WIVQ Peru Illinois. My destination. After the phone interview and subsequent hiring I packed everything I owned into my Red Grand Torino (yeah like Starsky and Hutch) and headed for central Illinois. As I made the 12 hour drive I thought about all the things I wanted to do with the radio station. I had lots of ideas and hey, they hired me to program the station, so naturally they believed in my programming prowess. Ha, right.
I arrived in Peru in the evening and found the station. On main street in Peru, located above a drug store, the station had taken over a dentist office and stuck a radio station in there. The on air control room was huge, seems like it had been the main examination room for the dentist. He must have been from Texas. Anyway it was setup in a traditional sort of way with a dj position, with console, two turntables, two cart machines etc. You faced the guest position thru a sort of makeshift wooden rack. On the other side was a table, chair and a guest microphone on a mic stand.
The General Manger, Ben Granger meet me enthusiastically and offered to let me stay in his guest room
in his apartment until I could find a place to live. I gladly accepted the offer.
Ben was a young guy, just a few years older than me and had started as a jock and then moved into
sales. This was his first GM job as far as I know. He had a booming voice, but was quite small, maybe 5'8" or something like that. I learned later that he loved it when he was called upon to fill in for someone on air. you could tell he missed it.
Soon I had located an apartment. It was actually a small studio apartment attached to the landlords house. Ty and Irene Ruva became my first landlords. We shared the two car garage and got along famously.
I set about learning what a program director was supposed to do and handled the noon to 6pm airshift every day. The station was quite typical for that sized market. News and public service, adult contemporty music, local sports play by play, Tradio and on Saturday morning a three hour polka show. -Yikes.
My morning guy was Mark Kohring, from St. Louis. Great guy, we hit it off right away. We shared responsibility for the Polka show. Meaning we alternated working the Saturday morning show 6am to noon, so at least every other weekend, you got the full weekend off. The Polka show began at 9am, so you would
go in, sign on the station and do a normal show from 6 to 9 and then....
Cousin Eddy Nowatarski would stride into the control room, with a stack of polka albums under his arm. He would also have a spiral notebook filled with live copy ( he did his own commercials, live in Polish). Most of
his Polka albums were K tel best of collections and would feature as many as 15 polkas on each side of the
album. Problem was that with that many songs on each side it was really hard to set the needle down in the right place. Invariably Eddie would hand over the album to you and say, cut number 13 please. They you would have to stand on your head with your nose inches from the record to try and count the bands and get it on cut 13. During the show Eddie was totally immersed and practically ignored who ever was running the board for him. He read announcements from the Polish community, did his own news and of course played a lot of polkas. He didn't wear headphones though and wanted the speakers kept low int he studio, so he never actually heard any of the polka music. After a Tim Mark and I agreed that it was much easier to
simply put one polka album on...and then start at the beginning of the side and just play the songs in order, rather than Eddies particular selections. Since he couldn't see into the jock position this seem like a great solution. I know, its gotta be wrong to fool an 80 year old Polish guy, but the bottom line was, nobody listened to this nonsense and Eddie would soon be gone. No not dead, cancelled.
In January of 1979, after a few months of working at WIVQ Vicky and I got married. She moved out
to Peru with me got a job in a nursing home and began building a home for us. She was totally cool with the move. It was a good thing because it was the first of about 13 more moves.
Things were humming along nicely until June of 79 when our radio tower (which was on the roof of our building)took a lightning hit and it was destroyed. We were informed that we would be off the air for 60 days! I gotta give credit tot he little company that owned the station. They kept us on pay role during this period. The problem was that we needed to move our antenna to a larger tower outside of town, but needed some very special balanced phone lines to get the stations signal from the studio to the tower. The local phone company did not have this equipment and it was going to take all that time to get everything in place.
So while we waited I did what any beginner PD would do. I convinced them to change the format to Album Oriented Rock. I said, look let's get rid of Tradio and Cousin Eddie and all that crap and be a hip cool Rock station. Lasalle-Peru is a cool place, lets' give them a cool radio station. They went for it. So during our extended off air time I set about getting records, designing format clocks and dry running
the air staff. We would practice in the on air control room as if we were really on the air. By this time they had purchased new equipment for the studio, repainted and had a carpenter build new cabinets. It was cool.
We decided to rename the station Q-101 and were set to debut on the air as soon as the equipment was in place. The tower site we were using was in huge cornfield just a few miles outside town and as we went out to see it, someone had a brainstorm. Why do we have to wait 60 days....lets just hook up at the base of the tower and broadcast in the cornfield. And that's exactly what we did. We rented one of those construction offices on wheels you see at job sites. We built the studio in the trailer, moved all the equipment out thereand Q-101 went on t he air ahead of schedule...lots of ears tuned in every day. (cornfield, get it).
WIVQ was a great experience, because I was able to treat the station as a laboratory. I experimented and tried new things all with Ben's approval. He seemed to like my ideas and once we made the change to Q-101 that station did really well.
I worked with some wonderful people at IVQ, the amazing Gene Delisio would could do a 15 minute sportscast off the top of his head, with just a quarter sheet of paper with notes. J.C.Hall, who was a production wiz, Bob Grove a local kid who was great on the radio, Ben Granger my first GM, Mark Kohring and of course Cousin Eddie.(He never knew).
During out technical problems I got to know two contract engineers, Gary and Jim who handled all of our technical stuff. I had been at IVQ for about two years and one day Jim told me that he was just back
from Kentucky, where he had picked up a new engineering client. These two guys, who knew nothing about radio had bought the local AM/FM station and were looking for a young guy to run the stations for them. He told me he had recommend me. What! Are you nuts. Run their stations?
He said, look they wanted me to come down for an interview, so why not check it out.
Yup, they hired me. Look out Appalachia here I come.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Really? Your first job in radio was as a program director?
I often get a surprised reaction when I tell people that yes, my very first job was as a program director. How did that happen? Seems like it was meant to be. Even as I continued my teenage dream of being in radio, I was more focused on the behind the scenes. I wanted to know how things happened on the radio. Why did they play the songs when they played them? Who told the disc jockeys what to say?
Who made the decision on the contests and station promotions?
Yes, I had fun making tapes and pretending to be on the air. I could also see how it would be cool
to be thought of as someone on the radio. I did not however really crave attention or want to be out in public with this. I just thought it was cool to play records and talk on the radio.
So with Mr. Shaners help, I selected SUNY Geneseo as a destination for college. They had a good communications department, plus as a teachers college I learned the female to male ratio was about
5 to 1.
Upon arrival at Geneseo I sought out the college radio station to see if I could get on the air. There were actually two stations. An FM non commercial station that featured NPR programming and played jazz music and an unruly animal house type AM carrier current station (could only be heard on campus) that played Top 40 music. The FM folks were snobs and I immediately tried to get on the AM station WGBS. While hanging around the station I saw the on air schedule posted on the control room door. There were at least 40 names and a long waiting list of people who wanted to be on the air. The station manger was a guy named Steve Rondinero, who was famous on campus because he already had some commercial experience working on several stations in Buffalo including my dream station WKBW. He had just completed a summer of working part time overnights on KB and often held us in rapture while telling stories of what it was like. Of course since he worked overnights he was able to get to know legendary KB morning guy Danny Nevereth. Steve was also a bit of a prick and listened with distaste to one of my home made radio station tapes, which I was hoping to use as an audition for the station. He told me to get lost, and talk to him next year when I was a sophomore. Unfortunately there are still lots of PD"s in the business who act that way, but that's another story.
I was disappointed, but still determined. So as the fall wore on and I became disillusioned with the whole college experience and the seemingly useless courses I was taking I came up with an idea. What if I when to Rondinero and proposed to work the overnight shift on the station. No one wanted to do that, in fact the station signed off at midnight most nights during the week because no one would work. Plus most everyone was sleeping and not paying any attention to the station.
When I hit him with the idea Rondinero simple said, sure knock yourself out. It was a stroke of genius, except for the fact that it make making class the next day very tough and while I got lots of on air time that first semester, my heart was just not into any of the classes I was taking. My grades were not good and after on semester of burning up the overnight airwaves on the college station and struggling with class, it was clear to me that college was just going to take too long. I wanted to be in radio now and I was not learning anything that would help me get on the radio. In fact the most profound thing I can remember was from my class called Interpersonal communication. Professor Goetzinger lead the class and often remarked about how he got food and snot in his beard and it was a pain but he couldn't bring himself to shave it.
Nope, college was not for me and I had a plan. I remember my dad saying to me, OK your not going back next semester, what do you figure you'll do? Join the Air Force I gulped. And that's what I did. I tried to get into Armed Forces radio but they had not openings at the time, so I enlisted and became an Air Force Security Specialists.(Air Force version of MP).
During my time in the service I still dreamed of radio and spent lots of time listening to radio wherever I was and when I came home from the service, once again my dad said, what do you figure you'll do? My mom sort of came to the rescue. She had seen ads on TV for a Vocational school in Buffalo that had a course in radio. We looked up the school and made an appointment to go up for a tour.
The Advanced Training Center, on Sheridan drive in Buffalo was mainly a welding and auto body repair kind of school. Buy a guy named Bill Desing, convinced them to offer radio and he put the course together. It was six month, six hours a day from noon to six of combined classroom and in studio training. The goal of the course was for each student to emerge with a professional resume, a three minute air check, three commercials written and produced by the student and a nice well rounded understanding of how radio worked. Plus in those days you had to pass an FCC test and get a license to be on the air, so there was prep for that test as well.
Sign me up I said. My GI benefits paid for school, and I could draw unemployment while going to school so I started making the 60 mile drive to Buffalo every day, just in time for the Oil crisis of 1977. Gas prices jumped from about 55 cents a gallon to over a dollar, but hey, I was gonna be on the radio.
The school had two fully equipped studios. One was styled after an FM station and the other an AM Top 40 station and we got to spend time in each studio almost every day. We had about three hours of classroom time and three hours working on air and writing and producing commercials. Mr. Desing had a well rounded background and he really taught us a lot. He had copies of old radio shows like Gunsmoke, Fred Allen and The Shadow. We spent hours listening to these old radio dramas and learned about the golden age of radio. It was frustrating sometimes thought because we would get hooked on one of the shows and then find out that he didn't have the next show in the series and we got left hanging.
Bill Desing was my first mentor and he gave me great advice. I had told him of my make believe radio station and my failed college experience. He said to me, I predict you will be programming radio station in big markets someday. He said you're a natural and while working on the air is fun, you seem to want to be in charge and that's rare. He also told me something very important: Do not limit yourself by Geography. what he meant was : go where the jobs are. Radio is tough to break into and you have to willing to go to wherever to get that first job. Plus remember there are only a few radio stations in each town. So when you want to advance, be ready to move. I know this was great advice because my 11 classmates, all from Buffalo thought they could get a break, and get their first job in a large market. Didn't happen. None of them every got a job in radio as far as I know.
At the end of six months I passed the course with flying colors. I had a well done resume'. I had a decent three minute on air check tape and three commercials that I wrote and produced. The next step was
to place an ad in Broadcasting magazine. Don't remember exactly what it said, but in any event it was telling the radio world that I was ready for that first challenge.
I can't say I was full of confidence as I waited for the phone to ring, but I was somewhat optimistic. I had managed to get a part time job at a station in Olean (20 miles away). So while going to school during the week I got to do the Sunday morning god squad shift on WMNS AM 1360. God squad is what we call that shift because it was mostly airing religious programs on tape. I did get to be on the air from 6 AM to 7 AM before all the religion started. After that it was mostly getting the tapes ready to go and baby sitting the station, but hey it was a start. One of the shows I had to run each Sunday was the Lutheran Hour. The first time I ran the show I panicked! It lasted only 15 minutes. I couldn't figure out where the other 45 minutes went. Turns out the show was only supposed to be 15 minutes. Don't ask me why they still called it the Lutheran HOUR.
My first time actually on WMNS was a nightmare. I was going to ATC during the week and contacted the program director of the station to offer my services on a part time basis. He said sure come in for an interview. I had one of my college shows for an audition tape and he listened for a minute and then said follow me. We walked through- the station to the on air control room. The midday guys was playing a tune and had his feet up on the console, reading the newspaper. I glanced at the big clock on the wall and saw that it was about five minutes before noon. Oh, he is letting me see the control room I thought. Must be he is going to hire me. As I began the self congratulation in my mind I heard the PD say to the midday guy: hey take a break, go get some lunch. He's taking over and he gestured to me.
What! OK the PD said you've got a five minute newscast at the top of the hour, then you'll play tunes until 1, here are the commercials for the hour, the script for the newscast, a pair of headphones and up on the wall is the format clock. Follow it..and have some fun, I'm going to lunch.
My face got so hot I felt like I was on the sun. Somehow I muddled through the hour and wasn't horrible because he did in fact hire me for the god squad. I do remember driving home that day thinking why in the world do I want to do this?
Then something cool happened. The phone did ring. Ben Granger, the General manager of a station
in Peru Illinois wanted to talk to me about coming to work. He had seen my add and requested I send a resume and tape, so I did.
He called back a week later and said, how would you like to be our program director? What! I thought this was for an on air position. No he said, we want you to come out and be our program director. I thought to myself I have no idea how to do that. So of course I accepted the job, we agreed that my pay would be
105 dollars a week and I loaded up my car and headed for Illinois.
I'm a program director, now what do I do?
Next time: What do you mean your second job in radio was as a General Manager?
Who made the decision on the contests and station promotions?
Yes, I had fun making tapes and pretending to be on the air. I could also see how it would be cool
to be thought of as someone on the radio. I did not however really crave attention or want to be out in public with this. I just thought it was cool to play records and talk on the radio.
So with Mr. Shaners help, I selected SUNY Geneseo as a destination for college. They had a good communications department, plus as a teachers college I learned the female to male ratio was about
5 to 1.
Upon arrival at Geneseo I sought out the college radio station to see if I could get on the air. There were actually two stations. An FM non commercial station that featured NPR programming and played jazz music and an unruly animal house type AM carrier current station (could only be heard on campus) that played Top 40 music. The FM folks were snobs and I immediately tried to get on the AM station WGBS. While hanging around the station I saw the on air schedule posted on the control room door. There were at least 40 names and a long waiting list of people who wanted to be on the air. The station manger was a guy named Steve Rondinero, who was famous on campus because he already had some commercial experience working on several stations in Buffalo including my dream station WKBW. He had just completed a summer of working part time overnights on KB and often held us in rapture while telling stories of what it was like. Of course since he worked overnights he was able to get to know legendary KB morning guy Danny Nevereth. Steve was also a bit of a prick and listened with distaste to one of my home made radio station tapes, which I was hoping to use as an audition for the station. He told me to get lost, and talk to him next year when I was a sophomore. Unfortunately there are still lots of PD"s in the business who act that way, but that's another story.
I was disappointed, but still determined. So as the fall wore on and I became disillusioned with the whole college experience and the seemingly useless courses I was taking I came up with an idea. What if I when to Rondinero and proposed to work the overnight shift on the station. No one wanted to do that, in fact the station signed off at midnight most nights during the week because no one would work. Plus most everyone was sleeping and not paying any attention to the station.
When I hit him with the idea Rondinero simple said, sure knock yourself out. It was a stroke of genius, except for the fact that it make making class the next day very tough and while I got lots of on air time that first semester, my heart was just not into any of the classes I was taking. My grades were not good and after on semester of burning up the overnight airwaves on the college station and struggling with class, it was clear to me that college was just going to take too long. I wanted to be in radio now and I was not learning anything that would help me get on the radio. In fact the most profound thing I can remember was from my class called Interpersonal communication. Professor Goetzinger lead the class and often remarked about how he got food and snot in his beard and it was a pain but he couldn't bring himself to shave it.
Nope, college was not for me and I had a plan. I remember my dad saying to me, OK your not going back next semester, what do you figure you'll do? Join the Air Force I gulped. And that's what I did. I tried to get into Armed Forces radio but they had not openings at the time, so I enlisted and became an Air Force Security Specialists.(Air Force version of MP).
During my time in the service I still dreamed of radio and spent lots of time listening to radio wherever I was and when I came home from the service, once again my dad said, what do you figure you'll do? My mom sort of came to the rescue. She had seen ads on TV for a Vocational school in Buffalo that had a course in radio. We looked up the school and made an appointment to go up for a tour.
The Advanced Training Center, on Sheridan drive in Buffalo was mainly a welding and auto body repair kind of school. Buy a guy named Bill Desing, convinced them to offer radio and he put the course together. It was six month, six hours a day from noon to six of combined classroom and in studio training. The goal of the course was for each student to emerge with a professional resume, a three minute air check, three commercials written and produced by the student and a nice well rounded understanding of how radio worked. Plus in those days you had to pass an FCC test and get a license to be on the air, so there was prep for that test as well.
Sign me up I said. My GI benefits paid for school, and I could draw unemployment while going to school so I started making the 60 mile drive to Buffalo every day, just in time for the Oil crisis of 1977. Gas prices jumped from about 55 cents a gallon to over a dollar, but hey, I was gonna be on the radio.
The school had two fully equipped studios. One was styled after an FM station and the other an AM Top 40 station and we got to spend time in each studio almost every day. We had about three hours of classroom time and three hours working on air and writing and producing commercials. Mr. Desing had a well rounded background and he really taught us a lot. He had copies of old radio shows like Gunsmoke, Fred Allen and The Shadow. We spent hours listening to these old radio dramas and learned about the golden age of radio. It was frustrating sometimes thought because we would get hooked on one of the shows and then find out that he didn't have the next show in the series and we got left hanging.
Bill Desing was my first mentor and he gave me great advice. I had told him of my make believe radio station and my failed college experience. He said to me, I predict you will be programming radio station in big markets someday. He said you're a natural and while working on the air is fun, you seem to want to be in charge and that's rare. He also told me something very important: Do not limit yourself by Geography. what he meant was : go where the jobs are. Radio is tough to break into and you have to willing to go to wherever to get that first job. Plus remember there are only a few radio stations in each town. So when you want to advance, be ready to move. I know this was great advice because my 11 classmates, all from Buffalo thought they could get a break, and get their first job in a large market. Didn't happen. None of them every got a job in radio as far as I know.
At the end of six months I passed the course with flying colors. I had a well done resume'. I had a decent three minute on air check tape and three commercials that I wrote and produced. The next step was
to place an ad in Broadcasting magazine. Don't remember exactly what it said, but in any event it was telling the radio world that I was ready for that first challenge.
I can't say I was full of confidence as I waited for the phone to ring, but I was somewhat optimistic. I had managed to get a part time job at a station in Olean (20 miles away). So while going to school during the week I got to do the Sunday morning god squad shift on WMNS AM 1360. God squad is what we call that shift because it was mostly airing religious programs on tape. I did get to be on the air from 6 AM to 7 AM before all the religion started. After that it was mostly getting the tapes ready to go and baby sitting the station, but hey it was a start. One of the shows I had to run each Sunday was the Lutheran Hour. The first time I ran the show I panicked! It lasted only 15 minutes. I couldn't figure out where the other 45 minutes went. Turns out the show was only supposed to be 15 minutes. Don't ask me why they still called it the Lutheran HOUR.
My first time actually on WMNS was a nightmare. I was going to ATC during the week and contacted the program director of the station to offer my services on a part time basis. He said sure come in for an interview. I had one of my college shows for an audition tape and he listened for a minute and then said follow me. We walked through- the station to the on air control room. The midday guys was playing a tune and had his feet up on the console, reading the newspaper. I glanced at the big clock on the wall and saw that it was about five minutes before noon. Oh, he is letting me see the control room I thought. Must be he is going to hire me. As I began the self congratulation in my mind I heard the PD say to the midday guy: hey take a break, go get some lunch. He's taking over and he gestured to me.
What! OK the PD said you've got a five minute newscast at the top of the hour, then you'll play tunes until 1, here are the commercials for the hour, the script for the newscast, a pair of headphones and up on the wall is the format clock. Follow it..and have some fun, I'm going to lunch.
My face got so hot I felt like I was on the sun. Somehow I muddled through the hour and wasn't horrible because he did in fact hire me for the god squad. I do remember driving home that day thinking why in the world do I want to do this?
Then something cool happened. The phone did ring. Ben Granger, the General manager of a station
in Peru Illinois wanted to talk to me about coming to work. He had seen my add and requested I send a resume and tape, so I did.
He called back a week later and said, how would you like to be our program director? What! I thought this was for an on air position. No he said, we want you to come out and be our program director. I thought to myself I have no idea how to do that. So of course I accepted the job, we agreed that my pay would be
105 dollars a week and I loaded up my car and headed for Illinois.
I'm a program director, now what do I do?
Next time: What do you mean your second job in radio was as a General Manager?
Thursday, December 9, 2010
The Beatles are in my radio
Every day as I drive to work I watch people at stoplights. I often think, I wonder how many of those folks are looking forward to getting to work? I think about this because each day I can't
wait to get to work. I love what I do. I love radio, the people in it and everything about it. My love affair with radio began early. I was maybe five or six when I got a Sylvania clock radio with a built in radio for my room. It had a lever on it that you could move to select 60 mins 45 mins or 30 mins, so the radio would click off. I set it on 60 minutes every night when I went to bed and listened to WKBW in Buffalo the big top 40 station. I think my mom was convinced that after a few minutes I would be asleep, but I remember many times reaching over and flipping the radio back on after it clicked off at 60 minutes. I was fascinated by what went on behind the senses. I tried to imagine what was happening at the station with all the groups and performers. I had no idea they were just playing records. I visualized that the station had many studios. The announcer was in one and then the groups were shuffled in and out of the other studios to perform their songs live on the radio. So as the announcer would say, Ok that was the Four Seasons with Sherry baby, and now here are the Beatles on WKBW, I thought he would just be pointing at them to start singing. Meantime the Four Seasons would file out the studio to make room for the next song. Wacky right? Hey I was only six.
Throughout the 60's I listened to the radio all the time. We had radios in the barn, so that during chores we could listen to the radio, it was always on KB and I was always paying attention to what was happening on the radio station. How did they decide what songs to play? Who told the announcers what to say? Why did they all work just three or four hours on the air? And so on.
By my early teens I had built my own radio studio in my bedroom and was experimenting with doing my own radio show. At first I ripped off Cheech and Chong and call my station ASOL and I became Catfish Cooper host of the Curly Catty Disc Show. I spent hours making tapes, doing voices and playing records on my make believe station. I forced my friends to listen to these tapes and actually got some encouragement from them. After a time, I decided to get a bit more professional and changed my radio station.
So I created WJLK FM 97 and put myself on afternoon drive 3-7 pm. I decided to change Catfish to Cat and became Cat Cooper. I spent hours recording shows as the afternoon jock on this hot rockin' top 40 station. I bought the top ten singles each week and started building my record collection. I created Format clocks, clipped Public service messages out of the paper to read once an hour and created a fictitious line up of jocks who also worked at the station so I could cross plug them during my show. Yeah, I was destined to be a program director.
I spent hours recording shows in my home made studio in my bedroom. It was just one large room upstairs and didn't have a lot of electrical outlets to run all my equipment. So I plugged in an extension cord at the bottom of the stairs and ran it up to my room and then added more extension cords to power the turntables and recorders. This worked fine except that on several tapes you can hear my mom standing at the bottom of the stairs, calling my name, advising that dinner was ready. When she couldn't get my attention over the loud music she would simple un plug the cord and the studio would go dead.
Many of my tapes had interruptions, where the show would go dead for a few seconds and then pickup in mid song. Oh well, radio always does have technical difficulties now and then.
In high school I continued to pursue my dream and in discussions with the school guidance counselor made my love of radio the focal points of college planning. The counselor, Mr. Shaner told me that the local radio station (WLSV Wellsville NY, about 20 miles away) had a Saturday morning show called Teen time. All the schools in the county could send a represenitive to be on the show, play requests and read school announcements a couple times a year. His policy had been to let several different kids do it each year, but since I was so involved with learning about radio he managed to send me to represent dear old Rushford Central each time we came up in rotation.
By the time I had appeared on that show a few times, I convinced the disc jockey working that Saturday shift to allow me to actually run the board, rather than sit in the next room while he ran th controls. He taught me what do and I ran my own show, while he took an hour off to drink coffee and smoke.
I then began to work to make my tapes/shows more realistic. I thought it would be cool to do a live remote broadcast, so I took my portable recorder and hit the streets of Olean NY, the nearest city. Two of my friends went with me, but were mortified when I pulled out the recorder and headphones and started interviewing people on the street. I told them I was the teen reporter for WKBW in Buffalo and many were glad to talk to me. My two friends hung back and couldn't believe I was doing it. I took the tape back home and added music around the interviews and created my live remote broadcast tape.
After that incident my friends always made sure I didn't have the tape recorder with me when we went places.
Next time: Really, your first job was as a program director?
wait to get to work. I love what I do. I love radio, the people in it and everything about it. My love affair with radio began early. I was maybe five or six when I got a Sylvania clock radio with a built in radio for my room. It had a lever on it that you could move to select 60 mins 45 mins or 30 mins, so the radio would click off. I set it on 60 minutes every night when I went to bed and listened to WKBW in Buffalo the big top 40 station. I think my mom was convinced that after a few minutes I would be asleep, but I remember many times reaching over and flipping the radio back on after it clicked off at 60 minutes. I was fascinated by what went on behind the senses. I tried to imagine what was happening at the station with all the groups and performers. I had no idea they were just playing records. I visualized that the station had many studios. The announcer was in one and then the groups were shuffled in and out of the other studios to perform their songs live on the radio. So as the announcer would say, Ok that was the Four Seasons with Sherry baby, and now here are the Beatles on WKBW, I thought he would just be pointing at them to start singing. Meantime the Four Seasons would file out the studio to make room for the next song. Wacky right? Hey I was only six.
Throughout the 60's I listened to the radio all the time. We had radios in the barn, so that during chores we could listen to the radio, it was always on KB and I was always paying attention to what was happening on the radio station. How did they decide what songs to play? Who told the announcers what to say? Why did they all work just three or four hours on the air? And so on.
By my early teens I had built my own radio studio in my bedroom and was experimenting with doing my own radio show. At first I ripped off Cheech and Chong and call my station ASOL and I became Catfish Cooper host of the Curly Catty Disc Show. I spent hours making tapes, doing voices and playing records on my make believe station. I forced my friends to listen to these tapes and actually got some encouragement from them. After a time, I decided to get a bit more professional and changed my radio station.
So I created WJLK FM 97 and put myself on afternoon drive 3-7 pm. I decided to change Catfish to Cat and became Cat Cooper. I spent hours recording shows as the afternoon jock on this hot rockin' top 40 station. I bought the top ten singles each week and started building my record collection. I created Format clocks, clipped Public service messages out of the paper to read once an hour and created a fictitious line up of jocks who also worked at the station so I could cross plug them during my show. Yeah, I was destined to be a program director.
I spent hours recording shows in my home made studio in my bedroom. It was just one large room upstairs and didn't have a lot of electrical outlets to run all my equipment. So I plugged in an extension cord at the bottom of the stairs and ran it up to my room and then added more extension cords to power the turntables and recorders. This worked fine except that on several tapes you can hear my mom standing at the bottom of the stairs, calling my name, advising that dinner was ready. When she couldn't get my attention over the loud music she would simple un plug the cord and the studio would go dead.
Many of my tapes had interruptions, where the show would go dead for a few seconds and then pickup in mid song. Oh well, radio always does have technical difficulties now and then.
In high school I continued to pursue my dream and in discussions with the school guidance counselor made my love of radio the focal points of college planning. The counselor, Mr. Shaner told me that the local radio station (WLSV Wellsville NY, about 20 miles away) had a Saturday morning show called Teen time. All the schools in the county could send a represenitive to be on the show, play requests and read school announcements a couple times a year. His policy had been to let several different kids do it each year, but since I was so involved with learning about radio he managed to send me to represent dear old Rushford Central each time we came up in rotation.
By the time I had appeared on that show a few times, I convinced the disc jockey working that Saturday shift to allow me to actually run the board, rather than sit in the next room while he ran th controls. He taught me what do and I ran my own show, while he took an hour off to drink coffee and smoke.
I then began to work to make my tapes/shows more realistic. I thought it would be cool to do a live remote broadcast, so I took my portable recorder and hit the streets of Olean NY, the nearest city. Two of my friends went with me, but were mortified when I pulled out the recorder and headphones and started interviewing people on the street. I told them I was the teen reporter for WKBW in Buffalo and many were glad to talk to me. My two friends hung back and couldn't believe I was doing it. I took the tape back home and added music around the interviews and created my live remote broadcast tape.
After that incident my friends always made sure I didn't have the tape recorder with me when we went places.
Next time: Really, your first job was as a program director?
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Instead of writing a book.......
Ok, so my experiences in radio have been pretty incredible. I've often started a book version of
my life in the biz, with never get very far. Not that anyone would by that book, but it would be fun
to write. So instead I think I do the blog and basically do blog posts that would be similar to chapters in the
book.
So, coming soon "How did the Beatles get in side my radio?
my life in the biz, with never get very far. Not that anyone would by that book, but it would be fun
to write. So instead I think I do the blog and basically do blog posts that would be similar to chapters in the
book.
So, coming soon "How did the Beatles get in side my radio?
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