Friday, Dec. 02, 2005 10:13 am

Radio Story 2

Friday finally. This week has gone quickly (as I know this whole month will), but it has been full. Lots to do between now and Sunday's arrival of company, too. I will worry about all that tomorrow. Yesterday at group I got to discussing the in-laws that are coming and that brought up more anxiety than I expected. Odd how this woman was my good friend and then she became my mother-in-law. And I don't mean odd that the transition happened, I mean odd that she really BECAME the stereotypical mother-in-law. Not in the worst ways, really, but it little nitpicky ways. Our lives are very different from theirs and sometimes I think they just don't get us. My parents don't really get us either, but I think they are more just accepting that this is the way it is and they are open-minded. I don't know, I may be getting anxious for no good reason. We spent maybe two or three hours with them last Thanksgiving and I was ready to leave. We'll see how weird two full nights AND that night on the east side are.

The coolest news of the week... I'm celebrating Christmas with the Governor next week! How cool is that. Not that I am a lover of THIS governor, but the chance to see the inside of the mansion, especially at Christmas, will be very cool. I am only going on the coattails of our older morning man, but whatever. He had received the invitation last week and I was jealous, but then yesterday he asked if I could go with him. It is actually during my airshift time, but I had already asked off for that day to recover from the in-laws visit, so it should all work out. We'll take the limo and have a big time!

Went out last night to the restaurant/bar next door to celebrate a saleswoman's birthday. It was a lot of fun, especially since I was mostly sober and she wasn't. Entertaining AND informative. She said I should be a fly on the wall at a salesmeeting because the people in there LOVE me and do not love the manager or my on-air co-workers and I should hear that. Nice to get the reinforcement.

Also had an interesting conversation with a friend that is doing some freelance work with men that we used to work for when I first moved here. They may have some opportunities for me part-time and stuff that might be something I could do with less voice in future years, who knows? I told her to drop my name if an opportunity came up. Extra income would certainly be welcome now (but I mean NOW, today, December, and that isn't going to happen at that job, obviously).

Don't know if I've talked about the weight loss endorsements I may begin doing, too. I have staunchly denied weight loss product endorsements on my show. I tried and turned down at least two products that I can remember. After much cajoling and an incredible amount of money, I agreed to do one product's spots, but I don't endorse them. I introduce the woman that talks about them, but I never say I'm taking them or what they do for me. I did try it and it never did do a lot for me, so I was glad I wasn't pimping it. Now that product dropped me in order to use another person on the station. That pissed me off and cost me lots of money (although I had already had a drop in my rate so it was less than it would have been a year ago). Anyway, another saleswoman has an opportunity for me to try one of these local weight loss centers and see if I want to endorse them.

I have several good reasons to consider it. 1.) The money. I need the money desperately and this will be a pretty good amount, possibly for a long time. 2.) The opportunity to do this for free, too. A money saver, certainly. 3.) I will lose weight. No doubt I could stand to lose a lot. My Austin friends have never seen the "real" me that I see in myself. I really liked me when I was slim in the 1990s, but that damn depression/hormonal debacle of 1998 sure started the spiral UP of the weight. 4.) I would like to lower my blood pressure without having to ingest more pills. This was his recomomendation, so that would save me even more money and aggravation.

I also have some mean reasons for wanting to do this. First, of course, is to show that other product that dropped me that I am in demand and you CANNOT let me stop doing spots or you will lose me. And it will hurt their product, I know, when people not only don't hear me talking about their product but they hear AND SEE the change in me with this product. Also, this saleswoman offered this opportunity to another person at the office. Cotton. Little round cotton ball. He has been begging for endorsements and for the money they bring. Most salespeople aren't much interested in giving him an endorsement opportunity because he is not really an "on-air personality." This saleswoman let him get in on this deal, but the "catch" is that you have to lose some weight and be committed to it before you start doing the spots. He had lost 9 pounds, which is a great start, and bailed on her and said he didn't want to do it anymore. I want to be the dependable one, the committed one that follows through on a promise.

Two of my female co-workers on other stations have done this and they have lost a TON of weight. One has lost over 60 pounds and the other probably a lot more. They both, obviously, needed this a lot, but they had nothing but praise for the program and the products and their new look. They said I would like it, I'd learn to eat better, and I would enjoy the money. They both continue to get paid even though they have plateaued on their weight loss and haven't been working on it for a while. Okay, cool deal and I want to get started. I'm psyching myself up!

The trouble with writing the radio stories that I began yesterday is that I am having a TON of memories flooding my head all the time now. Really weird how many thoughts keep popping up from those earliest days.... and the not so early days, too. I have been in radio a LONG time.

Okay, without much further ado, I will write a radio story. Oh, but wait. I've also had lots of memories flooding in from this new Texas music station in San Antonio. It just started this week and it is very good. It is owned by my company so I hope there might be an opportunity there when they start using disc jockies. My most aggravating co-worker (I'd forgotten I'd given him the name Fat T until I re-read an old entry. Perfect name.) Fat T emailed me the link and said that he thought this is what our underperforming classic rock station should flip to. How stupid is that? Nothing like taking away a ton of our audience and dropping us from number 2 to number 5, 8, 10? He just wants our station to be all classic. He even said that he thought I would be great on a Texas music station since that was my passion and his was classic. I wrote him back and straightened him out that I like the mixture. I don't want to hear wall-to-wall Texas, I still want my Johnny Cash!

And speaking of radio, we got a little book this week. In our primary demo, 25-54, the morning show had dropped to number ten for some odd reason. I was number four in afternoons, which is very good. But if you looked only at the one month, not the three month period, I was number one, probably for the first time ever. Hope the good numbers continue. I need another really good book and bonus!

Okay, now

RADIO STORY NUMBER 2

I thought a lot yesterday about how I got into radio in the first place, so that's where we'll go today...

Some disc jockies claim that they were building little transmitters in their radio as a teenager and illegally going on the air. Or they swept the halls of the local station so that they could meet the disc jockies. I didn't have any great stories like that, sadly. My earliest inklings that I might get into radio? I did LOVE to listen to the radio as a kid. Mom had a black/brown bakelite radio at the head of her bed that we tuned into the two Top 40 stations in town. I preferred KPUR (probably because Mom did), but my cousins insisted that KIXZ was the "cooler" station. Both played the Beatles and I remember that. I also distinctly remember lisening to "Sugar Shack" a million times and I think I even knew at the time that Jimmy Gilmer was from Amarillo so that made it cooler. Wayne Newton's Red Roses for a Blue Lady made an impression, too.

Later, when we lived on the farm, I remember sitting and listening to the big old console radio (that I have inherited along with the bakelite radio) and writing down the songs as they were played. My purpose was to write them down until I heard the same song again. Even then, I was trying to figure out rotations. I KNEW there was a method to this radio play and I wanted to figure it out. I don't recall ever writing them down that long to get to that second play of a song, but that was my goal.

When we lived in Colorado I got my first cassette player and recorded a million songs off of that concole radio (by holding the microphone to the speaker). I would do little radio shows in my garage with my recorded songs and with my dad's screwdriver as a microphone. I really wanted to paint that screwdriver handle grey and put black dots on it to make it look more a "real" microphone. Funny, the cassette player had a microphone, but it didn't impress me as looking like the REAL thing.

All that said, and that leads you to think that radio was on my mind all along, I also could make a case that I would have grown up to be a newspaper reporter or editor, a travel agent, a school teacher, a graphic artist, etc. I did lots of role playing as a kid and I loved them all.

So as I was in high school and started college, radio was not on my mind at all. I also had had some discussions with my dad that probably discouraged me from radio. At one point in high school I decided to be a journalist. When I mentioned that to my father his response was "A journalist? Depression comes along, that's the first job to go." Okay, dad doesn't want me to be a journalist. I loved the stunning photos in Southern Living magazine so I decided I could be a photographer! "Photographer? Depression comes along, that's gonna be the first job to go!" Okay, no photography. This went on and on until I finally said, "Daddy! What do you want me to do? Do you want me to be a petroleum engineer? I will do whatever you want me to do." His response? "I just want you to be happy?" It's a miracle I had any hair left after pulling it all out. Dad was in the petroleum industry and thought it was the most stable business ever. Interesting that he barely made it to retirement without being ousted like some of his co-workers. No business is stable, no job is for sure. My advice to kids is to do what they like and always have their eyes open!

So, discouraged by Dad, how did I end up in radio (although, that was one job I never did ask him about)? I went to college and started with just the basics and such. In my second semester I wanted to take a radio course, but really was afraid. I had signed up for a couple of art classes (like my dad wouldn't complain about that?), but they didn't make so I had to find something else. I opted for Radio 101.

Radio 101. Actually, I think I signed up for two classes... Intro to Mass Comm and Intro to Radio and TV Announcing. That one was a pre-requisite to being on the college station. So these two classroom courses and my teacher lit that fire that started me in radio. Still, I was only thinking about it in practical terms. A female saleswoman came to talk to us one day and described all the great opportunities in radio for women salespersons. I took it to heart and thought that would be a great career. Still, to get the degree, you went on the air on the college station.

So in the fall of 1978 I started the fall semester and was introduced to a radio studio. The professor I had had for my previous classes hadn't been in radio in a long time and was on TV on the weekends, but the teacher for THIS class was a "kid" only a couple of years older than me, but he had been on the radio in El Paso since he was 16. He was one of these people that probably built a transmitter in his own garage and was meant for radio. He taught our class how to be disc jockies. He told us that we probably all wanted to be the rock jocks on the FM dial, but that we had to learn to be Top 40 disc jockies first because you could transform yourself from Top 40 to Rock (or to country or anything else) but you couldn't go the other way. He had a great point that I can still understand.

He taught us the basics of radio (and I still have my notes from that first class and they make me laugh now at the simplicity and basics that I didn't know then that are so ingrained in me now). He was a great teacher and I had a huge crush on him, too. He and I are still friends.

My first airshift was scheduled for a Wednesday night. I was going to be on from six to nine I think. Sadly, I got really really sick and couldn't do it. Someone else had to do it I wonder if stage fright had anything to do with me getting sick? I wish I had diaries from those days. The next shift I was scheduled for was Saturday night for SIX HOURS. That is a long long shift, especially for your very first time.

I was so nervous. I trembled as I cued up records and tried to sound like I knew what I was doing on the radio. I'm sure it was horrible and I'm glad there is no recording of that show (or probably any other I did on that station). I know I was cratering through the night because it is such a constant JOB. It is similar to Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory... you just cannot get behind! There is no time to pause and regroup and have a cigarette, you are running and working for six solid hours. It's not such a big deal when the day comes that you know what you are doing and you know where the records are, etc., but I was really going downhill that night. The teacher/friend came in at some point to check on me and I probably burst into tears. At least I was close to it. He pulled out Eric Clapton's six or seven minute "Cocaine" and cued it up and told me to play it next. That gave me a good bit of time to "come down" and figure out where I was again.

I remember going home at the end of the long six hours and Mom and Dad being up watching TV waiting on me. I sat on the stairs in the living room and told them all about the experience. I was very high from the experience. In the upcoming weeks it just became clear to me that being ON the air was my place, not in sales. I didn't ask my dad if it was okay or tell him that that was what I was going to do, I just moved forward and didn't worry about him anymore. Interesting how you find that path and it is right.

That's how I began my radio career, but that is just college... Maybe tomorrow I'll tell about that first professional job. Within maybe eight weeks of being on the air for the first time EVER, I had a full-time job in radio. That's working pretty fast!


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