being told something he didn't know, or maybe he's one of those people who glosses over details and doesn't care when his equipment breaks or gives bad results, I don't know. The advice I tried to give him was not totally unsolicited because he did ask to borrow the sample line. Fortunately, emissions testing and students of this sort are no longer my problem.