Not a lot of people do what I do. When compared to other business and industry. There are only 10,000 radio stations in the country. If each one had a program director, that would mean there are 10,000 program directors in the country. But that is not the case. Because many companies now have guys programming two or more stations, that number is more likely 6 or 7 thousand. That means there are only that many jobs in the entire country for what I do. To say it's competitive to find and keep a PD job these days is an understatement. I been lucky. I've been a PD my entire career.
Many of the experiences and lessons from CQ 102 have given me the edge I think. I think of myself as a broadcaster, not just someone in radio.
The distinction is that a broadcaster understands that stations owe much to their communities. We are using public air waves to make money and we need to repay that buy doing good works in our communities. I began to understand this concept while working with David at CQ 102.
In the following years I have been involved in fund raising, volunteering, tornado relief, building homes and many other charitable projects through the various radio stations I have programmed. I put it down on paper and in dollars raised for my entire career so far, the number is around 3 Million dollars.
It started with the Happiness House radiothon at CQ 102. The Happiness House was a specialized school in Geneva for kids with very serious issues. They were funded by various groups including the United Way, but always seemed to come up short. David and I toured the facility and met with the Director to see how we could help. We decided a radiothon would be the way to go.
It became one of the most rewarding things I've ever done. We would suspend programming for 24 hours. No music. No commercials. Just stories about the kids and their families and lots of begging for money. The entire staff contributed. Answering phones, taking pledges, accounting, getting food.
The air staff would stay up for 30 hours strait trading shifts on the air and pleading with folks to get the phones ringing. At the end we would all be exhausted, punchy and delirious when we got our final total. The first year I think we did around 13,000 dollars. The radiothon became an annual event and for the next several years we topped the dollar amount every single year. It was a great feeling and I became hooked on these types of events.
Every on on the CQ staff bought into this concept and put forth amazing effort on efforts like the HH radiothon.
CQ also responded to a need in the community created by a very sad story.
John Walsh's son Adam was abducted and murdered. The story galvanized the country. It brought to light the fact that many parents, when confronted with a missing child situation, often did not have a current photo of the child with them. (John Walsh of course went on to spearhead efforts on behalf of missing children ant to host America's most wanted).
So, the CQ Child ID program was born. We would set up in shopping centers and malls and offer a free child ID card to parents. A color photo of the Child on a small laminated card you could carry in your wallet. Response was incredible. We had lines stretching around the block at every event. We got some nice attention from the N.Y. State Assembly as well. Local officials attended one of our events and we got lots of press coverage. I'm proud to say the first child to receive an ID card was Erin. She got her picture in the paper at the ripe old age of 3. The photo showed Erin getting her fingerprints done, with Assemblyman Mike Nozzolio and a couple of Sheriff's deputies.
I know Jenn is reading this and screaming, "WHEN DO I SHOW UP IN THE STORY". It's coming.
Anyway, back to Erin. She loved going to the station with me and I often took her along on Saturdays at the office. We would spend time in the production studio working on commercials and stuff and I started recording her and playing it back for her to hear what she sounded like. One Saturday I had her record something that I ended up using on the air every single day I worked at CQ 102.
Each day at 3 at the beginning of my on air shift, out of the speakers you would hear a tiny voice say:
CQ 102, Randall C. Bliss....that's my dad! Everywhere I went through out the Fingerlakes people would say, Oh yeah, you're that guy who has the kid on the air every day. An important lesson. You can't go wrong putting kids on the air, people love it.
Along with truly great community stuff, CQ 102 had a cast of characters that made every day at work fun.
Evan Coleman, the golden throated 19 year old, who loved radio so much he never went home. He often worked late and sleep on the couch in the front office. Evan was tall and thin and the most pasty white person I've ever seen. He was blessed with an amazing metabolism which allowed him to eat anything and everything. He was actually banned from local restaurants that featured all you can eat salad bars.
Uncle Lewie, our flamboyant night jock who the kids loved. His phones never stopped ringing during his night-time show. On one of his first nights on the air he did the Top 5 at 9 countdown in reverse order. In other words he played the number one song first, then number two and so on. At least the #3 song was in the right spot. Kinda takes the suspense out of the feature.
One of our overnight jocks Paul Mcarthur believed that the coffee machine talked to him. I tuned in one night at about 3 am to check on him and he was discussing this coffe machine phenominon on the air.
Danny Weinfeld, David's younger brother who served as our engineer. He lived in Boston and only visited a few times a year, thankfully. Danny constantly made him self a nusiance because he wanted to work on equipment in the air studio in the middle of the morning or afternoon show. He didn't like it when I told him overnight shifts were invented for engineers to work on equipment.
The list goes on, charaters all but also many very talented people like Ace News anchors David Waples, Kim Young, Monica Wilson, Marti Casper and Paul Attea. On air talent Dangerous Dan Lundy, Mike Smith, Bruce Barrows, Gabe Sinicropi Mark Casti and Tom Sherman. All great people who went on to great success after their time at CQ 102.
All in all I spent four years at CQ, eventually rising to station manger. This move came after David's family sold the station to a new group and David stayed on to help the new company build a group of stations. He was traveling a lot looking at markets and stations so he promoted my to station manager to fill the gap while he was away.
I learned a lot in those four years and got much better at being both a programmer and an on air talent. For much of those four years I also worked part time on a station in Rochester on the weekends. That came about after David's friend Gary Burns came a visitin'.
Gary was a programming consultant and had just signed on with a station in Rochester to lauch a new Top 40 format on WPXY. He came to visit us in Geneva and steal some folks for the on air lineup. Evan Coleman was hired full time and he asked my to work weekends and fill-in as well. Of course David added Evan's name to the list on the wall. Eventually Bruce Barrows left CQ for PXY as well.
So I continued programming CQ, doing afternoons and then on weekends driving to Rochester to do two or three shifts each weekend.(it was a 60 mile drive one way). Because the stations had some signal overlap, I used a different name in Rochester, Scott Randall. It was confusing. I carried three by 5 index cards with the station call letters and the name I was using at the time and I put it on the console to remind myself who I was and where I was.
It was brutal and left little time for home life and I did this scedule for over two years. It did however really allow me to hone my skills just by the sheer repetition. I did manage some time with the family though and in 1985 Jennifer came along. She was born on Mothers day, May 12. On that saturday we were having a CQ 102 staff picnic and vollyball game in the park next to Seneca lake. We had a great time and Vicky was doing fine. That night around 11 she said, I think it's time to go. We took Erin next door to the neighbors and headed for the hospital with the four way lights flashing. Vicky still kids me about making her sit on a blanket
on the car seat because....well you can figure it out.
Jenn arrived early the next morning. A real nice Mothers day present for sure. So now our little band of radio gypsies had grown to four and I began to feel the pull to move up to larger markets. I felt like my four years at CQ had prepared me for a challenge at the next level.
It wouldn't be long before I got my chance.
