Oral History Interview with Becky Diaz, Fall 2016 Page: 2
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(We started with small chats and Diaz began telling us the genesis of her career)
Becky: I wanted to know what TV news reporters were making for income and I found out that
you don't make a lot of money the first few years.
Rita: Yes that's what everyone one is scared of.
Becky: As a journalist you have to start out in a small market. I was already from a small town
and I did not want to go back to live in a small town.
Rita: Yea
Becky: I come from a very humble family. I had to pay my way through college and do work-
study and had to do summer jobs to pay. I don't wanna go back to that. I said so I don't know if I
really wanted to continue the broadcast journalism, I think I wanted something different. So my
professor said why don't you think about broadcast sales? (Referring to Dr. Richard Nelson, one
of her college professors). So I go 'selling TV stations?' He goes no, no no. He said selling the
time, the advertising and I said 'oh okay I'm gonna look into it. He said I'm gonna tell you what
to do, even though you already have my class, I took his class for broadcast ratings, he said I
want you go and see if can get yourself into meetings with the general managers of local radio
and TV stations here in the Houston market and tell them that you are doing a special project for
me, Dr. Richard Nelson, and interview them and see what they tell you about the industry and I
said 'okay that's great I'll do that.' Back then we didn't have mobile phones like this, we had to
look up their phone numbers up in the yellow pages or white pages but there was no such thing
as the internet back then. Everything is so easy now you can Google whatever. So that's what I
did, I went and interviewed with several general managers of radio stations and TV stations and
they were all very easy to talk to and answer my questions, and I said wow this is pretty cool and
then they told me about what it would take to be in the sales industry for media and what they
always look for when hiring people. One of the things that they pointed out to me was that I
would be one of the minorities there because a lot of women were not in media sales although
the rise in the number of women was beginning to grow in broadcast sales, it was still very male
dominated.
Rita: What year was this?
Becky: This was in 80 and 81.
Rita: Ok. That's the same time you got your degree.
Becky: Yeah, so I said wow I'm working already at a radio station at KUHF as an assistant to the
general manager for my work study program and I work 20-25 hours a week and they all said
'well, you know what you need to go ahead and try to learn as much as you can about the radio
industry while you're there' and even though that station was not a commercial station it was a
community station. What you sell is people. PBS, NPR radio stations also, they do fundraisers to
collect money so the viewers and the listeners are the ones that make contributions to the stations
in order to generate money, revenue...and that helps pay for programming and for the people
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Unogwu, Rita; Russell, Jasmine; Cardena, Luissana & Diaz, Becky. Oral History Interview with Becky Diaz, Fall 2016, text, 2016-11~; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth847174/m1/2/: accessed July 9, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism.