|
 After
spending many years listening to some of the greats of Chicago radio (Larry
Lujack, John “Records” Landecker, Jim “Captain Whammo” Channell, Dick Biondi, etc.), I decided I
wanted my crack at the radio business. I
went to Midwestern Broadcasting School in Chicago in
January, 1977. My first real gig was in April of 1977 at WJPF-AM,
Herrin, Illinois. From there I went
to WAUR-FM/WMRO-AM, Aurora, IL where I met my soon to be first wife and
fellow radio personality, Phyllis Hartmann.
After Phyllis and I married in December, 1977, we moved to Daytona Beach,
FL where her parents had retired. Phyllis
was supposed to have a job at WROD-AM
1340, but PD Doug Montgomery didn’t remember offering her a position. I
tried getting into radio in Daytona Beach, and in May of 1978, I got my first
gig. I did overnights at WNDB-AM 1150
as Jason Scott (before the
days of Larry King). I also did weather and kept an eye on WWLV-FM
94.5, "Love 95". From there I went to WDAT-AM
1380 in Ormond Beach, where Phyllis was already on staff. I did
music shifts, swap shops, play-by-play and worked with great folks like “Barefoot”
Rick Glasby and Bill Wise.
I was also going to school at Daytona Beach Community College.
When I was accepted at the University of Florida, Phyllis and I both went
to work at WGGG-AM 1230. I served
as Assistant Program Director and did a lot of fill in and weekend shifts. I
left Florida and moved to Alaska in 1984. During my stay in the 49th state
I worked for KIFW-AM, Sitka as the 7-12 mid rock jock, and KCSY-AM,
Soldotna as program director and did both AM and PM drives (at different times,
of course!). We moved back to Florida in 1986 where Phyllis and I both
worked for Howard Griboff at WZIP-AM 1590 in South Daytona. When
the station changed hands to Charles
Cherry (WPUL-AM 1590) in 1988, I
stayed on until I completed the DBCC Basketball season as Sports
Director. From there it was Program Director at WSBB-AM 1230, New
Smyrna Beach under the late George
Mizelle and in 1992 I became Operations Manager for WELE-AM
1380 under Doug Wilhite.
After some negative financial problems with the station, I left and vowed not to
return to radio. That vow kept for
quite some time. I moved to Nashville in 1996, Phyllis and I split up, and
I moved to Richmond, VA in 2001 with my then new fiancée. I made the
fateful decision to return to broadcasting in 2002 and became Music/Traffic
Director and did an early morning air shift. In 2003 I became the main
fill in for the traffic and news anchors at Metro Networks in Richmond
and worked part time at Cox Radio WKHK-FM (K95) as a weekend jock
and fill in news/traffic anchor. In April 2005 I accepted the night shift
at WFLS-FM 93.3 in Fredericksburg, VA, where I took over a #3 shift and
brought it back to it’s deserved #1 status. In
2006, my wife Rachael and I decided to take the plunge into ownership. We
entered into an agreement to purchase WHAP-AM 1340, Hopewell, VA and put
the dark station back on the air under an LMA. When we hit a major
financial roadblock, we were unable to finish the sale. My days in active
radio were done. After the shutdown of WHAP, I started working with the Radio
Forecast Network, doing forecasts for stations across the country from
the comfort of my home studio. After an attempt at crossing over into the
dark side (Television), I’m now looking at a new challenge: running the
Richmond, VA operation of Traffic.com,
prepping traffic reports for a 3 station cluster and the local NBC TV
affiliate.
|
