inception in 1998. We’ve served the truth. We’ve served up community spirit and activism. We’ve proudly broken news stories and held public vigils for causes we believe in and that won’t change.
What I’m good at is telling stories and learning and asking questions. That’s what I’ve always done. Why? How? Where? When? Who? Geez…tell me more?
What we do here in sports media is give opinions. And many have given their “opinion” on my changes at WNST.net.
“Nestor is going broke.”
“Nestor was unfair with his employees.”
“Nestor has lost his mind.”
“Nestor finally sold the radio station to Peter Angelos.” (Well, only one guy said that but I thought it was funny.)
8
Much like most of the opinions I’ve heard about sports strategies and offenses and defenses over the years, they’re all very untrue and unfounded.
But “haters gonna hate.”
This is pretty simple.
I own the place. And for having worked 23 years on my own, starting at 428 Kane Street with literally nothing but a $391 a month mortgage, to owning a radio station and having risked everything to have it, I get to pick who I work with and how I guide my company and my fortunes. As I stated on Friday’s blog, I’m in business to serve my sponsors and my audience.
It’s a delicate balance. And it’s done, as Steve Bisciotti always agonizes when he discusses his move from Aerotek to the Baltimore Ravens, in the public forum. And this week I’ve been about as popular as any offensive coordinator the team has ever had.
The place I built during the summer of 1998 was beautiful. I found a boarded up dream. I never lost sight of that little failed children’s radio station at the end of one-lane road in Towson. I built it to be beautiful on Aug. 3, 1998 when the doors opened.
During my wife’s respite, she watched a lot of awful TV. But she also flipped to some cool stuff that spoke to me. One of them is Gordon Ramsey, who essentially rolls into your current business world and tells you how f**ked up your place and makes you change it or perish.
8The real world does that to me every day as a small business owner with a unique platform that folks at local advertising agencies like TBC and MGH don’t measure. My partners and sponsors deserve results.
If Gordon Ramsay walked in the door of my facility, he wouldn’t have liked what he saw.
And, so, with my bald, 95-pound wife always about 20 feet from me fighting for her life, I’ve made a difficult, life-changing decision. A very unpopular one in some circles but that’s OK. I’ve been unpopular before on a variety of topics.
But this topic is the one that I better know the best: how to life my life. And what I want to do.
I know many are angry regarding the announcement. I have been portrayed many ways despite pouring my time, soul and honest thoughts into the previous blog and this one. Somehow, for some, that’s still not good enough?
When CBS changes hosts or a format, you don’t even know whom to be angry at over there? It’s not W-Bob-Phillips. Here, at W-N-S-T.net. I don’t have that good fortune to be like Mr. Angelos where I don’t have to answer to my customers.
But when you’re lying in a hospital room all day and all night, and watching the Orioles win for the first time in a generation and watching your wife literally fight for her life for six months, you do a lot of thinking.
8One of my biggest problems with Peter Angelos is that he’s never, ever taken accountability for what he did to the city, the fans and the spirit of Orioles baseball. He’s somehow “above” all of that. Accountability is the true test of a person’s soul and spirit.
What do you stand for? What do you want your legacy to be?
I’m an accountable person. And I know what it’s like to struggle.
I didn’t grow up with much in Dundalk. I lost my right pointer finger in a lawnmower accident in 1972 that came three summers after my parents lost their youngest child, who was 12, in a drowning accident. I had a very dysfunctional family in many ways. I had a pregnant girlfriend when I was 15 and raised my son, who’s turning 30 in a few weeks and is a great person, a good friend and has become a deep thinker who teaches me a lot in my adulthood. My mother is 95 years old and still lives in the house she purchased in 1951. Her Albuterol costs $420 a month so she can stay alive and the government health insurance hassles her all the time about her medications.
I pay my bills. I do my best. I treat people well. I answer all emails, inquiries and I run a cool, local business that serves the community in a myriad of ways.
So, in reality, if any mystery person on Twitter with 27 friends wants to call me out on accountability or the residue of the way I’ve lived my life, then I can only laugh in 2014.
My track record speaks for itself.
8I’ve given opportunity after opportunity to a bevy of inexperienced people and I’ve tried to make an unprecedented business model somehow work at a “little AM radio station” that everyone in the world bet against 16 years ago.
I’m still here.
And, now, after 16 years it’s going to be better for me to do it the way I’m doing it as I journey through the middle of my life.
And you can put AM 1570 on your radio dial and flip back and forth to the corporate guys on the FM dial and judge for yourself at any given moment as to whether I’m having a better conversation or they are.
And you can follow us at WNST in a bunch of ways on social media, mobile and the web. And I’d love for you to participate and continue on our journey together as I try something new in my life.
It’s really as simple as that. I’m “all in” on me.
It’s now “Nestor” vs. “105.7 The Fan.”
I’ll take my chances…
