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?
No comments:
Post a Comment