Radio Types are an Odd Bunch

I have worked with a lot of people who had the same desire as me. To have a career in radio. There are virtually none left on the air. Thank you corporate America..
The ones I did cross paths with had their own goals, there own ideas and their own dreams. Most were great, some were, well, let's say peculiar.
When I worked at WMAS in Springfield, it started out as a Sunday only gig from noon till six. I worked alone all afternoon, and built up a following just doing odd things on the air and telling stories. I used to listen to the station on Sundays, and before me was Bonnie Barnes. I don't know where Bonnie came from, but I worked with her before on WLDM in Westfield, which later became WNNZ. I was doing the morning show, she was in sales. When WLDM went dark, and WNNZ came on one minute later, I was the first "live " voice on the air. Fifty thousand watts. I got mail from Canada. Not long after, Bonnie quit, and I got fired, along with most of the folks there one day and that was that.
So one Sunday ten years later I turn on WMAS, and when she said her name I called. Hi, how are ya, the usual. Two weeks later, I called her again to hear I song I guess, and she tells me she's leaving, and I should work there. I wasn't interested, so I said no thanks. Bonnie could talk a lot, and that she did, because the next morning, Steve Williams, the program director called me and said he wanted me to do Sundays. I finally agreed, and six months later the morning guy moved south and I was plugged into the morning show for the duration. This went on till New Years eve, 98 into 99, when I was fired. This was a capitalism decision by the owner.
During my years at WMAS I had a ball, mostly because of two people, Chip Evans and Steve Williams. Steve is a tall guy with an amazing voice, and a go for it attitude, and as PD, he has the decision to reject any idea I ever came up with. He never did. There was a day I wanted to do a morning show from the roof of the station. This was three days setting up on the air. The concept was that my contract had expired, ( I never had a contract in my life on radio ), and the new one was in the mail, but due to the terms of the contract, I had to do my morning show as per my contract, but I was not allowed on the air without a contract. Joe Rizza our GM got in on this and went on the air with Steve and me. I was yelling off mic how stupid this was, Joe was trying to calm me down, Steve told me to be cool, and I slammed the studio door on the way out of the studio. Steve was doing his daily show as this went on, and the phones lit up demanding I be on the air next morning, and it went on all day.
At 5:30 the next morning, Steve started my show, and a lot of people were listening to see what was going to happen. Phones started ringing almost right away, and about a minute into the sports Steve was doing, another voice came on the air out of somewhere. It was the engineer Chuck Hurlihey and me talking. We were on the roof, and tapping into the signal. I was on the air, from the roof of WMAS. That morning had dozens of people stopping, hundreds of horn toots and waves. I'm sure a lot of people driving down that busy road tuned in to see what was going on up there especially when a local cop pulled his cruiser in the lot and left his flashing lights on for half an hour or so. Joe was using a bull horn to communicate with me, and Chip and myself were getting eaten alive by black flies from the river. It was one wild fun filled morning that got a lot of press, and more listeners.
There were weird things that happened to me on radio. When I lived in Southwick, I had about a 25 minute drive to WREB in Holyoke every morning, and I used to listen to the news on the way in all of the time. One morning, there was a story about some guy, despondent I guess, who was on the 25th floor of a building somewhere in New York, threatening to jump. After four hours of negotiations, he jumped. So I am thinking about this story, and was wondering what would you say to someone who was on a ledge like that. How would you get him to change their mind?
I found it far more interesting to assume roles on the air, rather that just ask hypothetical questions, so I became a jumper one morning. I told the audience I was on the 15th floor of a building in Holyoke, this was my last show and I was going to jump unless someone talked me down. I was sounding as serious as possible, and the calls started coming in. There were no 15 story buildings in Holyoke then, and wouldn't you think management would wonder how I possibly could have set up a broadcast from this alleged ledge? A lot of people thought it was real. So much so, that half way through my last hour, the Holyoke Police, six of them came rushing into the station. I took a break and buzzed the receptionist, as you could see the door from the studio. " What's going on", I asked. Judy said, " They're here to save you." Somebody called the police station and begged them to stop the guy on the radio from killing himself, and they believed it was true. The story made the front page of the Springfield Republican the next morning with the slug line, " Police Save Talk Show Host From Jumping". Who would have thought one idea would double the audience in one day.
Years later at WMAS one winters morning, I noticed about 25 hubcaps all over our parking lot from cars going over the North end bridge and hitting a pot hole about the size of a swimming pool. I called the DPW and had them on the air. There was only one guy who could get the hole fixed, so I got his car phone and called him as he was driving to Boston. He was on the air too, and said he would make sure it got done. I then got a remote mic, went out and lined all of these hubcaps up in a snow bank, and tried to sell them on the radio. Some how the local TV station got wind of this, and by the end of the day, the story was on the nightly news and the pothole was filled. More free PR and more listeners.
In my early days at WMAS, there was a regular crew of voices doing their shows every day. I did the mornings, Steve did mid days, Wayne Carter afternoons, followed by Frank Knight, and finally Art Lord. Almost every AM station on the dial had their own version of Les Nessman, ( WKRP in Cincinatti ). We had Art Lord, and Lordy this guy was scary. He looked Gothic all of the time. Reminded us of a vampire. He would come in every night with duffel bags full of whatever. He looked like he was taking a trip somewhere. When I came in for the morning show, he had this stuff everywhere, and it took him 10 minutes to get everything back into the bags. He was always in a hurry for some reason, maybe because the sun was coming up. When he left the station, he went to work at a ladies senior citizens home. He died a few years after leaving the station, probably from sunlight.
Frank Knight is an institution. He has been on just about every station around here that there is. A story I heard about Frank shows how some program directors just shouldn't be doing what they are doing. It seems that years back, Frank went from one station in the area to the FM side of WMAS. Frank is a Polka nut, and generally knows his stuff when it comes to big band music. Not so with the music in the 70's. He once played a song, then said he was going to take a break, and when he came back, it will be time for a great song by Alice Cooper, and SHE'LL sing it for you right after this. Not long thereafter, Frank was plugged into the AM side and entertained for many years.
Wayne Carter was a curious guy that could talk ad infinitum about anything. He was a marine, knew a million radio people, and was once a best friend to the guy who voiced the intro for the Superman TV series. He had a couple of failed marriages, and would up somehow on WMAS. He had no car, and not many friends.
When Joe Rizza left the station, he was replaced by a guy who started the ruination of that station. He had convinced the owner to go all satellite, except for the morning show on the AM side. He then told me it was my responsibility to dismiss everybody else on the air, as I knew them and he didn't. I almost lost my job in the argument over this, but I finally conceded as they knew me, and this clown had no tact or feelings. Steve had already left, and I had to tell Frank and Wayne. Wayne was devastated. He was older, and he knew that with the state of AM radio, this was the end of the line for his career.
They were given a small severance package, and Wayne decided that he would do the other thing he loved to do. Drink.. Somebody broke into his apartment and took his TV. I got him another one. He called me at home weeks later, asking me to come right over to his place. When I got there, all of his meager things were on the tree belt and he was on the curb. He had nothing.
Wayne lived with Linda and me for a few weeks. He slept on the couch, left early and just walked all day long because he didn't want to be a pest. We would give him money, and the one other person in the area he knew, stored what little he had in a garage somewhere.
Wayne got into some sort of AA program out near Boston. He would call from time to time. I had heard nothing from him for a few months, till one night I got home and listened to the answering machine. I wasn't sure who it was, the voice weak and barely a whisper. The booze caught up to him.. I pondered calling him back.. I waited a day or so and called. He was gone. Buried in some Potters field somewhere out on the Cape, I imagine there is no marker there.
About six months later, I got a call from the guy who was storing his stuff. He wanted it out of his garage, and wanted to know how to get hold of Wayne.
I never knew much about the man except that he loved radio and had a great sense of humor, and stories. Man he could tell stories.
In better days, the old crew was pretty tight. I went in one morning as usual, started the show at 5:30, when I heard some voice in my earphones, and traffic noise. I stopped, wondering what this was when Steve, who isn't on the air till 10, pushed the door open and took my picture. Stunned? I guess you could say that. So what was this all about? He told me to go home, then I realized the voice reading the sports, or whatever, was my wife Linda. She had set this entire thing up with Steve. The remote unit, the engineer, and the bride were on my front porch, doing the morning show. We did the whole morning from my house. When it started raining, we moved into the living room. An entire morning on the air with cops stopping in, members of the Air Force, sponsors bringing food, and strangers sitting on the couch. At one point, I was playing Tetras on the TV with somebody, and this was going out over the air. Could that happen in today's radio? no............no.
There was a cow in the area that got away from its owner and I found out about this. I managed to set up "Cow Central" on the air, turning this search into something huge. I named the nameless cow Elsie, ( of course ) and had half the community out looking for her. I had a cow in a can sound effect we used constantly.We had hourly cow updates and Chip always had this story in every newscast. I was in the woods with a phone talking on the air when I fell into a pond. Now this is good radio. This made the paper too. Cow Central. I had this goofy voice I played at all times throughout the day just before the update saying, " Where's The Beef?"
It went on for three or four days. It was a ton of fun, and listeners really had a good time with it. Then they found her dead somewhere. I never talked about that aspect of this whole bit. I just let it fade away.
Sometimes a caller would ask me to say happy birthday to someone and I would. One day a friend called me, and reminded me it was his wife's birthday.
It would have been easy just to say Happy Birthday, but I quickly scribbled some dumb notes and turned the entire morning into Liz Stones birthday bash. Chip did his news outside, I had parade sound effects, and people in the station calling in talking about this special day and the preparations they were making for dinner. I got calls all morning from people wondering who in the world is Liz Stone. I even had her on the air saying where she would be to sign autographs . When I got a weird idea , I went with it, and it always worked.
The morning I convinced Chip to announce he hit the lottery was a fun day. He said a lot of mean things about everybody, then I told him I looked at his ticket and although he had the right numbers, it was an old ticket from 3 weeks ago, then he started to retract what he had said. It was a hoot hearing him squirm.. Johnny never could have done the Tonight show without Ed, and I never could do my show the same way when Chip left. He was the best.
The format was big band music. One morning I had Chip announce, right as he finished the news, that we were pretty excited about the new format change. "Now we kick off the new WMAS!! All rock and roll, all the time." At 5:35 in the morning, people who were used to hearing Sinatra or Glenn Miller were treated to a nice little Dire Straits tune, Money For Nothin'. It was the long version and I pegged the VU meters. I never knew how many people were awake at that time, and how really mad they could be. After all, it was April first, but that never dawned on them..
See, we radio types are an odd bunch, as most of us ,then ,wanted you to laugh as we tried, oh so hard ,to keep that "theater of the mind" still alive , and make you wonder, what's going to happen today with those goofs on the radio?