A question I often pondered is why did I stay in radio so long? The answer is not so easy. The money was not good at all. I started out as a minimum wage button pusher at a 5,000 watt AM daytimer in Savannah, Georgia in 1983. By 1986 I had squeezed another 15 cents an hour out of management. Wow! What a windfall. In 20/20 hindsight, I believed the low wages was ownership’s way of taking advantage of us admittedly unambitious disk jockeys who lived and breathed radio. In other words we were underpaid because we loved the medium too much and were fools enough to take the monetary abuse. The first four years was a love hate relationship. Fact was that I could have been more proactive in sending out airchecks to bigger stations; but I felt at the time a longing to stay in gospel radio. Lack of confidence also played a role.
I was a shy teenager who had friends working at the Piggly Wiggly making upwards of a dollar more an hour. The “prestige” of my job somehow compensated for the gap. Personal appearances at skating parties paid way more than my station in summer of ‘84 but these gigs became non-existent on into 1985, a pivotal year for me.
Realizing that my pleading with a system that was either unwilling or unable to give a substantial raise caused a sense of futility hidden from plain view. Those closest to me knew of my dissatisfaction. For the sake of my craft I was willing to continue honing my DJ persona while I secretly, later openly, pursued a better paying job.
A promising airplane factory job was the first I turned down. A five week training course completed, I flat refused to see myself ever taking any amount of money to do shift work. My dad had pulled some strings with a college buddy’s wife well connected with the plant. The job would have been a sure thing. Somehow radio beckoned and I returned full time despite the better money and benefits. Needless to say greed never played a role. The tug of radio was an irresistible force. It was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, the greater good, my purpose; a calling. With that rationalization my wander lust subsided, for the moment.
By the end of 1986 I was fed up by the insult of a tiny raise not compensatory with my perceived improvement that I legitimately worked very hard obtaining, thank you very much; artistically indignant to coin a phrase. In reality my skill set was only better in delivering time, temperature and record introduction with inflections borrowed from the FM top 40 disk jockeys I attempted to emulate never imagining that personality radio was the wave of the future.
The days of my type of DJ were numbered while the shock jock was on the cusp of forever changing the way radio was done. Not that I wanted risqué talk a part of my repertoire rather the courage of these innovators to break the rules by speaking in their natural voices, expressing the listeners’ mind and bringing a brand of honesty that turned broadcasting on its ear was what I came to admire today.
In my defense, personality radio was not part of my training or nature. Being myself on-air horrified me so advice to lighten up would have likely fallen on deaf ears. I would have scoffed at the idea seeing it unprofessional. In the final analysis, no one mentored me to excellence. Only the mechanics of running the board were taught, the rest was hit or miss self education.
Radio home number one was never a cohesive unit; a beast lacking focus. It was truly chaotic and not in a good, creative contrasting way. There were other DJ’s who did time, temp and intros “better” than me, for sure, but that method was going the way of the dinosaur. The radio industry evolved as my station spewed an extinct form I would eventually unlearn at my next two stations…
stay tuned
copyright 2009 The Peanut Whistle. All rights reserved.
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