You ready for some bullshit?
So, for the 4th year running, our owner decided our least-listened-to station is going to carry high school football, for the team of a nearby one-horse town with nothing going for it. As usual, that town's local businesses have ponied up sponsorships, so we're going to make some money on this, I suppose, despite the fact our broadcast coverage barely reaches their market.
Every year the thing is a train wreck. Nobody is ever put in charge of it, and the owner just assumes that it will take care of itself and find its way to the air. The PD is on vacation, the board-op has no idea what he's doing, and the engineer and I have both thrown up our hands in disgust and walked away from it.
This year's new stupid wrinkle is, in an effort to wring more money from the sponsors, we're apparently carrying broadcast coverage of two scrimmages ahead of the actual season. WHY? They're 45 minutes long and are glorified practices! They're not even long enough for us to air commercials during them. It's a waste of time for all involved and makes that station look even more mickey mouse than it does.
Today is the second of the two scrimmages in question. We got word last week that this week's scrimmage was going to be at 5pm instead of the usual 7:30, so we had to reschedule all the clocks and recut all the promos to reflect the new time. So we do, and manage to get all our ducks in a row, for once.
Well, apparently, our commentators get out there today with the equipment, our clueless (and stinky-BO-problem-afflicted) board op shows up here at 5 as planned... and we all find out that somewhere, sometime, the scrimmage got moved again to 7:15 and nobody thought it would be important to tell the radio station. And because our board-op is completely incapable of dealing with any kind of adversity or unscripted event, he just lets all the commercials roll starting at 5. So we have about 20 straight minutes of commercials (the same 9 commercials over and over, mind you) until the engineer gets there and asks WTF is going on. That's when we find out the 7:15 thing. Oh, and also that it's an Intrasquad scrimmage. For non-football people, that means there isn't even another team. It's one team practicing against itself. IT IS LITERALLY JUST A PODUNK HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL PRACTICE, AND OUR RADIO STATION IS THERE TO BROADCAST IT!
What a goddamned clusterfuck. Why are we covering this? Why weren't we told about the time change? Why do we even bother?