Why Your Opinion Doesn't Matter

Just as a reminder, I have a second blog now. An explanation for it can be found here.

Today at the radio station I was asked to go through emails, adding senders to our newsletter contact list. A lot of these were contest entries and opinions on our new programming schedule. We had our share of complaints, too. I've heard stories about ridiculous complaints to the media before, but nothing compares to reading them firsthand. Here are a few of my favorites:

• One man wrote to complain that we no longer play Georgia Southern University football, even though we still do. His signature states that he is a graduate of said University's business school, and lists the cities where he lives and works (not the addresses or company, mind you, only the cities). Just in case the people he emails need to know that stuff.
• Syndicated radio host Mancow apparently made a joke about marijuana, which one listener found highly inappropriate since teenagers might have been listening (even though we don't make the show, and no teenagers listen to talk radio).
  
• A mother was absolutely enraged that an announcer from the hourly news segment spoiled the uneven bar competition during the Olympics by announcing the results before the television broadcast. She thought we ought to have some sort of warning before sports results. Like Mancow, the hourly news is not produced in-house, as is made apparent by the announcement at the beginning and end of every segment.
• Sometimes we host shows for our sponsors as part of advertising agreements. One of the sponsors with its own airtime is a local coffee house and cafe that hosts live musical entertainment every week. A man claiming to be a regular listener of the station sent an email complaining about the quality of this program. Due to this allegedly poor quality, he "suspected" that the cafe was either a product of the station's owner, or one of our sponsors. I thought it was kind of odd that a regular listener hadn't heard the numerous commercials played for the cafe every day.
• A large number of people wrote in asking the station to change its program schedule. That's not such a bad thing, since if a lot of people complain about the same program, it probably means that a change needs to be made. But the people who wrote had really specific reasons. I don't think I saw a single one that just said, "I think this program should be aired at this time, because it's more convenient." Instead, people wrote letters along the lines of, "I think this program should be in the afternoon because in the morning I have to get the kids ready for school and then I have my part-time job and then I play bridge with the girls for a while and we usually go out for lunch afterward. Also, I'm special."
• My favorite complaint defies all logic. One of our listening families moved to Austin, Texas, where there is another radio station that happens to have the same call letters. We received an email from one of the family members because the Dr. Laura show is on at a different time there, and she thought we should call the Austin station and get the program manager to change the time slot. Seriously.

This, my friends, is why big companies and politicians don't listen to us.