Starting over at a startup

By this time tomorrow, I will have finished my first day of my new job.  And I will have broken a promise that I made to myself more than a decade ago.

Shortly after I graduated college, I took a job at a small radio station in Valparaiso.  It didn't pay well, but it was an established station with a broad listenership and good reputation.  As a reporter and anchor at that station, I was able to cover a wide range of issues and stories in Northwest Indiana.  I covered some not-so-interesting Porter County budget hearings, some lively Porter town council meetings, the county fair, and the annual Popcorn Festival.  Some stories weren't so positive, but I won a couple of awards for covering the murder of a six-year-old girl in Portage and the arrest of her killer in Gary.  When Gov. Bayh deployed Indiana State Troopers into Gary to help control rampant crime there, I covered the event for ABC Radio News.

After just 10 months in Valparaiso, I was approached by the manager of a station that was about to go on the air in Evansville.  A startup.  It was supposed to be a big opportunity.  I would be given all of the latest technology and support to put on a newscast that would rival the other news voice in town.  In reality, I was sold a bill of goods.  The support wasn't there.  Although the equipment was new, the technology was straight out of the 1970s.  Management had no idea how to promote the product or sell the product.  Six months after the station went on the air, I would go out to cover news and be told that by the people that I interviewed that they had never heard of my station.  Ten months later, the station manager pulled the plug on the whole idea and that's where my professional radio career ended.  I vowed never to work for another startup again.

But tomorrow, I will report to my first day of work at a startup.  Am I insane?  Maybe.  But this one is different.

The organization that is behind WLPR in Merrillville has a track record of producing programming that people in that part of the state pay attention to.  In a media market overshadowed by stations in Chicago, Lakeshore Public Television has operated a station that provides local news and public interest programming to viewers in Lake, Porter, and surrounding counties.  Now, it wants to duplicate that success on the radio dial.

Last year, LPT purchased a station from the American Family Association with the goal of converting it into an NPR affiliate.  They hired radio professionals who knew the business.  My news director last worked at WIBC in Indianapolis.  She knows her stuff and brings instant credibility.  The program director is a native of the area and has two decades of experience in radio, running non-commercial radio stations in Indiana and Alaska.  He's also a good friend of mine and assured me that this was a risk worth taking.

Will it be easy?  No.  The area has changed a little since I was last working there in 1996.  I'm not looking forward to having to be at work at 3 in the morning.  I'd rather have a place of my own than live in a hotel during the week and commute back to Anderson on weekends.  A full-time gig with medical benefits would be nice instead of 30 hours a week.

Will it be worth it?  Yes.  I'll be working with people I respect in a field that I love.  Once radio gets in a person's blood, it's there for good.

So, I've broken my promise.  It won't be the first time, and probably not the last.  But taking a risk on a startup again could be the jumpstart my life needs right now.

More on Day One tomorrow.