I had enough. I wrote this to all of the Moody station managers and engineers so they would know what to expect when Phil Shappard brought his “near-perfect” system to them in the next year.
My Resignation
July 9th, 2006
My resignation and the Truth about the Master Control installation for MBN...
It has come to my attention that the truth about the Master Control installation for MBN has not been fully revealed to you. I have attached a .pdf containing our recommendation presented on June 13th after repeated attempts to be heard were ignored as well as correspondence between RCS and Moody from March through June. I have further correspondence from this month if you are interested in the current details of the situation.
March 15th was the first we contacted RCS about major issues developing after the installation of Master Control mid January. March 23rd was the response received from RCS. Six weeks later on May 26th we followed up on these issues. We received the discouraging response May 30th.
I would hope that after careful review, you would see that Master Control is designed for a live-assisted, music based, local station. The Moody Broadcasting Network is a program based, fully automated, network. I wholeheartedly respect the work that our friends at RCS are doing. They have worked very hard to get the system to function the way it was sold to us. Maybe someday in the future they will attain that goal. The fact remains that we are trying to fix something that should have worked from the moment of purchase. I look forward to working with them on the installation of the WMBI system as that will be a station that can fully benefit from the design of RCS Master Control. They are great people and have a great product. Unfortunately it is not a universal product for every application; particularly network operations. What we really are doing is working for RCS to develop their product for network operation, which will allow them to truly market to Networks. We are the second Network in the U.S. attempting to use Master Control. We are not being compensated for our beta testing and troubleshooting in any way and I feel that we should be.
What disturbs me is that even with everything working correctly, MBN is going to operate less efficiently which will result in less effectiveness. Those responsible for overseeing this apparently are happy to compromise our needs for the network in order to maintain a "healthy" relationship with this software vendor. The network needs a system that will allow us complete control with the packaging and distribution of audio. We can function on another system designed for network operations. All of you locally would then benefit from our work still using Master Control. A lot of what has transpired I believe goes back to the Strategy Sessions. I lot of problems acknowledged in those sessions have not been addressed and are a major cause of the tension, and discouragement, felt by employees here in Chicago. If they have been addressed, they have not been communicated effectively. I knew it would be a slow process, but it sure feels like we are crawling along the ground on our last breath.
We have been told that we are committed to using Master Control for the network. The lack of logic in this decision has completely baffled me and many fellow employees. We have not been heard and some of us even feel dismissed. I can not see how I can continue to work in an environment that promotes inefficiency and fails to listen and respond to their employees.
Working in that type of environment would motivate me to do the absolute minimum. That is not the person I was brought up to be. So it is my regret that after 5 years of serving you faithful stations that I must step aside in my role as Program Systems Operator for the Moody Broadcasting Network.
On a positive note, I am pleased to announce that I will still be able to be a part of the ministry of the Moody Bible Institute. I have been fortunate enough to have been accepted by the engineering department to fill the position made available by Ron Kinze's retirement. I would like to be clear that had I not been approached with this opportunity I still would be stepping aside. I do not see how we can serve the ministry when we do not have God as the number one priority and our family as number two. I am not willing to compromise my mental and physical health by placing work before my family as others have decided to do.
In closing, I truly believe that if my father was alive and still leading broadcasting today that he would
not have allowed this direction to proceed for as long as it has. He would have listened to each employee involved individually as well as all of us as a group, gather all of the facts, and made a logical, timely decision that would have benefited the network to continue to fulfill our mission of advancing the cause of Christ effectively.
John Neff
Moody Bible Institute
820 North LaSalle Blvd.
Chicago, IL 60610
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