Click here to read more from B&C's Classifieds
LOL....Wow did the email from B&C bring back some cool old memories!
Yeah, like everyone else in this business back in the
early 70s, my job hunting completely revolved around Broadcasting magazine. The weekly visit to the Akron public library
was a major event. Usually I'd walk away with a few good leads. Of
course on occasion, I wouldn't be the first one there so I'd have to wait my
turn when a couple of other prospective DJ's or news people scoured the
wonderful back pages of the magazine.
Then when my turn would come, it was straight to the
classifieds. Hell, I don't know if I realized there were actual articles
in there for the first three months I read the magazine! Every week I saw
the longtime ad by KPOW in Powell, Wyo. (which never interviewed me in spite of a
dozen or more reels). But one week in late 1973, I saw an ad for a news
director at little WAYT in Wabash, Ind. Yeah, it was only a 250 watt
daytimer but it was a good shot at that first job. I sent a resume and
reel (on reel-to-reel tape I might add!) and one day got a call from the GM,
O.J. Jackson.
Oh My God!!! (OMG didn't exist yet.)
The phone interview went well enough to get me a visit to
the booming metropolis of Wabash (population 13,000 then) on a cold January
morning. Driving into town I kept the radio in my old AMC Gremlin tuned
to 1510AM, anxiously awaiting the first electrons to make it from the WAYT
tower to my antenna. And finally, just as I crossed the county line into
Wabash county, a crackly signal lit up the dial playing Carly Simon and "It Was
So Easy." (Gee, I still remember that song!). Fred Ramsey was the
morning jock doing live readers for Hamm's beer and the local Dairy Queen that
fateful morning. But though I remember that, the rest of the drive to
downtown was a blur of anticipation, anxiety and fear!
It's there in Wabash that I did my first SUCCESSFUL radio
job interview. O.J. offered me the job right there on the spot and I
headed back home to Ohio as the very excited new employee of WAYT, 1510AM On
the Banks of the Wabash. (Memory's better than I thought it was these
days!)
I've never left the industry since, having moved from
radio into television and eventually public broadcasting management where I've
worked in Syracuse, Roanoke, Houston and now Charleston, Ill. It's
been a fantastic ride through several decades.
So I very much remember with great fondness those many
visits to the library to read the Broadcasting
classifieds and get that first "radio job." And yes, with my new job and
$100 a week paycheck, I finally subscribed!
