A Bad Job

Well, I walked in today to discover that I'd screwed up something for our Fox affiliate in Tucson: the Superbowl.

There are two easy ways to get canned in this business: Screw up something that brings the FCC down on you (like children's break content or lengths), or cost your station a buttload of cash elsewhere.

This Superbowl screwup is costing the station between $20,000 and $34,000.

In my defense:

I checked it twice.
I ran it past a sales assistant who used to be a traffic manager.
I've been doing this job a month, and it was my first big sporting event.

I don't see the error, but I've been too disheartened to look closely. From what they're telling me, I think I know what I did. I treated it like a regular show, basically, and didn't build in enough "what if" safeguards."

My supervisor has given me almost no training; I've done a similar job before, and we've both assumed I'd pick this right up.

The traffic manager handling this has worked on Fox Superbowl shows before, and she didn't catch the error.

At the end of the day, though, MY name was on it.

My name is the one that's been discussed in what's basically been a day-long closed-door meeting here, one I'm not invited to.

My name was the one discussed on the 16th floor of the corporate building today, our department manager/corporate VP heading up there to hash it out with big bosses.

I halfway don't want to last through this. I don't want the "dumb coordinator" treatment I'll likely get after this if I'm still around.

My boss and the dept head won't make eye contact with me. I'd say they're trying to maintain a necessary distance to make this easier on them.

So my plans to change careers might just be starting a little earlier than I'd hoped...