My Life as an Extra by Ruth Kaufman

Author:Ruth Kaufman [Kaufman, Ruth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ruth J. Kaufman
Published: 2017-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

My mental state is akin to the accountants in The Producers who sing about how unhappy they are.

Why? Another form letter talent agent rejection. More acting rejection in the form of two on camera auditions I didn’t book. And another first self-submit voiceover audition, which took much too long because I’m still challenged by the recording and editing program. I don’t like submitting from home because there’s no feedback. If the commercial spec says “not announcery,” it’s difficult for me to hear if I’ve achieved something that’s up to the client to decide.

And I had more career rejection. Despite having decided to remain in my current job until I earn some income from acting (I have to believe I’ll succeed, or why bother? Because it’s about the journey, not the outcome. Argh.), something compels me to keep searches running on a couple of job sites. On and off I’ve dreamed of being an author, and responded to an ad for an editor at a local publisher. I had a phone interview, which I thought went well. They said they’d get back to me. Which they did, with a form rejection e-mail.

I also applied for a newly created position at WZRJ: marketing director, which sounds like an interesting change. I have every skill listed in the post and know the hiring manager personally. But I didn’t get an interview, not a phone call, nothing. I got a form e-mail, with the subject header “Rejection Letter,” not even from the hiring manager but from some HR person mired in Barnaby Broadcasting’s corporate headquarters.

And who did they hire? A woman from outside the company with no radio or broadcasting experience but who supposedly is a whiz at marketing specialty soaps. If that wasn’t bad enough, her introductory e-mail had three typos. Nice.

Then boss Brenda asks me to teach Miss Newbie how to use the Arbi—Nielsen radio ratings.

Miss N wears a chic red suit and stilettos. Her lips and nails are red, too. We meet in her tiny office with pastel bars of soap in a bowl on the corner of her desk.

“As I’ve said, a rating is the percentage of listeners in a given population or demographic tuned in to a station at a certain time or daypart, such as morning drive, which is 6:00AM to 10:00AM. Advertisers often focus on AQH, or average quarter hour. The share is the percentage of those listening to radio who listen to a station.”

“Let me make sure I’m hearing you.” Her voice has a slight Southern twang I’d bet men find sexy. “A rating is the number of different people who tune in.”

I bite my tongue. I’ve explained the concepts a dozen times with examples from the ratings reports and led her to websites defining these and other radio industry terms. This is harder than teaching English as a second language. “That’s called cume persons. And the cume rating is cume persons divided by the population.”

I’m not proud of the urge to show my superiority and confuse her even more.

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