Much has been written about all the smart and talented radio people who’ve been let go over the past eight months or so. Every time we hear of another respected friend losing his or her job, there is shock, anger, the throwing up of hands and the feeling of helplessness to aid our colleagues in landing their next gig — because that next gig just doesn’t seem to exist right now.

But what happens when someone with whom you’ve been engaged in fierce battle for the past decade gets shown the door? There was a time that this would be cause for ‘an emergency cocktail’ in our building. Everyone knows that a shake-up at your competitor is an opportunity to benefit in their moment of vulnerability. It may mean simply looking inward and tightening up, exploiting their weaknesses, turning it into a publicity stunt or sometimes even hiring the person who’s been your station’s nemesis.

The PD at our competitor was let go last week. This man has been a thorn in my side for the past 10 years. The glares we exchanged at ‘neutral’ concerts could have cut miles of roll-out banners. There isn’t enough bandwidth on the Internet to copy/paste the nasty, albeit good natured, emails we’ve exchanged after each book. Do the math; I’ve been in a 40-book battle with this guy! He would win, we would win. He would win, we would win. I think he was trying to comfort me one time when he wrote, "Arbitron giveth and Arbitron taketh away".  Putting it mildly, it’s been intense.

I remember bumping into him years ago and I said something to the effect of, "Can’t we just all get along?"  To which he simply replied, "I will never be your friend. I’ll either be your boss or your agent,  but I will never be your friend." It was a thing of mutual respect (at least that’s what I told myself).

But he lied. He was my friend. He made me a better jock. I thought of him every time I turned on the mic. He doesn’t know what I know about him. He’s completely unaware how people who have worked with him would tell me how brutal he was in an aircheck session. I wanted that!  I would have taken that from him. I learned more about how to be and how NOT to be on the air from what others told me he expected, than any aircheck session from the consultants and PD’s I worked with over the years.

And now he’s gone. I’m told he’s going to catch up on his reading, paint his house, go to the dentist, have a cardio-scan, get a check-up while he still has insurance. And I still have a job to do. I’m still being paid to beat him in middays, but it’s not his station anymore. It’s going to take a while to get used to not imaging him reaming me out for a bad break, or scream, "SCREW YOU" to his radio when I get something right.

We’re in radio because we are competitive. We have no idea how lucky we are when we have a worthy adversary.  Until he’s gone.